Paraphony is a term which has three distinct meanings in the field of music.
30-474: The Roland VP-330 is a paraphonic ten-band vocoder and string machine manufactured by Roland Corporation from 1979 to 1980. While there are several string machines and vocoders, a single device combining the two is rare, despite the advantage of paraphonic vocoding, and the VP-330's synthetic choir sounds are unique. Despite the VP-330's electronic string and choir sounds being less realistic than those of
60-716: A modern reinterpretation that focuses only on the ability of an electronic musical instrument to generate more than one note-frequency but with the inability to offer individual articulation of tone and/or loudness to each of the individual overlapping notes . The root of that misconception has been anecdotally attributed to probably the Sound on Sound ("SOS") magazine article, " Introducing Polyphony " (part of its "Synth Secrets" series of articles) published for December, 2000. In this article, musician-writer Gordon Reid ( seemingly incorrectly) identifies paraphony thus: "...a form of sound generation called 'Paraphonic' synthesis, prevalent in
90-549: A reinterpretation - possibly a misinterpretation - of meaning '2' and its use has since become widespread. Meaning '3' has prevailed, effectively deprecating meaning '2'. This article relating to electronic musical instruments is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Sound on Sound Sound on Sound is a monthly music technology magazine. The magazine includes product tests of electronic musical performance and recording devices, and interviews with industry professionals. Due to its technical focus, it
120-411: A shop through which browsers could purchase back issues of the magazine alongside merchandise, PDF articles and new subscriptions to the print edition. In January 2008, the website expanded to include podcasts and videos featuring interviews, product demonstrations , featured articles and news stories. The magazine is a regular attendee of worldwide music technology conferences and events such as AES ,
150-479: A single filter and secondary amplifier arrangement. This was revisited in the following month's continuation of the "Synth Secrets" series where 'paraphony' was compared to polyphony in the context of synthesizers: "Figure 1 (above) shows the architecture of a 'divide-down' paraphonic synth on which only the first note played benefits fully from the Attack and Decay stages of the contour generator, and only
180-632: A single input, it has turned around to be a somewhat negative description of instruments that cannot 'fully articulate' their polyphony, where each note shares a significant part of its sound creation (or its contouring) process with any and all other overlapping notes. In fact, Reid was quite correct in what he described, in that instruments described by Roland as offering this 'parallel sound' paraphonic ability had offered layered combinations of sounds comprising individual sounds and voice-architectures that, where electronically generated , did indeed conform to his description. (Roland's first 'paraphonic' device,
210-473: Is Roland's new GR-500 Guitar Synthesizer...both paraphonic and polyphonic. Polyphonic because full chords can be synthesized. Paraphonic because all five sections may be played at once." This does not explain how that 'new (commercial) meaning' of "paraphony" that in the context of electronic music instruments in 1977 has been turned around significantly into the 21st century from multiple complete polyphonic and monophonic sounds that can be layered in unison to
240-400: Is broadly similar to the behaviour we would expect if the same thing were played on (e.g.) a piano. The above can be contrasted with the following recording of how one paraphonic synthesizer (a Korg Volca Keys ) actually handles the same situation in real life. The first note (C) briefly peaks at a high volume ("Attack") when hit, then fades to a quieter level ("Sustain") as
270-463: Is played, a similar situation occurs. The previously-held C and F# return to full "attack" volume alongside, giving the false impression all three notes were hit simultaneously in a chord-like manner. (While this demonstrates how the Volca Keys chooses to handle paraphony, other methods for doing so are also possible). Completely unrelated to paraphony in its traditional, musical-consonance sense
300-457: Is predominantly aimed at the professional recording studio market as well as artist project studios and home recording enthusiasts. Independently owned, the magazine is published by SOS Publications Group in Cambridge , United Kingdom. The magazine was conceived, created and founded by brothers Ian and Paul Gilby and their friend Godfrey Davies in 1985. It was originally launched in 1985 on
330-496: Is the commercial sales term coined by Roland Corporation for their GR-500 "Paraphonic Guitar Synthesizer" released in 1977 (continued in 1978 with the Roland RS-505 "Paraphonic String Synthesizer"). Here, Roland were drawing attention to the ability of the synthesizer to produce distinct sounds 'in parallel', whereby each note played can produce multiple complete tuned sounds simultaneously. The instruction-manual introduced
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#1732802524744360-495: The GR-500 "Paraphonic Guitar Synthesizer" , counted the original guitar sound amongst its 'parallel sounds', which does not necessarily conform to the interpretation). Those articles did, however, seem to apply the term to any electronic musical instrument with this 'single route' voice architecture limitation, as opposed to Roland 's definition of the actual stacking of different sounds into one, multi-composite sound. Interestingly,
390-647: The NAMM Show , NAB , IBC and Musikmesse , and regularly publishes articles, videos and podcasts reporting from these events. A sister magazine, Performing Musician which covered all aspects of live performance, was launched in early 2008, but closed at the end of 2009. The magazine was named after the Bill Nelson's Red Noise album Sound-on-Sound and as of 2003 the website had a Bill Nelson Shop section in which this musician's independently produced CDs could be bought. Alongside monthly product tests,
420-555: The Roland VP-330 vocoder and the Moog Sub 37 . The following example simulates how we would expect a non-paraphonic polyphonic synthesizer (i.e. one with an individual EG for each voice) to behave when multiple overlapping notes are played without being released. (In this case, C, F# then B). Note how previously-played (but still held down) notes remain "in the background" when subsequent notes are hit. This
450-493: The UK Channel 4 television programme, The Tube , championing the convergence of MIDI , computer technology and recording equipment. At the time of its launch, text for the magazine was edited on BBC Model B computers and pages were physically pasted together with wax. The modern magazine is full-colour throughout and led the way in using colour as much as possible through its pages when other magazines used colour only for
480-661: The above sense, a synthesizer is called paraphonic if it can play multiple pitches at once, but those pitches share part of their electronic signal paths. For example, the Roland RS-202 string machine could play several dozen pitches at once, but only with a single shared volume envelope , requiring the collective chord to swell and diminish as a single cohesive whole. Similarly, the Korg Poly-800 had 8 oscillators and could produce 8 voices, but had just one filter circuit shared by all of them. Other examples include
510-511: The content of individual articles. The articles printed in the magazine before January 1994 have been digitised and are hosted by the Mu:zines magazine archive. In 2005, Sound on Sound celebrated its 20th birthday by providing a series of 3 cover mounted DVD-roms with the magazine, one released in March, August and November. The DVD-roms featured extra content not available on the website or in
540-762: The era, such as the RS-202 , it features a BBD -based ensemble effect that thickens the strings, and optionally the choirs and vocoder. In 2016, Roland made a digital recreation of the VP-330, named the VP-03, as part of their Boutique range. In 2019, Behringer released their own VP-330 clone, the VC340. Paraphony#Paraphony in electronic music Paraphony is a term used in musical vernacular to refer to consonances which rely upon intervals of fifths and fourths . This terminology can be traced to ancient Greece and sources such as Theon of Smyrna . Completely unrelated to
570-407: The front cover and special features. In 1998, SOS Publications opened a website parallel to the magazine, digitising all of the print articles since January 1994 and providing additional, supplementary, content including audio and video files. The website grew to include a discussion forum, a subscribers area, a directory of professionals and companies in the music recording and technology sector and
600-400: The key remains held down (in accordance with ADSR settings). When the second note (F#) is played, it similarly comes in at full attack volume. However, due to the envelope generator being shared with the voice playing the (still held-down) C, it is forced to do the same. The 'C' returns to full volume simultaneously, giving the false impression it had been hit again. When the third note (B)
630-526: The last note benefits from the Release. Figure 2 (above) depicts a fully polyphonic 'divide-down' synthesizer — such as the Polymoog — that offers a VCF/VCA/EG 'articulator' board for every note on the keyboard." This is a significantly different (re)interpretation of Roland's 'parallel sound' paraphonic term where, instead of being the positive description of multiple simultaneous sounds from
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#1732802524744660-412: The late '70s and early '80s... why isn't 'paraphony' (if there is such a word) the same as polyphony? The answer to this is obvious if we consider the articulation of individual notes played on the instrument...", which Reid illustrates with a diagram of a synthesiser with polyphonic initial sound-generation (a divide-down multiple-oscillator and multiple-amplifier architecture) that is, in turn, fed through
690-528: The magazine features regular DAW columns which focus on software for use with Microsoft and Apple computers respectively. There is also a monthly collection of "Techniques" articles which provide how-to advice on specific audio equipment and software. Each issue includes several feature articles with specific foci: In addition, the magazine features several 'regular' elements that provide further information and insight into music recording and technology. These include: Sound on Sound does not provide ratings for
720-405: The magazine including several featured articles, a selection of reader demo tracks, tutorials on various aspects of music recording, samples for readers to use in their own compositions, and additional resources. In September 2010, Sound on Sound set up an annual awards competition enabling subscribers of the magazine to vote for a range of products, the winners of each category to be announced in
750-558: The multiplicity of any sound-architecture that follows oscillators or the like - simply for a more-meaningful and more-descriptive, terse description of the instrument's note-generation capability and irrespective of the separation (or not) of tone and/or volume, per-note. Meanwhile, the term, 'paraphony' is seldom (or never) applied to the instrument architecture for which Roland spawned the term, which would now, in more-modern parlance, include any 'multitimbral' synthesizer able to output multiple layered sounds simultaneously when triggered by
780-401: The products it reviews, however it does provide several boxes of information accompanying each product review in order to help readers make up their own minds about specific products. These include: All news and articles printed in the magazine since January 1994 have also been published online via its website, often including rich media content such as video and audio files that correspond to
810-502: The recent 'redefinition' has become the prevailing popular meaning of "paraphonic" or "paraphony" in modern music technology terms. Due to reinterpretations or misinterpretations of what paraphony may actually mean, many musicians (and some instrument-manufacturers) have remained with or returned to using such terms as duophonic and polyphonic to describe their two-note (such as modern reiterations of ARP's Oddyssey ) or multi-note instruments (such as Behringer's Poly D ) - regardless of
840-417: The same input notes. This leaves us with a multiple interpretations of paraphony that are described in the following table, showing the three meanings of the term "paraphony". Meaning '1' still stands as what would be termed its 'official' and long-standing meaning, whereas meaning '2' was applied by Roland Corporation presenting a 'sales-speak' word that actually already existed. Meaning '3' would seem to be
870-430: The tape-based Mellotron , touring musicians used it as a lighter and more robust alternative. The Roland SVC-350 is a similar vocoder in rack-mount form designed to accept external inputs. In addition to vocoding and generating string sounds, the VP-330 can also play four different choir sounds, each of which uses four bandpass filters, shared from the same pool of seven total. Like Roland's other string machines of
900-477: The term to customers, as follows: "The five separate sections... are the Guitar, Polyensemble, Bass, Solo Melody, and External Synthesizer Section... Each of the five sections may be played individually or in any combination... Roland has created a name for this new level of performance capability. It is the word "paraphonic," derived from "parallel" plus "phonic." RolandCorp US wrote, in 1978 sales literature , "It
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