Polyphony - Breaking up Unison to 2 Sounds

Howdy strangers,

This is either really easy and I am missing something under my nose or not possible due to how unison works, the manual says “UNISON Uses all voices to play the same note.”

If I want to have a chord/stab on Track 1 using 2 voices in unison mode and have a bassline on Track 3 using 2 voices in unison mode, is this possible? Everything i try, Track 1 gets prioritized trigs and those same bass trigs don’t play. I am able to have Track 1 use 3 voices in unison and the bass play as mono but would love if both could each have 2 voices in Unison mode while playing trigs on the same part of the pattern. Possible or no?

Thanks for any feedback

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Yes.

I think there is a possibility with midi loopback. Unison for T1 and T2, T3 send midi to T4 (T3 and T4 set to midi channel 3).

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you’ll be able to trigger the bass using sezare’s midi loopback suggestion (you can try sending notes from an external sequencer on ch3 to test) but it will only be heard when it’s triggered on its own (no stab trigs can coincide with bass trigs).

in unison mode, any tracks enabled in poly config will always act monophonically.

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I’ll add midi loopback with 2 tracks on the same midi channel should behave as Unison with “Use Track Sounds” option.
If you want exactly the same sound, Copy Sound is possible

So the midi loopback should be more appropriate for Stab (if you want several notes). Btw in mono you can make 4 notes chords with the 2 oscs and 5th subs.

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Thanks for the feedback. I will try it out as soon as i get the polyphony to work correctly again, it has become stuck. Even if i turn off all poly and turn off unison tracks are still playing in unison mode. i even deleted all trigs from each sequence and it is still playing the same notes. once i get this sorted i will try that out and report back

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Well, this exploration into poly modes has revealed bugs in the A4. If I test poly/unison out on a sound and decide I don’t like it and turn all poly voices off, it stays around. like now, again, tried unison on TRK 1, and turned it off, now no matter what track i play notes on track one also plays. turned off the machine again and nothing. the only way to get rid of it i have found is to delete that project and start a new one. kinda lame. Happily, someone just made me an offer on Reverb for mine so I am going to sample the kick drums off it tonight and now for the third time, sell this machine. could have been the perfect synth if it just sounded better but i am tired of wasting time trying to get sounds that just are not possible for it to make. all brains, no vibe.

Surprising. A4 MKI or MKII ?
Latest OS ?
No midi loopback ?

Would you describe steps to reproduce it ?

its a MKii. Latest OS. No midi loop back. Not sure how or why but happened last few nights. I was creating a patch in mono, decided to add more voices to the track in unison mode, then reverted back to mono for that track and turned off the voices. then on another track, init patch, when i press the key track one still plays with it. even if i mute track 1 it still played when i hit a note on another track, along with the other tracks sound. strange. i power cycled the unit and it was still there. i made a new project and it was fixed. a strange quirk.

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Were you actually changing back to reset/rotate etc from unison mode, or just disabling the 3 other voices but staying in unison?

yes, i for sure tried putting it back to poly, taking it off unison. did not work. i turned it on again, put something into poly then took it out and it worked ok, so it is not consistent but happened 3 out of 5 times when I was working on it. ill let elektron know but i just dropped off the A4 with its new owner so dont have to fret about this anymore.