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30-476: Each DCO offers sawtooth and square waveforms, which are mixed together with a white noise generator before being sent to a voltage-controlled filter (VCF). The Poly-800 features 2 polyphony modes: Whole mode offers 8-voice polyphony with one DCO per voice, while Double mode places the DCOs in pairs for a richer sound, albeit at the expense of reducing polyphony to four voices. The VCF is shared across all voices, which means

60-456: A free software emulation of the Poly-800, called Fury-800. At the time of its release, critics were not impressed with the Poly-800's single VCF, its very basic settings, including parameters with as few as four steps that would typically be adjusted smoothly with knobs, and its somewhat restricted sound abilities. However, these aspects did not significantly detract from its popularity among users;

90-517: A guitar. A variant with reversed-colored keys emulated the look of a Vox Continental organ. In 1984, Korg introduced the EX-800, a keyboardless, rack-mountable version of the Poly-800, which included limited MIDI System Exclusive (SysEx) capability. The EX-800 could also be paired with a Poly-800 through MIDI to increase polyphony. In 1986, Korg introduced the Poly-800 II, an updated version that swapped

120-712: A modern reinterpretation that focuses only on the ability of an electronic musical instrument to generate more than one note-frequency but with the inability to offer individual articulation of tone and/or loudness to each of the individual overlapping notes . The root of that misconception has been anecdotally attributed to probably the Sound on Sound ("SOS") magazine article, " Introducing Polyphony " (part of its "Synth Secrets" series of articles) published for December, 2000. In this article, musician-writer Gordon Reid ( seemingly incorrectly) identifies paraphony thus: "...a form of sound generation called 'Paraphonic' synthesis, prevalent in

150-413: A reinterpretation - possibly a misinterpretation - of meaning '2' and its use has since become widespread. Meaning '3' has prevailed, effectively deprecating meaning '2'. This article relating to electronic musical instruments is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Roland RS-202 The Roland RS-202 was a polyphonic string synthesizer , introduced by Roland in 1976. It

180-462: A secondary attack phase. The DEGs have a slight 'stepped' effect on slow attacks, which can add nuance to sounds such as flutes. The low-frequency oscillator (LFO) features a triangle wave that can be controlled with a joystick and features an optional delay for fading modulation in after playing a note. The joystick can be shifted upwards to modulate the DCO (creating vibrato effects), downwards to modulate

210-475: A single filter and secondary amplifier arrangement. This was revisited in the following month's continuation of the "Synth Secrets" series where 'paraphony' was compared to polyphony in the context of synthesizers: "Figure 1 (above) shows the architecture of a 'divide-down' paraphonic synth on which only the first note played benefits fully from the Attack and Decay stages of the contour generator, and only

240-632: A single input, it has turned around to be a somewhat negative description of instruments that cannot 'fully articulate' their polyphony, where each note shares a significant part of its sound creation (or its contouring) process with any and all other overlapping notes. In fact, Reid was quite correct in what he described, in that instruments described by Roland as offering this 'parallel sound' paraphonic ability had offered layered combinations of sounds comprising individual sounds and voice-architectures that, where electronically generated , did indeed conform to his description. (Roland's first 'paraphonic' device,

270-473: Is Roland's new GR-500 Guitar Synthesizer...both paraphonic and polyphonic. Polyphonic because full chords can be synthesized. Paraphonic because all five sections may be played at once." This does not explain how that 'new (commercial) meaning' of "paraphony" that in the context of electronic music instruments in 1977 has been turned around significantly into the 21st century from multiple complete polyphonic and monophonic sounds that can be layered in unison to

300-400: Is broadly similar to the behaviour we would expect if the same thing were played on (e.g.) a piano. The above can be contrasted with the following recording of how one paraphonic synthesizer (a Korg Volca Keys ) actually handles the same situation in real life. The first note (C) briefly peaks at a high volume ("Attack") when hit, then fades to a quieter level ("Sustain") as

330-471: Is performed via cassette tape. Early models of the Poly-800 required batteries to retain settings, with sounds and sequences being lost if the instrument was left without batteries, resulting in the synth powering up in a random state. To safeguard data, sounds and sequences could be saved and loaded via cassette, or as WAV or MP3 files. The Poly-800 could operate on batteries and included guitar strap pegs for mobility, allowing performers to wear it similarly to

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360-457: Is played, a similar situation occurs. The previously-held C and F# return to full "attack" volume alongside, giving the false impression all three notes were hit simultaneously in a chord-like manner. (While this demonstrates how the Volca Keys chooses to handle paraphony, other methods for doing so are also possible). Completely unrelated to paraphony in its traditional, musical-consonance sense

390-489: Is the commercial sales term coined by Roland Corporation for their GR-500 "Paraphonic Guitar Synthesizer" released in 1977 (continued in 1978 with the Roland RS-505 "Paraphonic String Synthesizer"). Here, Roland were drawing attention to the ability of the synthesizer to produce distinct sounds 'in parallel', whereby each note played can produce multiple complete tuned sounds simultaneously. The instruction-manual introduced

420-491: The GR-500 "Paraphonic Guitar Synthesizer" , counted the original guitar sound amongst its 'parallel sounds', which does not necessarily conform to the interpretation). Those articles did, however, seem to apply the term to any electronic musical instrument with this 'single route' voice architecture limitation, as opposed to Roland 's definition of the actual stacking of different sounds into one, multi-composite sound. Interestingly,

450-543: The Roland VP-330 vocoder and the Moog Sub 37 . The following example simulates how we would expect a non-paraphonic polyphonic synthesizer (i.e. one with an individual EG for each voice) to behave when multiple overlapping notes are played without being released. (In this case, C, F# then B). Note how previously-played (but still held down) notes remain "in the background" when subsequent notes are hit. This

480-586: The Poly-800 is technically a paraphonic synth, instead of a polyphonic synth. The filter can be set to either single or multiple trigger modes; in single mode, the envelope is triggered by the first key press and won't re-trigger until all keys are released. Multi mode allows each key press to trigger the filter envelope independently. Each DCO features a digital envelope generator (DEG) to control its own volume. These DEGs have six stages: Attack, Decay, Break Point, Slope, Sustain, Release (ADBSSR). This offers advanced modulation possibilities such as two-stage decay or

510-496: The VCF, and side to side for altering the pitch bend. The Poly-800 features a 49-key non-velocity-sensitive keyboard and a built-in 256-step polyphonic step sequencer . Although it includes MIDI capabilities, it lacks MIDI System Exclusive (SysEx) functionality, with the exception of the expander version, the EX800, or through modification of the Poly-800 with an EX-firmware-ROM. Patch backup

540-647: The above sense, a synthesizer is called paraphonic if it can play multiple pitches at once, but those pitches share part of their electronic signal paths. For example, the Roland RS-202 string machine could play several dozen pitches at once, but only with a single shared volume envelope , requiring the collective chord to swell and diminish as a single cohesive whole. Similarly, the Korg Poly-800 had 8 oscillators and could produce 8 voices, but had just one filter circuit shared by all of them. Other examples include

570-400: The key remains held down (in accordance with ADSR settings). When the second note (F#) is played, it similarly comes in at full attack volume. However, due to the envelope generator being shared with the voice playing the (still held-down) C, it is forced to do the same. The 'C' returns to full volume simultaneously, giving the false impression it had been hit again. When the third note (B)

600-516: The last note benefits from the Release. Figure 2 (above) depicts a fully polyphonic 'divide-down' synthesizer — such as the Polymoog — that offers a VCF/VCA/EG 'articulator' board for every note on the keyboard." This is a significantly different (re)interpretation of Roland's 'parallel sound' paraphonic term where, instead of being the positive description of multiple simultaneous sounds from

630-412: The late '70s and early '80s... why isn't 'paraphony' (if there is such a word) the same as polyphony? The answer to this is obvious if we consider the articulation of individual notes played on the instrument...", which Reid illustrates with a diagram of a synthesiser with polyphonic initial sound-generation (a divide-down multiple-oscillator and multiple-amplifier architecture) that is, in turn, fed through

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660-558: The multiplicity of any sound-architecture that follows oscillators or the like - simply for a more-meaningful and more-descriptive, terse description of the instrument's note-generation capability and irrespective of the separation (or not) of tone and/or volume, per-note. Meanwhile, the term, 'paraphony' is seldom (or never) applied to the instrument architecture for which Roland spawned the term, which would now, in more-modern parlance, include any 'multitimbral' synthesizer able to output multiple layered sounds simultaneously when triggered by

690-415: The original's chorus effect for a digital delay with adjustable modulation, as well as a new colour scheme. The Poly-800 II also incorporated MIDI System Exclusive (SysEx) functionality, a programmable equalizer with high/low settings, program backups via MIDI in conjunction with the existing cassette interface, and expanded the sequencer's memory capacity to 1000 events. In 2020, Full Bucket Music released

720-502: The recent 'redefinition' has become the prevailing popular meaning of "paraphonic" or "paraphony" in modern music technology terms. Due to reinterpretations or misinterpretations of what paraphony may actually mean, many musicians (and some instrument-manufacturers) have remained with or returned to using such terms as duophonic and polyphonic to describe their two-note (such as modern reiterations of ARP's Oddyssey ) or multi-note instruments (such as Behringer's Poly D ) - regardless of

750-417: The same input notes. This leaves us with a multiple interpretations of paraphony that are described in the following table, showing the three meanings of the term "paraphony". Meaning '1' still stands as what would be termed its 'official' and long-standing meaning, whereas meaning '2' was applied by Roland Corporation presenting a 'sales-speak' word that actually already existed. Meaning '3' would seem to be

780-407: The synthesizer became renowned for its distinctive joystick, optional reverse-color keyboard and strap pegs, allowing it to be played as a keytar . The Poly-800 was the subject of numerous DIY enhancements and circuit-bending modifications. These include adding filter cutoff and resonance knobs, along with a switch to alternate the filter response between 4-pole and 2-pole, which was facilitated by

810-433: The synthesizer's filter chip including a 2-pole output that was not utilized by default. Paraphony Paraphony is a term which has three distinct meanings in the field of music. Paraphony is a term used in musical vernacular to refer to consonances which rely upon intervals of fifths and fourths . This terminology can be traced to ancient Greece and sources such as Theon of Smyrna . Completely unrelated to

840-473: The term to customers, as follows: "The five separate sections... are the Guitar, Polyensemble, Bass, Solo Melody, and External Synthesizer Section... Each of the five sections may be played individually or in any combination... Roland has created a name for this new level of performance capability. It is the word "paraphonic," derived from "parallel" plus "phonic." RolandCorp US wrote, in 1978 sales literature , "It

870-492: The top and bottom of the keyboard, which could have independent sounds. Each note could be assigned a separate envelope articulation, which was necessary to avoid re-triggering the attack if an extra note was added to an existing chord being played. To achieve a more realistic sound of an ensemble of string players, the output was fed through a chorus effect using a number of delay lines triggered by low frequency oscillators . An American company called Multivox manufactured

900-460: Was the successor to the Roland RS-101, released in 1975. The synthesizer operated using sawtooth wave oscillators , which used a frequency divider in a similar manner to an electronic organ to provide full polyphony across a five-octave keyboard. The signal was then fed through a single envelope shaper , making the instrument paraphonic . The front panel had two separate controls for

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