Understanding Tracks in Buzz

When a new pattern is created, it contains one monophonic track. This means that only one note may be played at a time; If a note where played, and another added - the first would immediately stop and start the new note. While this is fine in many instances (drum loops, etc), it is limiting in that it will not let you play chords. To solve this problem, most machines will let you add more tracks (polyphony) to each machine currently in your song. The number of tracks (amount of polyphony) is up to the developer. The range is usually between 8 and 32 per machine, which should be adaquate for nearly all instances. Tip: If you were to run out of polyphony on one machine, you could easily add a duplicate of the machine to double the available polyphony. Repeat this as much as you want, with virtually unlimited polyphony. The only limit is your CPU power.

Figure 2.8

Figure 2.8 (above) indicates that 4 tracks are being used simultaniously on the Voidsynth. The column shown far to the left is the rightmost of its many parameter columns. Whether or not parameter columns are duplicated when adding a track is decided by the developer of each individual machine. In the case of the Voidsynth, it is more useful to have one parameter set globally to all notes being played (this is also the case in traditional synthesizers and samplers). In other instances it is more useful to duplicate parameters (such as a delay, which could easily be turned into a multi-tap delay with multiple track patterns).