Zoë Blade's notebook

Paraphony

A paraphonic synth can play multiple pitches at once, but only has one VCA, so they can only fade in and out as a whole. This is fine for big block chords, but less useful for anything more elaborate.

The term paraphonic was originally introduced by Roland to mean multitimbral, but was misinterpreted by users later on, and used to describe that different aspect of the same synthesisers, that otherwise has no word to describe it.

A paraphonic synth fits somewhere between being monophonic (playing only one note at a time) and fully polyphonic (able to play several notes at once, each using a completely discrete voice).

Polyphony: Paraphony

Paraphonic synthesisers: VC340 | VP-330