Also, as opposed to the species terminology of counterpoint, polyphony was generally either "pitch-against-pitch" / "point-against-point" or "sustained-pitch" in one part with melismas of varying lengths in another. Baroque forms such as fugue, which might be called polyphonic, are usually described instead as contrapuntal. Within the context of the Western musical tradition, the term polyphony is usually used to refer to music of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Polyphony ( / p ə ˈ l ɪ f ə n i/ puh- LIH-fuh-nee) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, homophony. Bach's " Fugue No.17 in A flat", BWV 862, from Das Wohltemperierte Clavier (Part I), a famous example of contrapuntal polyphony. In general, you can describe any instrument or arrangement in terms of polyphonic or monophonic.įor example, brass and reed instruments like trumpet or saxophone are monophonic the same way the early Moogs and ARP synths were.Īnd like I explained above, any musical composition has a defined number of voices.A bar from J.S. Polyphony is a relevant concept outside the world of synthesis too. Unless you’re using resource-intensive sample libraries or complex instrument patches, you likely won’t run out of polyphony for the majority of your work. Instead, enabling additional voices simply increases the load on your system until you run out of processing power. In your DAW, these devices generally aren’t limited to specific voice counts.
The same general concept applies to other instruments like VSTs and samplers.
#Polyphonic meaning full
Check out our full breakdown of synthesizer terms to learn more.įor a synth voice to be independent, it needs its own amplifier and filter modules to do the job right.
#Polyphonic meaning Patch
It means they’re capable of playing more than one patch setting with different voices at the same time. Hot tip: Some synths are polyphonic as well as multitimbral. In music production, the word is mostly applied to synths, samplers and VSTs to help you understand the capabilities of an instrument. It developed from the earlier practice of monophony which which meant compositions with only a single melodic line In fact, in early music, polyphony simply meant music that included parts written together in harmony. If the composer includes a separate part for each, you can say the parts are written for four voice polyphony. For example, chorale music is often written for the four standard voice types: bass, tenor, alto and soprano. It comes from musical traditions that date back centuries. The word “voices” is used as a shorthand to refer to an independent line or part. Just don’t confuse the term “voices” with singers-polyphony is a general term that describes how many individual parts are in play at once. It can refer to the distinct parts in a musical composition or the number of voices available in an instrument. Polyphony in music refers to the number of individual voices in a musical texture. In this article I’ll explain the meanings in full and break down what you need to know. So what does polyphonic mean in music and how is it different from monophonic? They can refer to synthesizer types and sound design, but they’re also sometimes used to talk about musical texture in general.
Polyphonic and monophonic are two musical terms that you might have heard if you’re new to producing music.
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