Discussion about the Korg PolySix synthesizer

Ok, I'll confess...
I am trying to nail the synth part to Steve Winwood's 'Valerie" and
would like to see how it sounds on the Polysix. I'm currently playing
the part on my Roland JX8P which is almost damn near perfect after a
lot of tweaking. The thing is, I know he played the part on a Prophet
5, and while I'd love to have a Prophet 5 right now it's not really an
option. Being that the Polysix has only one oscillator, and my Roland
has 2 DCO's, I'm able to get a much phatter sound out of the Roland,
but is there any way to fatten the Polysix to get a strong Van halen-
like "Jump" brass? I know the sound is achievable on a Prophet. And
I do know I'm talking about two totally different animals right now
but I'm sure there's gotta be some way into tricking the Polysix to
make such a sound, right?

There are two easy ways...

One, put it in UNISON mode. This will play all 6 voices at once, each slightly detuned. This effectively makes it a 6-oscilator mono-synth.

Two is to put it in Chord Memory Mode. Then you can play a chord and "save" that to memory. Then each time you play a note, it plays that chord progression. If you play a 2 note chord, then you can (AFAIK) play 3 notes at once.

Try UNISON mode first. It's the easiest, and fattest.

----- Original Message -----
From: Mike <tubmyk2@comcast.net>
To: PolySix@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [PolySix] Is it possible to get Prophet 5-like sounds out of the P6?
Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 03:03:37 -0000

>
> Ok, I'll confess...
> I am trying to nail the synth part to Steve Winwood's 'Valerie" and
> would like to see how it sounds on the Polysix. I'm currently playing
> the part on my Roland JX8P which is almost damn near perfect after a
> lot of tweaking. The thing is, I know he played the part on a Prophet
> 5, and while I'd love to have a Prophet 5 right now it's not really an
> option. Being that the Polysix has only one oscillator, and my Roland
> has 2 DCO's, I'm able to get a much phatter sound out of the Roland,
> but is there any way to fatten the Polysix to get a strong Van halen-
> like "Jump" brass? I know the sound is achievable on a Prophet. And
> I do know I'm talking about two totally different animals right now
> but I'm sure there's gotta be some way into tricking the Polysix to
> make such a sound, right?
>
>
>
>
>
>
> PolySix "Digiest" Page: http://www.acc.umu.se/~amber/Poly6
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>



.sig
-Chromatest J. Pantsmaker
http://www.chromatest.net

> I am trying to nail the synth part to Steve Winwood's 'Valerie" and
> would like to see how it sounds on the Polysix. I'm currently playing
> the part on my Roland JX8P which is almost damn near perfect after a
> lot of tweaking. The thing is, I know he played the part on a Prophet
> 5, and while I'd love to have a Prophet 5 right now it's not really an
> option. Being that the Polysix has only one oscillator, and my Roland
> has 2 DCO's, I'm able to get a much phatter sound out of the Roland,
> but is there any way to fatten the Polysix to get a strong Van halen-
> like "Jump" brass? I know the sound is achievable on a Prophet. And
> I do know I'm talking about two totally different animals right now
> but I'm sure there's gotta be some way into tricking the Polysix to
> make such a sound, right?

You can make a convincing "Jump" brass on the PolySix. There are many Prophet-
5 sounds that can be recreated on the PolySix. The PolySix has filters that
are similar - although not entirely identical - to the Prohpet-5, which is a
great advantage. Some of the P6 border-of-resonance sounds are similar to P5
sounds.
But that said, there is a whole category of sounds which are totally out of
reach on the P6. The sounds made on the P5 using cross-mod and sync cannot be
made on the P6. For these the JX8-P and JX-10 get closer, but then the
filters are all wrong. You can run the P6 LFOs very fast, and obtain a few
sounds that share some characteristics with cross-mod, but that's about it.
There is a reason the Prophet-5 is a legend.

/Frank

On Tue, 3 May 2005, Mike wrote:

> but I'm sure there's gotta be some way into tricking the Polysix to
> make such a sound, right?

Fat PWM is the key: Fairly fast LFO applied halfway up onto PWM and just
slightly onto pitch. Beef that up with a sub osc at 1 octave down and
Chorus or Ensemble FX. Voilá!

For fat leads: Lock two voices at a fifth or an octave range using chord
mode. Detuning voices internally for fatter leads is also an option,
either by using the pots (overall detuing) or changing the resitors in the
Unison-section to pots for manual detune during unisonmode..

See P6-digest page for more details....

regards,
Kristofer Ulfves, Uppsala, Sweden