Here are my feature requests after a week with the A4 (which is totally bad-ass, by the way!):
Performance ModeWhen setting up the Performance knobs, it would be great to add a secondary option to the Track Destination. Currently, any tweaks to parameters in the Performance Mode affect not only the Track Sound, but also any other Locked Sound that happens on the track. Due to the fact that the A4 only has 4 voices, I'm employing the Sound Locks a lot, such as placing bass drums via Sound Lock in between notes of a bassline. If I set up a Performance Knob to tweak the filter of the bassline, it will also change the filter of the kick drum which I do not want. I therefore suggest the following:
Currently, you press on a knob to step through the track targets when configuring the knob. This remains as is. The additional feature would be to hold FUNCTION while pressing the knob--this would step through the following options: Performance affects entire track (which is the current behavior), Performance affects only the Track Sound (any Sound Locks will ignore the Performance values), and Performance affects only the Locked Sounds (this last option is a lesser use-case in my opinion, but I offer it here for the sake of completeness and a few instances where I could find it useful). These three states could be indicated in the same fashion used to indicate the Osc/Env/LFO Page being edited--A solid line above the track target indicates the first mode, a half line on the left indicates Track Sound Only mode, and a half line on the right indicates Sound Lock Only mode. Of course, if there is a better way to indicate these states, that's fine.
If the above is too much to implement, having a single option in the A4 that says "Performance only affects Track Sounds" would be OK. It would be all-or-nothing on all tracks rather than being knob-specific.
Sound Edit ModeSound Locks are SO AWESOME and quite essential on a synth like this so I'm very happy they are available. To really put them to use, though, I would like to be able to edit a Locked Sound in real-time. Here's what I propose:
In the Sound menu (FUNCTION + SOUND), a new option is added named "Edit Sound". Upon selecting this option, the normal sound browser interface would appear. You then select a sound as usual--in this case, it would be a sound that is currently used in the pattern via a Sound Lock--and press Enter. This would then enable Sound Edit mode.
The A4 would first take the parameters of the saved Sound and copy them into a backup buffer. It would then turn off all of the Track Select buttons on the right to indicate that you're editing a saved Sound instead of one of the Track Sounds.
Now, when you press any of the Sound Parameters buttons (OSC thru LFO) and make changes, those changes would be written immediately into the memory location of the selected Sound--this would result in hearing the changes immediately the next time the sound is triggered in the pattern--this would allow you to hear your edits in real-time and in context with the rest of the pattern.
Once you have made edits, you have two options: Press YES/SAVE if you wish to keep the new sound (at which point the A4 would simply discard the data in the backup buffer) or press NO/RELOAD to discard the changes (at which point the A4 copies the contents of the backup buffer back into the Sound location, reverting it to its original settings).
If there is not enough available memory on the A4 to create a backup buffer, I still think it would be OK if the edits you made were destructive. There's no undo (that I'm aware of) when editing a Track Sound, so being able to revert changes on a Sound Edit would only be a bonus but not mandatory.
Disable Quick ChainingAnother great feature in the A4 is the Direct Pattern Change. I want this on all of the Elektron devices!
But for now, I'll just talk about the A4...
When using this new feature, I find myself constantly creating new Chains by accident. I'll be trying to bounce back and forth between patterns quickly and, quite often, I will not have removed my finger from one of the TRIG buttons before pressing the next--the A4 then interprets this as a Chain (the Chain LED then turns on automatically).
I would like a general preference to disable this "auto chaining" behavior. When this behavior is disabled, the only way to make a Chain would be to first press the CHAIN button to explicitly activate the mode--then it's obvious that you wish to create a Chain when pressing more than one TRIG button at the same time. But without CHAIN turned on, the A4 would simply load the pattern of the last-pressed TRIG button.
As a "bonus", but not as critical, would be a "mono-legato" style of pattern selection where I could hold TRIG 1, press TRIG 2 to have the A4 suddenly switch to pattern 2, then release TRIG 2 at which point the A4 jumps back to pattern 1 (because I'm still holding TRIG 1). This could allow quick "punch-ins" from other patterns. As I said, this wouldn't be as essential for me as simply disabling the auto-chaining.
QuickMute and QuickPattern modesThe various modes for the TRIG buttons that were introduced on the Octatrack are fantastic and I'd like to see something similar for the A4 since, to the best of my knowledge, the 16 TRIG buttons seem to serve no purpose during normal playback.
While I know requests have already been made for a QuickMute mode to allow one-handed muting (which I totally endorse--maybe the first 6 TRIG buttons toggle the mute state while the second 6 only do a temporary mute), I would also request a QuickPattern mode where the TRIGS will recall the pattern within the current Bank. This goes hand-in-hand with the Direct Pattern Change mode so that you can do quick changes without having to keep a finger planted on one of the BANK SELECT buttons.
During use, you could change the Bank Group and Bank as normal, but the pattern would not change until you finally pressed one of the TRIG buttons.
That's it for now! Thanks a lot, Elektron, for another great machine!
