Tutorial 02: Simple polyphonic patch

this tutorial is about building a polyphonic patch and understanding the difference between “single” and “poly” mode of modules.

in this patch, 10 modules are used. the VU meter is optional, but useful esp. for polyphone patches, to avoid clipping. the provided VUmeter module (Mix&Gain/Meter) is quite useless because of it’s low resolution, so I made one myself (Mix&Gain/Meter/VUcwm1.mdl, VUcwm2.mdl)

MVC A, esync, 2x ADSR, esyncAdder, LinVCA as in tut01 patch, and:

pitchModifier B

(Modulation/Pitch) for pitch modulating the OSC by LFO and EG.

uknowOSC

(OSC/Uknow) - a three-in-one OSC with pulse, saw and sub-oscillator.

24dB Highpass

for a change, an highpass instead of a lowpass filter is used here.

multiLFO A

a dsp-wise more “expensive” LFO with two rate modulation inputs and keyfollow. it’s out is connected to the pitchModifier module and the filter CFm input for pitch- and filter modulation. aftertouch is rateModulation source 1, ADSR2 rateMod source 2.

polyOut1

is required for polyphony; without it, you cannot play chords or layer sounds. note that the number of voices has to be set, too, and that dsp load will increase as you increase the number of voices. the polyOut is usually placed after all synthesis modules, and before fx modules (if used).

ok, so this is how polyphonic patches can be created. but what’s up with “single” and “poly” mode of modules?
it’s a tool to decide for every single module whether it should behave mono or polyphonic, to save precious dsp resources.
by right-clicking a module, a menu pops up which lets you switch from polyphonic to single mode. play some notes and check the difference yourself, by changing the mode of the multiLFO, and uknowOSC to “single”.  you see that, in single mode, the LFO sounds ok in most situations while the OSC in single mode results in monophonic behaviour. so, generally spoken, in a polyphonic patch modulation sources like LFOs can be switched to single while sound generators (eg OSCs) and sound-processing modules (eg filters) must not, otherwise the whole patch will behave monophonic.

the patch has a preset list (tut02.pre) to get you started.