Triton Sounds

[Ergo]

Hey

I have a question to you guys about the Square Wave lead sound on the Korg Triton...I'm playing in a Power metal band, and that sounds is veeeeeeeeery common for my soloparts....my question: with this sound I can ONLY press one key at the same time, otherwise the keys are quiet...anyone knows if it's possible to change that in some setting or something so I can press more then one key at the time ^^

VERY happy for ansers!

Erik

 

[Skipp]

Hey

I have a question to you guys about the Square Wave lead sound on the Korg Triton...I'm playing in a Power metal band, and that sounds is veeeeeeeeery common for my soloparts....my question: with this sound I can ONLY press one key at the same time, otherwise the keys are quiet...anyone knows if it's possible to change that in some setting or something so I can press more then one key at the time ^^

VERY happy for ansers!

Erik

Try creating a lead sound without the "mono" part turned on. I don't know how it's done on Tritons, but yamaha has that option inside voice options. It can be monophonic or polyphonic. That's what you have to look for.

 

[Sargas]

I don't know how to change it on tritons, but I do know how to change it on the M3, and they should be rather similar. On the M3, you do the following:

Go to program mode and choose your lead sound.

Press the Page Select button and go to page 1 "Basic/DT/Ctrls".

There you have the Voice assign mode, where you choose if the sound should be monophonic or polyphonic. Many leads are mono by default, you just change that to "Poly".

I hope that the Triton is similar enough to make that explanation useful

 

[Ergo]

I don't know how to change it on tritons, but I do know how to change it on the M3, and they should be rather similar. On the M3, you do the following:

Go to program mode and choose your lead sound.

Press the Page Select button and go to page 1 "Basic/DT/Ctrls".

There you have the Voice assign mode, where you choose if the sound should be monophonic or polyphonic. Many leads are mono by default, you just change that to "Poly".

I hope that the Triton is similar enough to make that explanation useful

Thanks man! it was very much as you said =)

 

[ypelletier]

Newbie question:

Why would somebody prefer monophonic instead of polyphonic? Memory issues?

 

[kanthos]

Short answer: glide and history.

Early synths were monophonic; it's much easier to design something that only needs one signal path to play one note at a time than duplicating the signal path or modifying it somehow to generate multiple notes. Many classic synths were strictly monophonic, so a lot of keyboard players got used to playing that way.

As for glide, also called portamento, the idea is that if I play two notes in a row, the pitch will bend smoothly from the first note to the second note. (A variation is legato glide, where the glide only happens if I'm holding the first note down when I hit the second; if I release the first note and then hit the second, there's no glide, which is useful if I'm playing one part high on the keyboard and need to jump lower, where the glide wouldn't make sense). Here's the only example that readily comes to mind:

by Dream Theatre. Jordan Rudess uses glide on the synth lead he plays around 0:25 and again before the second verse. It's somewhat subtle, but definitely present.

Glide doesn't make any musical sense in a polyphonic situation, because if you're playing multiple notes at once, which notes do you glide to and from? More advanced synths might allow gliding if you move from single note to single note while playing polyphonically, but in general, gliding is a monophonic thing.

Memory (really, polyphony) isn't an issue here: it shouldn't be any harder for a keyboard to let you play single notes in poly mode than in mono mode, and if you're concerned about running out of voices, you just play fewer notes or make sure to release them instead of using the sustain pedal to hold a large number of notes.

 

[Sargas]

A better example of the Glide function could be found in the song In the Presence of Enemies Part 2 by Dream Theater (yet again), here:

at about 3.56.

Another example is In the Presence of Enemies Part 1 (Guess the artist!)
[Media]

at about 0.30

Another thing with monophonic sounds is that you can actually do the pull-off technique used by guitar players. Since it can only play one note at a time, if you first press one note, then another one, the first note will die. However, if you release the second note while still holding down the first note, the first note will play again.
There are good examples for this as well, searching for one at the moment, will update this post as soon as I find it.

EDIT:

at about 4.51 you get a good example on that technique