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Thursday, December 12th, 2024 03:01 am

Synth Glossary

Aftertouch:
A means of generating a control signal based on how much pressure is applied to the keys of a MIDI keyboard. Most instruments that support this do not have independent pressure sensing for all keys, but rather detect the overall pressure by means of a sensing strip running beneath the keys. Aftertouch may be used to control such functions as vibrato depth, filter brightness, loudness and so on....

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Omni-2
"The ARP Omni-2 is an improved version of the popular Omni. It features all- electronic switching, single/multiple triggering and a separate bass synthesizer. The Omni-2 is actually three separate instruments in one package - 1) a highly evolved string chorus, 2) polyphonic synthesizer section and 3) separate bass synthesizer. All three sections can be played simultaneously for impressively-rich orchestral effects....The Omni-2 has controls to balance the volume of each section, selectable waveforms and chorus phaser controls. Each section has its own output so that the Omni-2 can be played in stereo or even dramatic 'triphonic.'"----[from ARP's promotional Omni-2 brochure courtesy of Kevin Lightner]

The Omni keyboards are string synthesizers with four separate voices (bass, cello, viola, violin, each independently switchable) and a bass/synthesizer section. The string section has its own variable speed LFO, and attack/release envelopes. The synthesizer section has a VCF and its own ADSR envelope. The bass/synthesizer split is set to the lower one and a half octaves. The Omni (model 2300) was ARP's best selling intstrument. Unlike the original, the Omni-2 has single triggering so that when any note is held down the VCF and VCA envelopes will not re-trigger. The original Omni had multiple triggering so that every time a key was depressed the envelopes were triggered.

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