Pittsburgh Poliphony + Utility

ModularGrid Rack

So I am thinking of building a modular, It will be my first one but I have a lot of other gear including a few mono synths. I know that a modular mono synth is loads of fun but I want a poliphonic one.There is a music shop here in Iceland that is realy interested in selling modulars so they asked me to help figure out what companies to start working with. I sugested MonoRocket for cases, Pittsburg modular, Make Noice, Mutable instruments and TipTop audio. I think with these companies there should be a nice variation in emphasis. In return I get a bit of a discount and well more good will then I have today. So here we have a 4 voice poliphonic beats. The top two rows are basicaly 4 voices, each voice has a Oscilator, Filter, Dual VCA, Envelope and tool box. Each row has two of these voices and at the end a mixing section. The bottom row has utilities for more complex opperations as each of the voices is pretty standard. Here we have a Yarns for the 4 voice midi control, Tides Wogglebug and Maths each followed by a mulltiple for aditional mangling of the four voices. and then a LPG that I am thinking of using to turn the lowest voice of 4 voice poliphony into a rythmic beating bass line and then a phace shifter to give the whole voice a final shimmer and finaly a outs. I am not compleatly shure about this as a first purchase... maybe I should start with more variety and spend less on more... I am hoping this set up will produce "HUGE" pads and string sections...Any thoughts? All discussion would be nice.

Just passing through, and I've never attempted polyphony in a modular, so take this with a grain of salt.

Basically, I'm getting kinda mixed vibes on this setup. The only reason I can think to have four identical oscillators is that you want to have single-input instrument / multiple voice polyphony, e.g. an analog polysynth. From that perspective, it seems like this has a ton of redundancy. My understanding of the block diagrams of most analog polysynts is that you'll have your multiple vcos fed into a mixer, then have that fed into your signal chain of vcf/eg/vca, etc. from that view of polyphony, it seems not only kinda weird that you'd need a vca (and a summing vca, at that) + eg + vcf + toolbox per channel. if that's where you want to start (keyboard poliphony), you can probably get by with 4 vco, some subset of mixers, 1-2 of the dual vcas, vcfs, and egs. basically, this could probably be chopped into a 6u. it also seems to me--again, having zero true modular polyphony experience--that it'd be the hugest pain in the ass to get four full, independent voices to sound anything similar to coming from the same synth, but that just may be me being a crybaby. for example, i could be wrong, but it looks like the slew limiter in the toolbox does not take a cv in, so good look unifying your polyphonic portamento, if...that's what you're after? 4 s&hs seems like overkill, so maybe that's why there are four tool boxes..unless they're for inverting the envelopes?

"it I am thinking of using to turn the lowest voice of 4 voice poliphony into a rythmic beating bass line"

this makes it sound like what you're after isn't like true keyboard polyphony so much as "multiple voices doing different things". if this is what you're after, me personally, i'd suggest some different sound sources or filters, etc. 

i'm also separately confused by the proclivity toward mixers here. each of the four voices has a dual vca w/ 2x1 mixing, then the far right has another pair of 3x1 mixers and 4x1 mixers. i may be over thinking that one, and you may be intending these to serve also as cv attenuators. i guess it's possible you're intending on taking the already complex signal from the vcos and mixing them with some other output from the same vco, and having that serve as the complex voice. that'd be rad as hell, but at the same time, yield so crazily varying results between voices, that i'd just look into different types of voices.

 

overall, this looks rad as hell, and if you've got the $$ lying around, go for it. it just seems to me that it's got a ton of redundancy, depending on what you're after, either in terms of needlessly repeating the same signal chain (e.g. attempting polysynth stuff), or making the same blip bloops with the same modules but playing different lines (pads and leads and bass with the same voices) where you could be employing other interesting modules.

 

i enjoyed this more than i should have...thanks!