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Chapter 3 ES2 94
ES2 tutorials
Create ES2 sounds from scratch
ES2 sound design from scratch overview
The “Create ES2 sounds from scratch” tutorials guide you—from the ground up (from scratch)—
through the creation of commonly used sounds. The ES2 sound design with templates on
page 103 tutorials also guide you through the sound creation process, but you use a number of
templates as your starting point.
To see the settings for these tutorials in the ES2 window, choose Tutorial Settings from the
Settings pop-up menu.
The Analog Saw Init tutorial setting is designed to be used as a starting point when you are
programming new sounds from scratch. When programming entirely new sounds, professional
sound designers like to use this type of setting, which has an unltered sawtooth wave sound
without envelopes, modulations, or any gimmicks. This type of setting is also useful when you
are getting to know a new synthesizer. It allows you to access all parameters without having to
consider any preset values.
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Start with the lters, the heart of any subtractive synthesizer. Check out the four lowpass lter
types—12 dB, 18 dB, 24 dB, and fat (Filter 2)—with dierent values for Cut (Cuto Frequency)
and Res (Resonance). Dene Env 2 as the lter envelope. This modulation wiring is preset in
the Router.
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Set Filter Blend to its leftmost position, which allows you to listen to Filter 1 in isolation. In
many circumstances, you’ll probably prefer Filter 1, but Filter 2 has its advantages. In addition
to the lowpass lter with 12 dB/octave slope (Lo), Filter 1 also oers a highpass, peak, bandpass
(BP), and band rejection (BR) mode. Filter 2’s lowpass sounds “softer” when compared with
Filter 1. It is best-suited to sounds where the lter eect is or should be less audible, such as
with Strings and FM sounds. Distorted TB-303-style sounds are more easily achieved with
Filter 2.
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This setting is also ideal for experimenting with dierent oscillator waveforms.
Create fat ES2 sounds
“Fat” synthesizer sounds have always been popular and are likely to remain so, given their use in
modern trance, techno, R & B, and other styles.
Create fat ES2 sounds with oscillator detuning and unison mode
The Analog Saw 3 Osc setting features three detuned oscillators, and sounds fat as it is. The
following introduces you to some additional tools to fatten the sound even more.
In many factory settings, the Unison mode is active. This demands a lot of processing power. If
your computer isn’t fast enough, you can switch o the Unison mode and insert an Ensemble
eect in a bus, for use with several plug-ins. This saves processing power. You can also save CPU
resources by freezing or bouncing several software instrument tracks.
Do the following:
m Check out the three-oscillator basic sound with dierent lter and envelope settings.
m Check out the chorus eect at dierent Intensities and speeds.
m Engage Unison mode and select a higher setting for Analog. Because the sound is polyphonic,
each note is doubled. The number of notes that can be played simultaneously is reduced from
10 to 5. This makes the sound rich and broad. Combining Unison and higher values for Analog
spreads the sound across the stereo or surround spectrum.