How Do You Use A Mono Synth?

[Passante]

I imagine it would be used for bass and lead sounds, but what else?
I know that is plenty already, but what other ways would you suggest to take more out of it?
Could I sample it into a daw to make pads sound with it?
Can I record it twice, pan left and right, add delay for a haas effect and create stereo?
Is this a common practice?
How do you personally use mono synths in your music. Do you have separate instruments for mono and stereo sounds?

[egbert101]

Drum sounds? Since mono synths have a bit of oompf factor, they can be used for drum, percussive or arpeggio type sounds. But yeah, bass because of the oompf, and leads because they scream and rip through a mix. The polysynth in comparison is more of a gentle creature so good for pads, but can work fine for less aggressive bass and leads, or depends on the distortion or feedback capability of the amp and effects sections.
As for sampling monos and playing them as a poly, there's no reason why this can't be done, however polysynths usually have the ability to blend their voices across the stereo spectrum with some options for unison, making for more lush and blended pad sounds.

[seafire]

Percussion sounds and effects/weird noises

[BertKoor]

Polyphony / chords can be done with a mono synth, easy with multiple tracks. It's been done for decades. A bit of planning & work required, but nothing really stops you from playing things not even possible with two hands.

[cryophonik]

Mono synths are great for arpeggiated parts.

[Shabdahbriah]

As a preventative to catching polynucleosis.

[Touch The Universe]

Legato mode for mono synths is the way for leads baby - get those glides on!

[Uncle E]

You can fake chords with arpeggios and delays. Or multi-track to create chords, which has the nice benefit of making you think about tonal movement instead of just playing familiar shapes. Some of my best tracks were done this way (with a single ATC-1).

[Passante]

Drum sounds? Since mono synths have a bit of oompf factor, they can be used for drum, percussive or arpeggio type sounds. But yeah, bass because of the oompf, and leads because they scream and rip through a mix. The polysynth in comparison is more of a gentle creature so good for pads, but can work fine for less aggressive bass and leads, or depends on the distortion or feedback capability of the amp and effects sections.
As for sampling monos and playing them as a poly, there's no reason why this can't be done, however polysynths usually have the ability to blend their voices across the stereo spectrum with some options for unison, making for more lush and blended pad sounds.

So what is unison and why do mono synth lack such feauture? Is unison like a choir singing the same note?

Polyphony / chords can be done with a mono synth, easy with multiple tracks. It's been done for decades. A bit of planning & work required, but nothing really stops you from playing things not even possible with two hands.

So how should I go about it?
If I want to create a 3 note chord, should I record a signal on the 3 different pitches and basically layer them?

Percussion sounds and effects/weird noises

Yes, those too. And I was thinking of acid-like sounds for techno as well.

Also, I was wondering, If I ad a stereo delay to a mono signal does the sound effectively become stereo? It's running accross the whole stereo spectrum so it's technically stereo now right?

Mono synths are great for arpeggiated parts.

Yes, but you should be careful and be sure there are no overlapping notes correct? Otherwise it would cancel one of the two. So you can't really make a very fast arpeggio on two different octaves for example.

Legato mode for mono synths is the way for leads baby - get those glides on!

Where can I learn more about this technic? I think I have an idea of what you talking about. I heard this effect in some 90's songs, it was used in hip-hop as I remember.

[zerocrossing]

I often use a mono synth for sound effects or percussion. I guess I could multisample it and use my Dominion 1 or ATC-X as a polyphonic instrument, but I’ve got some decent polys so there’s really no need.

[BertKoor]

So what is unison and why do mono synth lack such feauture? Is unison like a choir singing the same note?

Unison is when all available voices / oscillators of a poly synth play the same note. So yes, like a choir. There's often a detune knob to spread them out for fatter sound.
A mono synth has only one voice (made by 1 to 3 oscillators) so unison is no option on the synth itself. A choir of one person is not a choir.

If I want to create a 3 note chord, should I record a signal on the 3 different pitches and basically layer them?

I'd personally not use the term "layering" but dubbing or multi-tracking. Record track 6 with note G, track 7 does C, track 8 does the E. Together they form a C Major chord. Like a small string ensemble of 3 violins does it.

Mono synths are great for arpeggiated parts.

Yes, but you should be careful and be sure there are no overlapping notes correct? Otherwise it would cancel one of the two. So you can't really make a very fast arpeggio on two different octaves for example.

Well no. How an arpeggiator on a mono synth is supposed to work, is that you press two, three or four notes at the same time, and the arpeggiator plays a sequence of them, only going up, only going down, or up & down, or random, whatever mode you have the arpeggiator set to. So it works because you overlap some notes. The synth can play only one, so it makes them take turns.

Legato mode for mono synths is the way for leads baby - get those glides on!

Where can I learn more about this technic? I think I have an idea of what you talking about. I heard this effect in some 90's songs, it was used in hip-hop as I remember.

Learn? Just try it! It's on poly synths as well. Legato mode is also known as Glide, also known as Portamento. Well, almost... Legato is a playing style where the synth will glide from one to another only if you play them overlapped. The oscillator glides from one note to the next instead of instantly changing frequency. It's far far older than hiphop. The theremin (invented, what, 100 years ago) can only glide from note to note.

[lfm]

Part of why many feel there is more power in mono synths might have to do with that polysynths must have headroom in electronics for many voices that add to volume level.
- so single note tone will be weaker

But using preset level volume many synths can gain extra +6dB level or so if doing typical mono stuff. Prologue and REV2 at least allow that.

My favourite way of using REV2-16 is make a preset in one layer, then copy to second layer and vary "osc slop" and "voice pan" each layer. Incredible power you get from that.

Until Sequential Trigon and Moog One there were not that many three oscillator polysynths, so one reason the Pro3 could do interesting stuff as a mono synth that no polys could.

You can like BertKoor said make chords with mono synths, but I find that very cumbersome compared to just using a poly to start with.
- if you have a polyphonic midi keyboard you can record chord progressions in midi on sequencer
- then split those chords to 3 or 4 different midi tracks
- then render with mono synth each one to finally get a chord

This is how it was made in the 70's in the film Clockwork Orange as an example, but without the midi ability then. Incredible work by Wendy Carlos.


After seing the film I went to record store and bought the soundtrack. Never heard synths used like that.

[GaryG]

forgive me if my comprehension module hasn't kicked in fully yet but...

are you talking two different types of mono?

everyone here is talking about classic monophonic synths (minimoog etc), plays one note at a time yada yada but you keep talking about stereo. A single/not-stereo output is a mono output but not what people generally mean when they talk about mono synths....? Two different things, a monophonic synth can have a stereo output (stereo panned oscillators or effects) and old polyphonic synths could have a mono output (multiple notes but all coming out the one output).

[foosnark]

Most synth voices I use are monophonic. I'm big into modular, which is generally not well suited to polyphony in the basic keyboard sense. It's more like an orchestra, with groups of monophonic instruments playing individual parts that come together as a whole.

Some oscillators in modular can produce chords -- whether it's by tuning them individually, bending harmonics, or selecting a chord from a list, but it's not truly polyphonic since you don't individually control the notes.

One of my main controllers is a Make Noise 0-Ctrl, which has 3 CV lanes on it. You can use it like a tunable keyboard, so sometimes I'll use it to control two or three oscillators, so each touchpad I play on it is a chord, though the controller itself is monophonic (you can't play multiple touchpads).

Rather than writing out a full sequence in a DAW, a typical song for me is closer to a live session. There'll be some drones, a couple of sequenced loops or generative parts, and something manually played (could be a monophonic voice, a software polysynth, bass guitar, kalimba, etc.) Once I have everything patched, I record the full stereo mix live, with effects baked in. Sometimes I'll go back and dub other parts in.

There's no problem filling the spectrum and getting a full, complex sound without polysynths, or with minimal use of polysynths. It's just a choice.

[whyterabbyt]

forgive me if my comprehension module hasn't kicked in fully yet but...

are you talking two different types of mono?

everyone here is talking about classic monophonic synths (minimoog etc), plays one note at a time yada yada but you keep talking about stereo.

indeed.

is it mono as in 'not polyphonic', or mono as in 'not stereo'?