Polyphony n' Pan

[Jet-San Bwoy]

Hi peoples I would like to leave you smart cats with a question. (It's my first post, Y'all)

Is it legit (in terms of sound) to make beats on tha SP using only mono samples (to use max polyphony) and then record the beat to acid 4.0, duplicate de track and then pan the first track to the left speker and the second track to the right speaker? is the result equal to having a song made in the 404 whit only stereo samples?

Is this doable? Will it sound good(at least in theory)?


thanks a lot.

[nyquest]

doing that will make it sound exactly the same.

the benefit of stereo is when the left and right tracks contain slightly different stuff.

if L & R are duplicates of each other, its exactly the same as using a mono track. (because in the end the machine does exactly what you just said - sends the same signal to both the L & R outputs.)

[Jet-San Bwoy]

Thanks amigo.


I thought so...


there aren't many options to fix or atenuate that polyphony limitation. am I right?


question for every body:
do you think that one can make decent beats whit only mono samples?

or,

when you do your beats what elements you keep mono and what do you keep in stereo?

[chemisferio]

Usually the things I keep in mono are the bass and the drums, because they are usually the strongest-sounding and they loose all their punch and presence when panned. However, I haven't come across the 404's limitations with polyphony yet, maybe it's because I'm used to dealing with the shitty 8 voices of the 606, and in any case there are two simple workarounds: Either record a few tracks on your computer and re-import them into the sampler as one (which completely fucks up your workflow and creative momentum) or layering different sounds on one pad by using the resample function (which isn't that useful after all).
And yes, it is possible to make great music only in mono. My television has a mono speaker, and I never saw the need for a surround system, things sound fine enough for me.

[nyquest]

You only really need a little bit of stereoness in a track,

so having say 1 stereo + 6 mono at any point in time is probably the way to go

also I guess, if you track everything out, you can then do the finer things like panning hihats etc.

[Jet-San Bwoy]

thanks.
"well, I'm beginning to see the light"

This question is important to me beacause I tend to use loads n loads of shit in my tracks.
I'm used to do entire beats on acid 4.0, never having to worry about that pain in the ass polyphony issue.

belive me: acid 4.0 + internet + few production skills = Instinctive( - from the heart - capture the inspiration of the moment shit) Beats

[hurlingdervish]

if you split the left and right recordings of one stereo track you can set one 10 to 20 milliseconds off for a stereo feel, otherwise each side cancels eachother out.

its a pretty decent way of enhancing mono tracks if you dont or cant pan stuff out on your 404 for whatever reason


used to do this for my bands recordings because we didnt like the idea of playing in separate rooms or at seperate times, it kills the vibe

[fauna]

thanks.
"well, I'm beginning to see the light"

i'll offer my two cents cuzza the velvets reference:

w/ the 404 i often use the 6 stereo polyphany limitation to my advantage - which means, i add a seventh stereo sound & let the 404 choose a track to cut off. it often leads to stuff i wouldn't think of.

alternately, if yr tracking out of acid, sample in sounds in stereo that are moving (ie: w/ pan) from left to right or vice versa. that way on the 404 you can have beats & bass (or whatever) straight up the gut, but still have sounds that use the stereo field to create width & depth.

[hurlingdervish]

w/ the 404 i often use the 6 stereo polyphany limitation to my advantage - which means, i add a seventh stereo sound & let the 404 choose a track to cut off. it often leads to stuff i wouldn't think of.

truth

this often has great results, a kind of "cut and paste" type feel

[kel]

i wonder how hard it would be to set your own polyphony with some combination of buttons, similar to holding cancel and turning a knob.... future update? i think it could be useful somehow. you could just set the sp to monophonic, resample and bang away at your chops without worrying about overlap. hmmm

i wish i could decide the polyphony on the mpc. sometimes i sample tones from nintendo games and turn them into patches so i can write my own 8-bit tunes. but there are are some effects you can only get by letting the white noise, sine wave, square etc mute each other. that 8-bit stuff can only have four sounds at once if i'm not mistaken.

[Jet-San Bwoy]

i add a seventh stereo sound & let the 404 choose a track to cut off. it often leads to stuff i wouldn't think of.

When I get to a "polyphony saturation" point the sp "choses a track to cut off" but also makes shit run off-beat.
like the snares. and that's fucked up.

doesn't happen with y'all?

If it wasn't for this, the polyphony issue wouldn't be that big to me.
when shit starts to sonud off you know you have to remove elements or change them to mono...

and I must say: having a pair of perfect sounding hats or cymbs and have to change 'em to mono is like having your balls removed with an ice cream scoop.
It changes the drum samples tones completly.

[fauna]

i don't understand this ^^. you'll be triggering the 7th sample (or 13th mono) manually, so that shits gonna be in time. why would stuff suddenly be off the beat? unless yr triggering it off the beat, of course...it's not like the 404 will trigger something new without you...

[Jet-San Bwoy]

belive me, Mr. Fauna.
I think you can experiment for yourself.

I think that any elements that are playing simultaneous or that are near the 13th note you're about to play will suffer from this polyphony saturation issue.

since the internal processor is full or too occupied it won't work at 100% as a whole (not only on that 13th note) - it's like having to work drunk or with hang over.heheheheheh
this is what i belive that's happening

I was blocked on the sp for a very long time because of this.

I din't knew 4 sure if it was the quantize or my timming playng the pads 'cos i was too green on tha machine.
But now I know it's all polyphony.

I was adding elements to a song and then noticed de snares or hats were off, and was puzzled 'cos I never thought it was all polyphony. But it is.
In my opinion.

[fauna]

okay, that's cool, but i've never had that problem. i use the polyphany max to cut off random pads as i add new stuff, then i add more new stuff and more pads randomly cut off until i've basically cycled through twelve samples. i've never had "drift" because of this though. so that's strange, but there it is. good luck!

[Jet-San Bwoy]

really,

It would be fuckin cool if my sp did that.

I can picture what you're saying.


thnks brother.