Polyphony Count

What does this mean? Looking into buying a keyboard and need to know what the difference is between 64 and 128. How much of a difference does it make?

Polyphony count is, to put it simply, the maximum number of notes the keyboard can play at once.

Simple, right? And you might think, 64, or 128 notes at once? I only have 10 fingers, that should be more than plenty! Well, not quite. Some sounds, depending on how they're programmed, may use more than one voice. Layered voices (e.g. voice elements on a Motif) use up more than one voice of polyphony per note. Performance or combi mode (different names for similar functions on different boards) can cause even more layering to occur. On most synths, stereo samples use more polyphony than mono samples. And then add multitimberal use with a sequencer, where the synth is playing multiple tracks at once, and depending on how involved your music is, and what voices/presets you use, you could still run out of voices on a 128-note poly synth.

But of course, polyphony is just one specification, and not the #1 one to go by when choosing a keyboard. Get the one that sounds good to you, and are comfortable working with. There are ways around the polyphony issue (back in the 70s, most synths played only 1 note at a time, or 2-4 at the most).

thanks alot kpatz!

Polyphony is most important if you are playing live and want to have a lot of sounds going at once ... if you're recording you can always overdub ...

(even if they aren't necessarily heard or are very low in the mix ... at least in my experience ... its pretty hard to diable MIDI tracks from the sound engine or I haven't tried hard enough ... )

this would be more of concern to the one-man bands and whatnot ...

Sounds with long sustains (pads, orchestral, big piano samples) tend to eat up a lot of polyphony especially if you're heavy on the 'hold' pedal ... If you're running out of poly or your synth has an inelegant way of dealing with it, you will hear note stealing ... it is considered 'bad' but if the board is somewhat consistent about its appplication, I somethimes like the results ... (glitchy)

. . .

a lot of times it may not be an issue ... but Big Poly isn't anything I'd shy away from ...

Remember when the the Juno-6 had 6 voices? We've come a long way, baby.

Remember when the the Juno-6 had 6 voices? We've come a long way, baby.

These damn kids today have it easy. In my day, we had to walk 5 miles in the snow to get 8 notes of polyphony.

I remember my Yamaha FB01. 8 notes and 8 channels. You had to assign each channel with how many of the notes you wanted it to have. Still, you could do a ton of stuff with it. With that and my trusty QX21 2-track sequencer, I was cutting edge.

Yes. They're called "recording the result as audio"

Remember when the the Juno-6 had 6 voices? We've come a long way, baby.

yeah, we've travelled forward in time to the PEK.

with 4 voices.

Yes. They're called "recording the result as audio"

or clever use of delay/reverb.