Poly Flanger
Overview
Poly Flanger is a musically-intelligent flanger designed to build movement that is in key with your track instead of only producing generic sweeps. Traditional flangers produce sounds that often feel disconnected from a track's tonal progression. Poly Flanger solves this by snapping its resonances to musical pitches, so the effect builds on your harmony rather than working against it.
At its core, Poly Flanger is a polyphonic comb filter with up to 8 modulatable voices. Each voice can be snapped to a specific pitch in a scale, creating harmonic resonances that range from subtle enhancement to full chord-like textures. Scale mode steps through notes in time with your track, and flexible LFO modulation can be quantized to rhythm and scale—so even randomized movement stays musically in tune.
1. Main Controls
Frequency Tune. Toggle between Hz and MIDI note modes for the Frequency control.
Pitch. Shift the pitch of the flanger up or down based on the currently selected scale. With Chromatic scale selected, this is in semitones; otherwise, it will step through scale degrees in the current scale.
Span. Spread each voice's pitch across musical intervals to create more complex resonances and chords. At 0%, all voices share the same pitch. Increasing the value gradually stacks voices into fourths, fifths, and octaves. Negative values invert the interval order.
Stereo. Control the stereo width of the flanger voices. At 0%, voices are centered. Increasing the value pans voices across the stereo field and adds subtle detuning between left and right for a wider image. Positive and negative values swap the left and right placement.
Damping. Roll off high frequencies in the flanger's resonance. Higher values filter out harmonics for a warmer, darker tone. The filter partially tracks each voice's pitch, keeping the tonal character more consistent across the frequency range.
Feedback. Control how strongly the flanger resonates, creating harmonic peaks in the sound. Higher values create more pronounced, ringing tones that emphasize the harmonic character of the current style and can be pushed into resonator territory at extreme settings.
2. Display Controls
Voices. Set the number of flanger voices. More voices add harmonic density and enable richer chord stacking.
Style. Choose the character of the flanger effect. • Classic: Traditional flanger with both even and odd harmonics. • Hollow: Inverted flanger with odd harmonics and saturation. • Vapor: A unique diffused flanger with smeared resonances.
3. Scale Controls
Scale Mode. Quantize the flanger's pitch to notes in the current scale. Voices lock to musical pitches, creating arpeggiated harmonic movement and chord-like effects.
Root Note. Set the scale's root note.
Scale Type. Choose the musical scale used for pitch quantization. All quantized pitches and voicing intervals are derived from the selected scale. Voicing. Limit which notes the flanger voices can play. • Off: All notes in the current scale are available. • Intervals: Single notes or two-note intervals. • Triads: Three-note chords. • Extended: Four-note chords (7ths, 6ths, add9). • Penta: Pentatonic scale notes only.
Note Rate. Set the speed at which voices will change pitch in Scale mode, synced to your project's tempo. Faster rates create rapid arpeggios, while slower rates produce evolving harmonic progressions. At zero, voices snap instantly to new pitches. At other rates, voices crossfade smoothly between notes.
Scale Lock. Lock the scale settings between presets. When enabled, the root note and scale type will persist when loading new presets.
4. Modulation
Modulation Depth. Adjust the depth of the internal modulation applied to Frequency and Pitch controls. Setting this to 0% will enable manual control with no modulation.
Rate. Adjust the LFO rate.
Rate Sync. Enable BPM sync for the LFO rate.
Shape Snap. Enable snapping between LFO shapes. When disabled, the LFO shapes are continuously morphed.
LFO Shape. Choose from sine, triangle, downward ramp, or square LFO shapes. With Snap off, these shapes can be continuously morphed.
LFO Randomize. Adjust the amount of LFO randomization. Note that each waveform randomizes in a unique way.
Stereo Randomize. When active, separate randomization will be applied to each of the LFO's stereo channels, resulting in a wider effect.
Last updated
Was this helpful?