In general, you can describe any instrument or arrangement in terms of polyphonic or monophonic.įor example, brass and reed instruments like trumpet or saxophone are monophonic the same way the early Moogs and ARP synths were.Īnd like I explained above, any musical composition has a defined number of voices. Polyphony is a relevant concept outside the world of synthesis too. Unless you’re using resource-intensive sample libraries or complex instrument patches, you likely won’t run out of polyphony for the majority of your work. Instead, enabling additional voices simply increases the load on your system until you run out of processing power. In your DAW, these devices generally aren’t limited to specific voice counts. The same general concept applies to other instruments like VSTs and samplers.
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Check out our full breakdown of synthesizer terms to learn more.
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It means they’re capable of playing more than one patch setting with different voices at the same time. Hot tip: Some synths are polyphonic as well as multitimbral. It’s a little hard to grasp in words so here’s a video example that explains the difference. The result is a different kind of texture that’s sometimes called paraphonic. That means the second note won’t have the same characteristics as the first. If you only have one filter and ADSR-controlled amplifier available, the envelope won’t trigger again when you play the second voice.
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The onset of each note triggers the ADSR envelope that tells the amplifier and filter how to behave over time. Imagine you’re playing notes on a two-voice polyphonic synthesizer. Remember that a simple analog-style synthesizer consists of three basic parts-the oscillator, amplifier and filter.įor a synth voice to be independent, it needs its own amplifier and filter modules to do the job right. Polyphony means more than just note count when it comes to subtractive synthesis. In fact, the earliest modular synths were enormous walls of modules that could take up entire rooms! This approach continues today with the Eurorack format, although most modular rigs are now more compact.
These early synthesizers were monophonic because the technology of the time wasn’t capable of cramming in a whole keyboard’s worth of voices. I’m talking about the fat bass and lead tones of vintage analog synths like the Minimoog or the r. Monophonic synthesizers can only play one note at a time. The first synthesizer designs were monophonic, and many of the classic sounds we associate with synths came from monophonic instruments. If you use synthesizers or virtual instruments in your workflow, you might be familiar with how these terms apply. In music production, the word is mostly applied to synths, samplers and VSTs to help you understand the capabilities of an instrument. It developed from the earlier practice of monophony which which meant compositions with only a single melodic line In fact, in early music, polyphony simply meant music that included parts written together in harmony. If the composer includes a separate part for each, you can say the parts are written for four voice polyphony. For example, chorale music is often written for the four standard voice types: bass, tenor, alto and soprano.
It comes from musical traditions that date back centuries. The word “voices” is used as a shorthand to refer to an independent line or part. Just don’t confuse the term “voices” with singers-polyphony is a general term that describes how many individual parts are in play at once. It can refer to the distinct parts in a musical composition or the number of voices available in an instrument. Polyphony in music refers to the number of individual voices in a musical texture. In this article I’ll explain the meanings in full and break down what you need to know. So what does polyphonic mean in music and how is it different from monophonic? They can refer to synthesizer types and sound design, but they’re also sometimes used to talk about musical texture in general. Polyphonic and monophonic are two musical terms that you might have heard if you’re new to producing music.
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