![]() ![]() The limitation of one voice becomes an advantage when you consider things like legato passages, where you want to smoothly glide from note to note. But there are also times when it is decidedly not. Ah, the life of a singer.) So my point is that there are times when filling space is useful. ![]() (Our singer, meanwhile, continued to do what he did, blissfully unaware of the ongoing war for the mid-low frequencies. ![]() I would counter by adding fuzz or a synth pedal, but the added harmonics could crowd out our guitarist. He liked to play a lot of chords with an anchor in the low end, and the bass would get lost at times. I used to play bass in an R&B band, and figuring out where I sat in the mix with our keyboardist was a constant struggle. So, while polyphonic synths excel at pads that fill the sonic spectrum, they can be less suited to leads that cut through that space. The choir can make beautiful harmonies, but it can't take the lead like a soloist can. I used the example of a choir and a soloist before. Polyphonic synths and monophonic synths can serve different purposes, and it is often the case that the limitations of one are advantages of the other. More is always better, right?Ĭontext is critical here. We return to our conundrum with definitions in place: do we choose a monophonic synth or a polyphonic one? At first glance, it might appear the choice is simple. While only one of its voices can be triggered at a time, those voices can overlap and express different sounds simultaneously. Meanwhile, the Mutable Instruments' Rings is restored to an untroubled position in the pantheon of polyphonic instruments. In that case, we see that while it can form chords from its arrangement of oscillators, it can only express one chord at a time. Suppose we return to our example of the mighty multi-oscillator synth, one not so different in my imagination from the vaunted Moog Model D. To make this even more precise, let's do away with notes and chords for a moment and speak only of sound (after all, some synthesizers strive for the atonal).Ī monophonic synth allows you to express one sound at a time, while a polyphonic synth can will enable you to express more than one sound simultaneously. While debates about those complicated answers will continue to rage on despite our best efforts, I'd like to present the difference between monophonic and polyphonic in the way that I have come to think of it. So is it not polyphonic? You can see how this seemingly simple question has a lot of complicated answers. However, if we look at a eurorack module like Mutable Instruments' Rings, it can play multiple notes at once, just not at the same time. Then, they might clarify that it's about being able to play different notes on a keyboard simultaneously. Except, many monophonic synths have multiple oscillators, which can be tuned to the intervals of a chord. ![]() Some people describe the difference between monophonic and polyphonic synths as the ability to play chords. A choir or a soloist.īut what is a "voice" when discussing synthesizers? Attempting to define a voice is where things get slippery. So, polyphony is many voices, while monophony is just one voice. From the Greek, mono means one poly means many. (Ask Marc Doty, whose epic series on polyphony is linked at the bottom of this article.) We can get a basic understanding if we put on our philologist (word-knower) hats. They're more slippery than they first appear. Before we go any further, let's define these terms a little. ![]()
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