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2. Exploring Korg’s Legacy Polysix

1 Though its parameter count is a bit stingy, we can nevertheless build some thick, lively sounds using Korg’s Polysix. Here, we’ve fired it up and clicked the Proglist button in the lower-right. We use the Load Program command to bring in our Blank61.fxp patch, as there’s no initialised patch to start with.

2 Let’s have a listen to our blank patch. It’s pretty bland – just a sawtooth waveform with no filtering, modulation or effects. Let’s click Edit to dive into the Polysix front panel. We can see right off the bat where some corners were cut on the original: there’s only one oscillator. Let’s change its waveform to PWM.

3 The PWM wave is a pulse wave that can be modulated by a dedicated LFO. This is often used for string pads. Let’s turn the PWM – or Pulse Width Modulation – up to around 7.00. Now we’ll set the PWM Speed to around 5 – this controls the Rate of the dedicated PWM LFO. Check out how it sounds `in the video.

4 As would so many others, Korg attempted to compensate for the single-oscillator architecture with an added sub-oscillator, playing an octave or two lower than the main oscillator. Let’s activate the sub-oscillator by setting the switch to the middle position, ( 1 Oct). This sounds much more substantial, so we’ll go with it.

5 Now that we have a meaty signal for the filter to work on, let’s go to the filter section and set both the Cutoff and Resonance knobs to around 3. This will produce a muted tone. It sounds like an organ; let’s use the envelope to shape it. First we’ll increase the filter’s EG Intensity to 2.70.

6 Now it sounds like a loud organ! Let’s set the EG’s Attack, Decay and Release knobs all to 6. Set the Sustain to around 3. This will cause the filter to fade in and settle down while sustained, fading when released. Set the VCA Mode to EG to link the VCA to the envelope too. Now add Chorus and play!