What is Polyphony Really????

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Member Since: Aug 24, 2004

I was thinking about purchasing the Alesis Micron...and it boast 8 polyphony and 4 multitimbral...how does this add up? what does it do?..how do they interact?
To my understanding polyphony means for the model above i can play 8 notes at a time. Now im thinking...If theres a kick and highhat and a string on the first beat of the measure i just used up what 3 of my 8 polyphony???? Am i confused? Does multitimbral help?

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think for yourself
Member
Since: Apr 29, 2004


Jan 04, 2005 03:03 pm

eight sounds at a time, by my understanding, like a guitar and drums and piano and trumpet and on and on

Hold 'Em Czar
Member
Since: Dec 30, 2004


Jan 04, 2005 03:13 pm

ok lets start with polyphony, you've pretty much got a good understanding of that, lets use a strings sound for example. if you play a three note chord you're using 3 of your available 8 notes, if those notes keep sounding after you let go of the keys and you change chords, you'll be using 6 of your available notes (briefly) once you exceed 8 you'll hear some notes cut off abruptly, now as far as mutitambral goes, that says you can use 4 different sounds (patches) at once (most drumkit sounds count as 1). i'd be tempted to say you can use up to 8 notes for each sound (32 notes total) but i'm not sure.


peace

wyd

Member
Since: Aug 24, 2004


Jan 04, 2005 03:27 pm

If what "Whosyodaddy" said is true,8 polyphony per voice(8 on drums, 8 on strings, 8 on piano) that would be beautiful.

I copied this from a website. This is the technical description..

The Micron has 8-voice polyphony with 3 oscillators per voice, and is 4-part multitimbral. In addition to a powerful modulation matrix, the Micron offers a programmable step sequencer, arpeggiator, rhythm sequencer for drum kits, and dynamic realtime phrase sequencer—all of which sync to MIDI clock.
Polyphony and Parts: 8-voice, 4-part multitimbral

What do you make of this?






Czar of Midi
Administrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002


Jan 04, 2005 07:08 pm

Jay, the 8 voice polyphony will not have much effect on the drum sounds as you will probably not be hitting 8 sustained note in the drum kit, so no worries there. And odds are really good you wont ever use it up on any of the patches. Strings are the only real worry there as you can indeed get way moer then 8 notes going in a sustained string part. But a work around there is to use pathces that contain string sections rather then just a s ingle string instrument.

As for the 4 part multi-timbral, as explained above it means you will be able to play a sequance that will use 4 differant midi channels to send 4 differant parts of music to 4 differant instruments in the micron. So ya, drums , strings, piano, your all good to go there.

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