Paraphony

Paraphony is a term which has two distinct meanings in the field of music.

In musical theory

Paraphony is a term used in musical vernacular to refer to consonances which rely upon intervals of fifths and fourths. This terminology can be traced to ancient Greece and sources such as Theon of Smyrna.

In electronic music

Hammond Novachord (1939)

Korg Poly-800 (1983)

Completely unrelated to the above sense, a synthesizer is called paraphonic if it can play multiple pitches at once, but those pitches share part of their electronic signal paths. For example, the Roland RS-202 string machine could play several dozen pitches at once, but only with a single shared volume envelope, requiring the collective chord to swell and diminish as a single cohesive whole. Similarly, the Korg Poly-800 had 8 oscillators and could produce 8 voices, but had just one filter circuit shared by all of them. Other examples include the Roland VP-330 vocoder and the Moog Sub 37.

ARP Odyssey (1971)

Korg Mono/Poly (1981)

Demonstration

The following example is a simulation of how we might expect a non-paraphonic synthesizer (i.e. one with an EG for each voice) to behave when multiple overlapping notes are played without being released (in this case, C, F# then B).

This can be contrasted with the following recording of how a real-life paraphonic synthesizer (a Korg Volca Keys) actually handles the same situation.

When the second note (F#) is played, the first (C)- which had fallen to its "sustain" level- comes back at full volume as if it had been released and struck again at the exact same time (although it had not).

When the third note (B) is played, the same happens again with the first two.

(While this is how the Volca Keys handles paraphony, other paraphonic synthesisers may do so differently).