Improvisation 83 for Poly Evolver Keyboard and Prophet '08

Published on May 18, 2018 Sacred Synthesis

"A slow and dreamy synthesizer piece.

This improvisation makes use of a soft metallic digital pad on the Poly Evolver, a string pad on one Prophet '08, and a flute-like solo patch on another Prophet '08.

The digital pad is either mellow or shrill, depending on the setting of the filter cut off frequency, which is controlled by the modulation wheel. Its extreme upper range has much digital aliasing.

The Prophet '08 string pad uses a 2-pole filter setting with a high resonance level,, and its filter is similarly controlled by the modulation wheel. As always, the filter is very slowly modulated by an LFO. This creates a slight crescendo whenever a note or chord is sustained and gives the pad a slight heaving/breathing quality.

The flute sound seems simple but is deceptively elaborate. It consists of a narrow pulse and a square. The pulse width of each waveform is very slightly and slowly modulated. In addition, an LFO slowly modulates between one oscillator and the other. This means there is a subtle chorus effect from the PWM, a changing of timbre as the narrow pulse changes to a square and then back again, a faint beating of oscillators when the two briefly meet in the middle, plus a delayed vibrato which can be either maintained by a smooth connected playing technique or retriggered (and thus, delayed) by a disconnected playing technique. Its filter, too, is controlled by the modulation wheel. To deepen the richness of the patch's general tone, the identical sound of Layer A is copied to Layer B and the two are panned at the mixer. So much trouble for a simple little flute sound, but it's always worth it. Of course, all these effects are detectible only when a long note is heard, and that's fine, because they're meant to be musical nuances that don't overly attract attention to themselves."