New BA-1 iOS user here. This is my understanding of how glissando/glide works in BA-1:
In Mono mode, glide always occurs, whether the notes are overlapping or not.
In Poly mode, glide does not occur when you add to the number of active “voices” playing, but instead only occurs with non-overlapping notes of the same “voice”. For Example: If you we’re to play a triad chord one note at a time while holding each previous note (i.e. adding to the number of active voices), no gliding will occur as all the notes overlapped. However, if you add a fourth “voice” playing a melody of non-overlapping notes, you can still have that melody glide independently without affecting or being affected by the chord that you were already holding down.
In Poly mode, the amp’s envelope release is seemingly taken into account in determining whether or not notes are overlapping for purposes of glissando. Even if you have released the previous note, the next note you press will not glide if the previous note’s amp release stage is not yet finished.
It’s Point #3 above that I can’t seem to wrap my head around. I’ve never seen that implementation of poly glide in any of the other iOS synths I use. Can someone confirm whether that is actually the intended behavior? Thanks.
Here is a video illustrating Point #2 & #3. As you can see towards the end, Poly Glissando becomes quite unpredictable once you turn up the Envelope Release.
In the video starting at around 1:00, would you be able to explain what happens once I increase the Envelope Release to around 70? I’m playing one note at a time without overlapping, making sure that I release the key before pressing another. However, the glissando in this case seems inconsistent: sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t. Does the Envelope Release time actually come into play here? I think all of the other iOS synths I use are able to poly glide immediately after key release, regardless of the amp envelope’s release time. Thanks.
Okay, upon thinking about it further, it does makes sense for the voice allocation of glissando in poly mode to be affected by the amp’s release time, given that BA-1 only activates poly glide for non-overlapping notes of the same voice.
I guess it’s just a different implementation from what I’m used to, since all the other synth plugins I’ve used so far on iOS use either of these two methods:
Poly glide activates for overlapping notes of all voices.
Poly glide activates for all notes of all voices, whether overlapping or not.
The drawbacks for those two methods are that (1) a chord will glide between its notes unless all pressed in perfect unison and (2) glide can more easily occur between chords and melodies playing simultaneously. These can be cool effects but are not always ideal.
Meanwhile, the main benefit for those two methods is that the amp’s release time does not interfere with the poly glide (since there is no voice allocation to worry about), thus leading to much more predictable results. Especially for long sounds like pads.
Would be cool to see some kind of option for this. Maybe it would go in a tiny dot button near Glissando? Or maybe another voice mode aside from Mono & the current Poly? Basically like the current BA-1 implementation of mono glide (i.e. always active), but for poly mode.
By the way, here is a video showing the poly glide implementation in the official Moog Model D app, showing both the drawback and benefit that I mentioned above.
