Unison button is so cool

I’m obviously new to the Digitone by the title, but I just found the fun of the Unison button and wanted to give it a shout out. If you just got a Digitone, give it a try.

I was just playing a bass sound and then pushed the Unison button… added 2, 3, 4, 5… I instantly felt powerful haha.

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It can sound great for wide chunky snares, percussion and hi-hats too :wink:

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Please help me… I’ve been reading about unison for bass on Digitone but a) I don’t know what it is and b) I don’t know how to use it. I’m trying to create a fat bass sound on the DT, but just don’t how… Read about using unison, but don’t really get that. Bass tutorials on YT don’t have the sound I’m looking for. This is what I’m looking for: https://youtu.be/3NPxqXMZq7o

Any tips?

Unison uses more than 1 of 8 voices to play a note. You can then choose whether they are detuned from one another, and whether or not they sit in the center of pan left/right for stereo width.

Additionally, on the Digitone, you can do some additional things that give you even finer control over how the synth uses them, such as assigning certain sounds certain voices, or whether a repeated note will trigger a different voice each time, or the same voice each time. Etc.

I admit I’m not going to watch a video, but hopefully the above helps get you started.

Sometimes unison mode on synths makes a bass fat, but less distinct/punchy.

Dude when i first got my DN the first thing i really started to play around with was the voices page. Unison, voice locking, layering. I was shocked how fun it was to play while a pattern is playing instead of setting and forgetting.

Thanks @dave123, for taking the effort. It still is a bit complex for me. You mean you can use it so that you can create one “voice”, while using all four voices to create it? Am I right?

Sure thing!

Yes, you combine multiple of the 8 available voices into a single voice. The side effect is that you also reduce the overall number of voices available for other sounds while using one or more unison sounds.

For example, if you combine 4 voices to create a thick, lush pad, then you’re limited to only 4 other voices while that pad is playing (if leaving things in dynamic mode as opposed to locking the voices for the pad to ensure there’s always voices available even if it takes voices away from other sounds).

Creating sounds with unison generally makes them more lush, because you detune each voice and can spread it out in stereo. It also makes sounds louder on most synths. A tight but thick bass is probably fine with 1 or 2 voices. A dance music supersaw can often use 3 or 4 (or more). A dreamy, lush pad can use as many as 4 to 8.

If you run out of voices and trigger a new note, the voices will be “stolen” from whatever was previously playing, which can even stop that sound entirely. For example, if you have an 8 voice pad and trigger a new note, the previous sound will stop entirely as all voices are re-dedicated to the new note. In general, with only 8 voices, you want to be very careful and thoughtful about using even one sound with unison. Unless I’m using the Digitone for only one sound, I rarely use more than 2 voices in unison, and not more than 4, so that I can trigger the next note and not cut off the note that had been playing. But that’s me.

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@dave123, thank you so much for this masterclass! Your explanation is so much more comprehensive than the one in the manual! Thanks again!

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