A single Poly Evolver has only four voices to offer, and this has always been one of the major criticisms against it. But while working on a new piece of music tonight, I discovered that sometimes four voices is just the right number.
One of my favorite programs is what I call "PWM Piano." It s a deep PWM patch with an envelope much like a piano with the sustain pedal depressed. It's wonderful for left-handed arpeggiated accompaniments - very rich, and with a long release time that fills out the background. But the one shortcoming of this patch is that it can sound quite messy when you're beginning the arpeggios in the lower register. Long-ringing bass notes start running into each other, creating an annoying swelling boom effect that spoils the music and reduces the clarity of the chord progressions. One solution is to use a sustain pedal, but this isn't always practical (such as when your feet are already busy playing the bass pedals!). The solution? Four voices. When the voices able to ring at any one moment are only four, the voice reassignments cut the last ringing notes, almost like releasing for an instant a piano sustain pedal. Hence, if there are unpleasant effects from ringing discordant bass notes running into each other, that effect is quickly attenuated. It's a perfect and natural solution that requires nothing from your playing; the problem simply takes care of itself.
I actually discovered this obvious situation on the Prophet '08 in layer mode, but it applies even more to the Poly Evolver. Plus, on the Prophet '08, one very musical way of reducing the number of voices to four is by copying Layer A to Layer B, slightly detuning them, and then panning them at the mixer. This makes a fabulously rich sound, and it remains clean, due to the number of voices.
The moral of the story? With deep arpeggios, sometimes eight voices are far too many.
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