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  Aethellis keyboardist / composer Ellsworth Hall's
Polysix Tips and Tricks

Sure, I love my Polysix and used it on the new Aethellis album including the bass for the song "Portal," and resonance-y effects in "Hubris". It does have limitations; all synths do, but there are some things you can do to make the Poly emulate functions of much more expensive analog beasts. (I also got a MIDI upgrade as well which is a fabulous enhancement!)

One ADSR. The P6 only has one ADSR shared by both the filter and amplifier. You can however put the amp into "gate" mode (simple on/off envelope) if you want the filter to be enveloped separately (remember the evnvelope can be inverted too). But now, no amp release stage! What to do? Put the P6 through an external effects device. Delay or reverb will add a nice release. (AdamT from Wales, UK) 'Course a delay can also fatten the sound up even more, too. No cross-mod/poly-mod as on the Prophet 5. There is apparently a modification where replacing the timing capacitor of the LFO allows it to operate in the mid-audio range for those clangorous tones. (Andreas Nordenstam  lupo_@hotmail.com) However, if you don't want to mod the P6 in this manner, why just turn up the resonance, get it to self-oscillation and tune it into inharmonicity! Only multiple triggering available. Aside from the great MIDI mod designed by Ricard Wolf and Johannes Hausensteiner which provides different triggering options (among a great many other things like a noise generator, arpgeggiator sync to MIDI, sys-ex storage, etc.) there is a way to sort of simulate single triggering. When in mono mode (all 6 osc. stacked) have a filter sweep of some kind on the attack. Playing one note you hear the sweep, but if you play legato it won't be triggered on the next note. At least it's worked for me! No portamento. If you are recording or have a free left hand when performing live, you can use the pitchbend wheel for those nice glides. I know, not the greatest solution. But when playing live, it seems that the multiple triggering implies a very quick portamento, at least to my ears. No hard sync. Well, without a true second oscillator with hard sync ability, it's tricky. Although when in mono mode with certain filter settings the P6 does sound quite a bit like a synth in hard sync mode. Try experimenting. Only one oscillator. The sub-osc will help beef up the sound as well as the onboard effects. Plus having a seperate LFO dedicated to pulse-width modulation helps if you use it to get that chorus effect, then use the chorus/phaser/ensemble effects and maybe the free LFO to modulate the VCO or VCF. Plus you can always push the resonance to self-oscillation and use it as another oscillator.

LFO will only modulate one thing at a time. Well you CAN modulate either the VCO along with either the VCF or VCA at the same time with the one free LFO. However, the speed must be shared and the mod wheel is the device that introduces modulation to the VCO, so its depth is variable relative to the depth of the EG controlling either the VCF or VCA. Not perfect, but it does come in handy once in a while.  From Kristofer Ulfves, Uppsala, Sweden: Layering three or more voices at the same key with the CHORD-funtion and then slighly detuning them using the internal pots results in *fat* sounds a la Minimoog. Not too far-fetched either, since the characteristics of the SSM-filter within the P6 is somewhat a bit similar sounding to the classic 24 dB moogfilter. It is possible to modulate the VCF-CV input with audio in order to get rather nasty FM-effects, especially when the resonance is somewhere turned halfway up... From Jesse Ziser: I managed to get a VERY good bass drum out of this thing! I didn't think it was possible at first, but if you crank the filter into self-oscillation, put the envelope on the filter, set the VCA control switch to the gate instead of the EG, use an Attack/Decay envelope, and set up the VCO so that you can barely hear it through the filter, you can actually get a perfect-sounding bass drum when you hit the higher keys. For mods, patches and other goodies, check out Kristofer's archive, the Poly6-list digest homepage: http://www.acc.umu.se/~amber/Poly6/ Anyone else have any Polysix tips and tricks? Any corrections / comments to the above? Please let me know and I'd be happy to post them here. Just e-mail me.