Spectacular results with the A 155!!!
2002-02-23 by Roel Steverink
Hi all on the list, As I told in a another contribution here, I know proudly own a A 155 sequencer (Sorry no cash for a Maq 16/3!) Always was a dream of me to have an analog sequencer. Ever since TD, Schulze and other great artists made some groovy rhythms with it, I'm really hooked. And hi Manuel and Andreas and other newcomers, welcome to the list too. Yes I love Kraftwerk too, Manuel! In the seventies they were awesome, but I Computerwelt and Electric Café are also very good. But back to the A 155. The problem I had was how to hook it all up, so I could get the spectacular results I was aiming for. F.e. real time sequencing. Cause I'm not so technical strong as some of you, I was lost on connecting it the right way. Even on the Doepfer-site there was so little explanation on how to do it. So I began experimenting myself, but that let to a lot of time gone by, with out great results. Major break through was that I discovered I had to use a lfo (hé, I'm an new comer too analogue sequencing. It meaby seems simple, but it certainly is not!) to control the speed of the tone. That pomped some live into it veins! But still no melody. Big problem was where to throw the eg in! When I solved that, the trigger tracks where a new problem. I was slowly going in the right direction, but I needed help on that. Marcel Engels, a dutchman who owns a "Arrick" systeem (synthesizers.com), brought the solution.(Thanks Marcel!) I connected the reset to the s/h or the glide, that was wrong I had to put in into one of the trigger outs. (Something I really had to learn was that you can't put a lot into the sequencer, you have to connect the sequencer to other outs!) Now I could control the length of the sequence as well. All of a sudden spectacular results lay around the corner. And yes, when I began messing around with the switches of the first row, I found out that I had the abillity to dramatically interfere with the melody and tempo. Even only using only the two pot rows (one for the melody, other for the timbre) and one trigger track I could make a complex sequence with jumps in tone and other nuances and it sounded if their where running more sequencers!!! That way I by accident tripped on a melody which Schulze used for his sequencer on the Live album (1980) and it sounded it awesome!!!! I'm still not there yet, don't know how to use the trigger tracks simultaneously? And I used to A 150 to make a 16 step sequencer out of the A 155, you know the example patch in the Doepfer manuel. But for a mysterious reason I didn't succeed? I don't know where I went wrong? Although I quess that I'm tripped over something that wasn't explained in the picture, which is common knowledge to the techheads, but which I'm not aware off??? Keep on sequencing!!! Roel. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]