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ADVANCED FEATURES

The Oscillator Menu

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This chapter details the many advanced features available. Most of these
are found in the various Menus available. See page 19 for details on
selecting Menu Mode.

Each of the various Menus available will now be presented in more
detail.

The Oscillator Menu

To complement the front panel controls in the Oscillator section, there are
many other functions located in the Oscillators Menu. This Menu is
selected by pressing the keypad ‘

’ button when the MENUS button in

next to keypad button one is active. Use the PERF / PROG / PAGE
up/down buttons to scroll through the Menu functions available - See
table below.

Polyphony Mode (Menu Page 1)

This setting determines if the Program plays polyphonically or mono-
phonically.

When set to

MONO

MONO AG

, the Program plays monophonically (ie

only one note can be sounded at any one time). If a chord is played on
the keyboard, it will be noticed that as each individual note is released,
the note sounding will revert back to the nearest played note.

The

MONO AG

setting enables ‘Auto glide’ (portamento) to be triggered

whenever a note is played on the keyboard

before

the previously held

down note has been released (legato playing). Using ‘Auto glide’ in this
way can greatly add expressiveness to a Program. It is especially effec-
tive when applied to lead type sounds.

The monophonic settings are often useful when replicating sounds in the
‘real world’ which would normally be played monophonically, for example
a bass guitar.

As their name implies, the

POLY 1

and

POLY 2

settings allow polyphonic

operation.

POLY1

allows successive playing of the same note(s) to be ‘stacked’

together, gradually producing a louder sound texture as the note(s) are
repeatedly played.

With

POLY2

, if the same note(s) are played repeatedly, they will use the

same synthesizer voices as used previously, thus avoiding the ‘stacked
note’ effect.

Unison Voices (Menu Page 2)

Unison allows more than one voice to be used for each note played on
the keyboard. This effect is useful when a very thick sound is required.

Up to eight voices may layered one on top of another when just a single
note is played.

To listen to the effect, select Page 2 in the Oscillator Menu, turn the
PERF / PROG / DATA knob clockwise until the display shows

. Play a

note and listen to the sound. It will become thicker sounding. Increasing
the number of notes to a maximum of 8 will result in very dense sound-
ing textures.

Note: As more voices are assigned to Unison, the available polyphony
for all Parts will reduce accordingly. For example, using 8 voices in
Unison mode will result in just two notes of polyphony being available!

Unison Detune (Menu Page 3)

Unison Detune is used in conjunction with Unison Voices as described
above. When using more than one voice per note, the Unison detune
amount sets how much each voice is detuned relative to the others.
Adjust the amount until the desired effect is heard.

VCO Drift (Menu Page 4)

Controls the amount of tuning drift for the Oscillators. Setting a modest
value, 10 for example will cause each Oscillator to slowly drift fractionally
out of tune. Classic Analogue Synthesizers were known to gradually go
out of tune as the internal circuits heated up. This ‘instability’ actually
helped to give them their own unique character!

Preglide Semitones (Menu Page 5)

A Preglide is applied to the pitch of the Oscillators starting at a pitch
determined by the Preglide amount in semitones. Gliding up from a pitch
occurs when the display indicates between

-12

-1

, and gliding down

from a pitch occurs when the display indicates between

. At a set-

ting of

, no preglide is applied.

The time it takes to complete the Glide is determined by the PORTA-
MENTO knob on the front panel. The Preglide is triggered with every
note received.

Portamento Mode (Menu Page 6)

Determines the type of curve applied when PORTAMENTO is used. Two
types of curve are available, Exponential and Linear. Linear Portamento
sweeps through note intervals at a constant rate. When Exponential
Portamento is used, the rate of sweep decreases throughout the note
sweep’s duration.

Start Phase (Menu Page 7)

When synthesizing percussive or plucked type sounds, there is a lot of
detailed waveform information at the beginning of the sound. It is often
useful to have the Oscillator wave start in

exactly

the same place every

time a key is pressed.

The start phase option allows the precise starting point of the Oscillator
wave to be determined. At a setting of

, the wave will start at zero

Degrees. Each increment on the display shifts the start point of the wave
approximately 3 degrees. The wave will start at a random phase when
set to

OFF

Osc 1 - 2 Sync (Menu Page 8)

This function provides a way of producing interesting, piercing, metallic
sounds. It does this by using the frequency of Oscillator 1 to periodically
restart the waveform used by Oscillator 2. This technique is known as
Oscillator Sync. Set this to

to activate Sync.

It should be remembered that the

frequency

of a waveform corresponds

to the number of waveform peaks (cycles) over a given period of time.
The frequency also determines the Oscillator’s pitch.

Therefore if Oscillators 1 and 2 are detuned from each other, Oscillator
2’s waveform will be periodically interrupted and started again from the
beginning of the waveform cycle every time Oscillator 1’s waveform
begins a new cycle.

The diagram on the following page illustrates this.

Oscillator Menu

Page

Function

Display

Value

Polyphony Mode

OSC Pol Mode

MONO…POLY 2

Unison Voices

OSC Unison

OFF…8