The best way to avoid running out of polyphony is to re-evaluate the sounds that you are layering. More often than not there is a more economical way to assemble sounds, polyphony-wise (pun intended).

I'm not aware of any way to reserve polyphony. If you study the large multi-Part Performances available in the Factory Presets you can see how rarely if ever are all Parts sounding simultaneously - the math is really easy to understand. If you layer sounds so that, say for example, all eight Parts have 8 Element sounds. With 64 Oscillators triggering per note, you run out of polyphony very rapidly.

Sounds that are polyphony hogs - that use polyphony in a crazy way - are the organ sounds where you attempt to recreate all the drawbars. Layering a drawbar organ with other sounds might be the least efficient use ever of polyphony.

If and when you find yourself running out polyphony- the wise programmer looks for a more efficient way to accomplish the sonic goal. Many subtleties are completely lost when you start combining sounds and you might be able to "thin" the layering, preserve polyphony without necessarily losing what you're going for.

That my recommendation. Let us know if we can help.

In some popsongs there is a single note (often Strings) that plays for several measures.
When I play live, I use my sustain pedal to keep that single note playing, so I can play the song on my other keyboard with a piano sound from the Montage.
The single note dies during the piano playing, while I still keep my foot on the sustainpedal.

I can't remember this behaviour on my Motif XF.

Is there a way to prevent the single note from dying?

I'm not sure I see inside your setup here. There are some differences between the Motif and Montage that may or may not contribute.

You said complex performance - so I'm assuming this is describing all one performance. Where the strings you are holding with the sustain pedal is on one PART of a performance and the piano sound is on another PART of the same performance. And not that you are switching between performances - using SSS. Also, for this to sound right (with the sustain pedal held down for strings) - I'm assuming your piano PART is ignoring the sustain pedal. Is this correct? That would be the Motif way to do this and still available on Montage.

Do you have MIDI mode = single or multi? Just kind of curious on this one. It's one of those possibly-different-from-Motif type things.

What's going on with your string PART in terms of motion sequence (or is motion sequence master [MOTION SEQ ON/OFF]) turned off or not utilized for this PART?

What's going on with the string PART in terms of an ARP is it (or is the master ARP control [ARP ON/OFF] turned off or not utilized for this PART (PART level ARP turned off)?

What's going on in terms of the string PART in terms of Control Assignments (source/destination assignments) which may affect volume or other interactions such as the superknob or other knob interaction?

There's lots of reason for sound death and just want to be sure polyphony is the cause here. Maybe scale down the performance and experiment. If you did scale it back - it's hard to see that Montage is going to run out of notes if you just have a single string PART and a single-PART piano and see if that fails in the same manner. This would be a possibly less complicated setup just to get a handle on if the problem is polyphony or some other programming choice. Then start adding ingredients. Maybe it really is polyphony - again, can't really see what you've built there.

You can probably prevent a single note from dying by letting an ARP play it and have the ARP restart the (same) note over and over. String players do not have an infinitely long bow they can pull or push in the same direction forever - they have to gracefully "re-articulate" when they run out of bow and have to change directions. So maybe if you took this approach - if the problem really is polyphony that the ARP would pick up and maybe only miss a few beats if you say made this half notes. And very legato with no "off" time just like a string player would do. Not knowing what's really going on - and running with your polyphony theory (could be right - have to take it on faith right now) then this is a possible way to get something in the ballpark of what you want. Even though it really isn't keeping anything from dying - just resurrecting postmortem.

Hi Jason,

Thanks for your reply!

MIDI mode = multi
ARP is OFF
MOTION SEQ is OFF

It's just a performance with 3 parts.
2 parts (PART 1 and 2) for the pianosound (KEYBOARD CTRL OFF) and
1 part (PART 8) for the strings (that single note) (KEYBOARD CTRL ON)

I play the pianosound from an external controller (Nord Stage 2), which - in this case - only sends midi on channel 1 and 2.
I have two sustainpedals. One connected to the external controller, and one connected to the Montage.
I use my sustainpedal (connected to the external controller) a lot while playing piano, so it could be that polyphony is an issue.
I think that the Montage chooses to stop playing the stringssound, when I play too much piano.

Of course I can make the pianosound and/or the stringssound less complex. But it would be much nicer to have the ability to choose which PART not to cut.

Thanks for your suggestion to use an ARP. I think that will do the trick 🙂

Jeroen wrote:

Hi there,

Sometimes when I make a very complex Performance, the parts I wish to sustain are cut / stop playing because the polyphony runs out.

Is there a way to give parts priority above other parts in a Performance?

Thanks in advance!

I know this is a very old thread but for anyone else looking for answers on this:

In my tests I have found that the higher the Part number the lower the priority. Part 1 (and by extension quite possibly/probably Element 1 of Part 1) seems to be the best bet for priority of polyphony usage.

Thanks for your tests, Joe!
That's great to know!

Joe wrote:
In my tests I have found that the higher the Part number the lower the priority. Part 1 (and by extension quite possibly/probably Element 1 of Part 1) seems to be the best bet for priority of polyphony usage.

That said, I have observed that regardless of this^ sustained notes from Part 1 will still drop out when additional notes (from any Part) max out the polyphony.