Logic Pro X - Video Tutorial 48 - ES2 Synthesizer (PART 1) Video Lecture

[Music]
hello this is music tech help guy and
welcome to episode 48 of my Logic Pro 10
video tutorial series in this episode
we're gonna take a look at the ES 2
synthesizer and logic and the ES 2 is a
synth that's been a been around for
quite a while it's nothing it's not a
nuisance but I do think it's one of the
more versatile you know wave based
synths and logic and it's one of my
personal all-time favorite sins as well
one of the things I want you to realize
about the es 2 is that there are many
different east cents back from the e
magic days of logic es tu es one ESP es
mes e we will not be going over all of
these I'm going to be covering the es 2
and the e FM one all of the other ones
the EMP and es one all of those all
contain the features that the es 2 has
but just don't quite have the level of
features at the es to have so if you can
figure out how to use the es 2 you can
pretty much figure out how to use those
other four all right well one other
thing I want to mention just like I
mentioned in the retro synth in the
previous episode is that this is in no
way a complete tutorial for the es 2
this is just an overview to show you how
to get going and using the synth if you
really are interested in a complete
tutorial I actually have already done a
four-part two-hour-long ES 2 tutorial if
you are interested although the quality
of the audio is not quite as good as
this video and it was also done in Logic
9 not in 10 but nothing is really
nothing has really changed it's still
it's still the same synthesizer so the
stock sound for the ES 2 sounds like
this
it's just a very basic sort of you know
poly synth sound I'm gonna start with
one of the presets so if you're trying
to follow along you can use this preset
I'm gonna use the preset that's under
synth leads and it is called electric
buzz and electric buzz is just kind of a
monophonic sort of bass or lead
instrument and one of the things you'll
immediately find at the es2 is it's much
more versatile and has much more
modulation ability than the
retrosynthesis so you have the ability
to create much more complex synth
patches so to start what I'm gonna do is
I'm actually going to turn off all of
these modulation routers we'll talk
about what these do later but I kind of
want to start with a more stock sound so
the way you can turn these off is just
hold option and click on the targets of
each one of these and you'll turn off
those modulation routers another thing I
want to do is I want to turn the filter
off for the time being and you can turn
this whole filter wheel off just by
clicking here where it says filter so
filters in gray the filter is off I also
want to pull this sine level knob down
and I actually if you have any
distortion on or the chorus flanger
phaser on I would pull the intensity of
those down as well because we don't
really want to hear those quite yet and
then the last thing I'm going to adjust
is I'm gonna turn the vector mode from
mix and XY to off and so essentially
what we're hearing now is just the
oscillators plus just our volume
envelope over here well look like I said
we'll come back to all this stuff in
just a moment
so the es2 has three oscillators they're
labeled here 1 2 & 3 and you can turn
each one of them on or off just by
clicking on the number right next to the
waveform selection so for now let's just
start with oscillator 1 and we'll keep
numbers 2 & 3 off the knob just next to
the number shows which waveform you have
selected
so you can choose from a sine wave a
triangle wave a saw to the square wave a
square wave for the short up pulse as
well as a sine wave as an FM carrier
what I'm gonna do real quick is I'm
going to turn this on polyphonic mode
and I'm going to turn unison off we'll
talk about that later I'm gonna pull up
my voices to a bit of a higher value
than that to be you know the maximum
value but I'll pull it up to a higher
value and I'm also gonna pull this
analog knob down again I'll explain why
I'm making all these changes in just a
moment so basically what I have here is
just a sine wave and it should sound
somewhat like just the sine wave yeah
nothing special there what we can do is
on our oscillator we can change to a
different waveform and as we discussed
in the previous video
going from sine triangle Square to
sawtooth that's the order in which the
wave forms get more complex the overtone
series in those waveforms get more
complex so the sine wave is going to be
the simplest sound you can have the saw
or the triangle wave is gonna be a
little more complex but still kind of a
dull sound
[Music]
the square wave is gonna be kind of
bright
and then the Sawtooth is going to be the
kind of the most fuzzy the grittiest the
most complex sound
and then we also have this shortened up
pulse square-wave and remember in the
previous episode we talked about pulse
width modulation and basically what
pulse width modulation is is when you
can shorten or lengthen the up pulse of
a square wave and so when you go from a
50-50 square wave like this and you go
to a shortened up pulse there's less
energy in the signal and so you end up
having a thinner tone but sometimes it's
a distinct sort of metallic sound that
you might want so there you go we'll
come back to this FM option in just a
moment so I'm going to stick a later one
on a square wave the knob just to the
left of the waveform selection is the
tuning of that oscillator you can tune
each of the oscillators up or down by 36
semitones so basically up or down by
three full octaves I'm just gonna option
click on that and set it to its you know
it's standard stock value and you can
also detune each oscillator and cents as
well and we'll come back to that in just
a moment next let me turn on oscillator
2 and I'm also going to set the tuning
for this to 0 as well for oscillator 2
you get a few extra options you get a
square wave that you can adjust the
pulse width on so instead of just
getting a short and a 50/50 pulse wave
square wave you actually get the whole
gamut of a 50/50 all the way up to a
shortened pulse so you can modulate the
pulse like this
[Music]
and again the shorter the pulse is the
more thin metallic this tone sounds you
have your sawtooth your triangle wave as
well as your sine wave like before but
we also have these synced waveforms as
well as a ring modulator with the synced
waveforms you may recall from the
previous episode we talked about
oscillators sync where you can sync two
waveforms and you have essentially a
master waveform in a slave waveform
that's essentially what's happening here
you can sync a square wave to oscillator
1 and you can also sync a sawtooth to
oscillator 1 and so when you do that you
can kind of you can adjust the tuning of
the slave waveform which is number 2 and
you can kind of alter not necessarily
the tuning but the but the the tone of
it
you can vary the tone if we were just to
use a regular you know right to regular
saw teeth and you alter the tuning of
oscillator 2 you're just gonna create
harmony
so here i've got a seven semitone you
know the second oscillator is raised up
seven semitones so it's a perfect fifth
so I have two oscillators that are in
harmony at a perfect fifth but if I use
the synced option it creates a tonal
shift like a Tambor
[Music]
today almost looks like this kind of
metallic biting tone is what we get
alright so for oscillator 3 oscillator 3
has many of the same options as
oscillator 2 except that ring modulation
is replaced by a noise generator so on
oscillator 3 if you choose noise you
basically just have an oscillator that
generates white noise it doesn't matter
where you play on the keyboard you're
gonna get the same the same the same
sound so so what is a ring modulator by
the way ring modulation is when you can
take the signal of two oscillators and
you can add and subtract you get the
this the sum and difference of all of
the overtones in the overtone series of
those two waveforms I believe offhand
that the ring modulator on oscillator 2
is a square wave so if I choose a square
wave up on oscillator 1 and then change
the you know the tuning what you're
actually gonna hear is the fundamental
of these two waveforms plus the addition
and subtraction of every single overtone
in the overtone series of these two
waveforms and so you get a kind of a
metallic biting sound as well similar to
like the synced oscillator
[Music]
it's a little bit more distorted you can
hear there's a little bit of dissonance
in there as well the only thing I
haven't talked about let's go down to
oscillator 3 is this particular preset
has this you know the sine wave replaced
is something that says mean and what
does that mean well what does mean mean
mean is actually one of many digi waves
that you can pick from these digi waves
are essentially just a wave table is all
they are they're a set of a hundred
different waveforms you can pick from
and they're just given different you
know descriptions you know things like
cold or organ or you know piano they
don't actually sound like a piano but
they kind of embody the like the sort of
the overtone series or the overall tone
of that particular instrument so you can
use them as kind of a starting point to
build your overall patch the way you
access these is you simply right click
on where it would normally say a sine
wave and then you'll find you'll get a
whole list of these different digi waves
so it lets say I want you know the one
that says one of the organs I'll say
organ number three so this is what organ
number three sounds like so kind of like
an organ sound a little bit of a Bell
tone above it and you can do that for
all three all three oscillators any of
the ones that say so well they all say
sign at the bottom you can right click
on that you can change that to any of
the any of the different
any of the different digi waves so let's
do this I'm gonna stick with mean to up
here I'm gonna go with a slightly
shortened up pull square wave and number
two and number three I'll go at the
sawtooth and currently I have all three
of them at the same tuning we'll change
that in just a moment the other thing
you can do with your three oscillators
is you can balance them that's this
triangle here does this is the balance
between the three oscillators so you can
move this around you'll hear more of one
more of two or more of three depending
on where you put this point in the
triangle
[Music]
so you can find a blend that you know
fits the sound that you're looking for
now one quick thing I want to show you
before we move on from the oscillators
is that oscillator one has a sine wave
up here that says basically has a slider
all the way up to FM what this does is
it actually turns oscillator 1 into an
FM carrier wave and then oscillators 2 &
3 are modulating waves and we talked a
bit about this in the previous episode
with FM synthesis but if I set this to
sine wave set this one to the sine wave
with the FM slider essentially number
two is our modulating wave and number 1
is our carrier wave and as I pull this
up I'm pulling up the FM depth and
you'll hear more of those kind of
Classic FM sounds and you can change
what you want the modulator to be so I
can actually make the modulator a
sawtooth and the carrier a sine wave
[Music]
so there you go so I'm gonna go back to
what we had before though in addition to
being able to adjust the triangle over
here you can also set each of the
oscillators to a different tuning so
let's that say that I want my sawtooth
to be down an octave it's 12 semitones
maybe I want my second oscillator to be
up an octave and I want oscillator want
to be right in tune you can have them
all in different octaves and create a
different sort of blended tonality
[Music]
now we're getting sort of like an
organized sort of sound another thing
that we discussed in the previous
episode was being able to fine tune the
oscillators and adjust the tuning and
sense you can do that same thing here
and one of the things that we said we
could do is we said you can take two
oscillators that are on the same pitch
and you can slightly detune them in
sense now in the previous episode I just
bumped one oscillator up $0.10 and it
created a nice chorus effect and then I
had to go retro actively bump the entire
tuning of the entire synth down $0.05
because the frequency that we hear when
we detuned two oscillators is in between
the two oscillators so if I bump one of
them up $0.10 then the overall frequency
the overall pitch of the over of the
whole oscillator is gonna we're gonna
perceive that as plus five cents so what
we can do here is we actually have
independent detuning of the oscillators
so I can pull oscillator one up by five
cents and I can pull oscillator two down
by five cents let's actually go a little
bit further let's go seven cents and
we'll get a bit of a chorus effect now
so this a little bit richer tone than we
would have before next let's talk about
the global controls up here we have
polyphonic monophonic legato a voice
count as well as a unison mode which we
didn't see in the in the previous sent
at least it was there but it wasn't
labeled unison in polyphonic mode you
can have up to 32 voices and if you
check the unison button what happens is
the voices 1/2 and the reason why the
half is 1 in unison mode you're actually
doubling up your voices on every key so
right now I have you know with unison
mode off I have 3 oscillators on every
single key you play if you check this
you're now gonna have two of each of the
oscillators and every key so you're
gonna get a little bit of a thicker
louder tone
see it a little bit bigger tone the
other thing that you can do and this was
the same thing as the double option in
the retrosynthesis when unison is on you
can go over to this analog knob and you
can pull this up and what this does is
it emulates analog pitch drift because
in analog synthesizers the pitch of an
oscillator may not always be perfectly
in tune so if you have all three
oscillators double down every key so we
have six oscillators per key and you
start to detune those even further than
our manual detuning you can get a really
rich chorus effect
if you pull this up too much though
it'll just start to sound out of tune so
there's a fine line between out of tune
and chorus which you can also do is you
can set your mode to monophonic or
legato in the previous video we
explained the difference between the two
and the basic difference is that in
monophonic mode you can only play one
note at a time
[Music]
and then in legato mode the envelope
doesn't restart itself for every note so
you get a bit of a smoother tone out of
it this is great for arpeggios and and
melodic ideas
[Music]
now monophonic mode in legato motor
treated a little bit different when you
turn unison mode on then polyphonic mode
is when you turn polyphonic mode in
unison on it halves the voice count
because it doubles up the number of
voices on every key in mono or legato
mode when you turn unison on the number
of voices that you see in that display
is the number of voices that you have on
every single key so it's crazy about
this is if you have legato unison
thirty-two voices on that means that you
have thirty two sets of oscillators on
every single key that you play so that
means that you we have three oscillators
times thirty-two voices so basically
ninety-six notes on every single key
which seems crazy but once you play a
key it's it's super loud and it has this
really rich almost almost like a flanger
effect on it because of the detuning
that we have over here
so I'm gonna do just before I play this
is pulled the volume control down a bit
because otherwise this is gonna clip
actually probably pulled it up a bit a
bit more there
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
so there's really rich chorus effect you
know that you can't get in polyphonic if
I go back to polyphonic now it's a it's
a rich chorus effect but not as thick
sounding is that that legato mode that
we had so for now I'm gonna stick with
poly and unison alright the next control
I want to show you is not the filter but
actually the controls on the right side
here you have a master volume control
this just controls the volume of the
entire synthesizer you can pull that up
pull it down
you can also introduce an extra sine
wave into your oscillators much like we
did in the retro since if you need to
reinforce the base you can pull this up
and it'll layer a sine wave underneath
your current oscillators there's also a
built-in flanger phaser or chorus effect
so I'll go with the flanger and pull the
intensity up event here's what the
phaser sounds like and then the speed is
just the speed at which the phaser
flanger of course moves it
and you can also add distortion as well
you can choose between a hard and soft
distortion the hard distortion is gonna
sound more like a like a solid-state you
know distorted sound whereas the soft
distortions and sound more like a almost
like a tube overdrive if you will so I'm
actually not going to use the distortion
I'm not going to use the the modulation
either and we'll come back to it but
this XY pad believe it or not has
nothing to do with these faders around
are these knobs around it it's a bit
it's a bit misleading because you look
at these six knobs you're like oh it has
do something with this XY pad actually
has nothing to do with the XY pad so
we'll talk about that later
next let's talk about the filter I'm
going to turn the filter on and the
filter in the es2 is essentially not one
but two filters you have filter one here
filter two here the filters can be in
series or in parallel and you can choose
between the two right here parallel
basically means that the signal from the
oscillators is split into half of its
sent through filter 1/2 a sent through
filter 2 and then they're joined and
blended on the opposite side in series
this means that the signal is gonna pass
through filter 1 then that signal is
gonna pass their filter 2 and then go to
the output so for a bit more of a
balanced sound I'm gonna go with
parallel the first thing I'm going to do
is just to demonstrate filter one by
itself I'm gonna pull this blend knob
all the way up and so you'll only hear
filter one now filter one like most
filters has a cutoff frequency and a
resonance control and you can also
choose between five different types of
filters you have low-pass high-pass peak
band reject and band pass and in the
previous video we discussed that a
low-pass filter is a filter that allows
lows but cuts highs high-pass is one
that allows highs but cuts lows band
reject cuts a middle band of frequencies
but keeps lows and highs and band pass
cuts highs and lows but keeps a middle
band of frequencies we also said that a
peak filter is kind of like just a band
boosting a band
and an EQ salt what I'm going to do is
I'm going to choose a four filter one
I'm going to choose a band reject
actually choose a bandpass filter and
the cutoff frequency here is gonna
essentially adjust the center frequency
of that band so I'm gonna pull the
resonance down just play with this just
you can hear it it sounds like so we can
choose between a higher or lower
emphasis with the low-pass and the
high-pass this is actually a cutoff
frequency cutting out the highs letting
the highs back in with high-pass cutting
out the lows and then letting the lows
back in so I'm gonna stick with the
bandpass for now and we'll come back to
resonance when we get to filter two
which is right now so let's check out
filter two I'm gonna pull the blend all
the way down so adjust here filter 2
filter - unlike filter one is a
dedicated low pass filter you cannot
change it to any other type of filter it
too has a cutoff frequency and resonance
control so what I'm gonna do is set the
cutoff where I feel like it sounds best
there we go and you can choose between
three different cutoff slopes you have
12 DB 18 DB and 24 DB so that the larger
the slope the the steeper the slope so
24 DB cut means that you have 24
decibels of attenuation per octave so 12
DB would a bit be a bit more gradual
slope let's go with 18 the fat option
basically acts kind of like a low
frequency shelf it just boosts the low
frequency I'm not going to turn that on
but you can play around with it and then
you can also add resonance remember that
resonance is a boost in the frequency at
the cutoff frequency so if I pull up the
resonance
[Music]
you get a bit of a high-frequency
shimmer at the cutoff frequency and then
what you can do is that because we're in
parallel I can actually blend these two
filters together and find the best sound
that's band-passed
low past
that we can have a combined band pass
and low pass
there we go all right let's take a look
at before we move on to the modulation
routers let's take a look at our
envelopes down here there are three
envelopes two of them envelopes 1 & 2
can be used for modulation techniques
envelope 3 is a dedicated volume
envelope and so it's essentially an
amplitude or an amplifier envelope
whatever you want to call it as four
stages attack decay sustain and release
we'll talk about time later and if I
want to create more of like a synth lead
or bass sort of sound you want to make
sure that your attack time is set low so
the sound immediately enters and you
want to make sure that the release time
is is set rather low because then you
press the key sound immediately enters
and you let go of the key and the sound
immediately dies away so this is meant
for basses and leads not really meant
for pads or chord type instruments if I
want to create more of a pad or like
synth string type of instrument I'm
gonna whit make sure that I pull the
attack time up a bit and pull the
release time up a bit so I get a more of
a fade in a fade-out
I actually want even more than that
[Music]
so I get a very very sort of gentle soft
fade in and fade out all right so now
that I've got that set up let's talk
about these modulation routers the
modulation routers are a way to take
modulation sources either like a direct
control like your modulation wheel or a
fader or something like that or a
built-in modulation source like an LFO
or an envelope and pair it up with an
element of the synthesizer so in the
previous episode we talked about you
know using an LFO to create vibrato so
let's let's create a basic for broto
effect here basically each of the
routers have a target and a source at
the bottom we'll talk about the via
parameter later the target is
essentially what's being affected and
the source is what's doing the effecting
so if I'm creating a vibrato effect the
target would be pitch and you can choose
pitch 1 2 or 3 and it's oscillator the
pitch of oscillators 1 2 or 3 or you can
say the pitch of all 3 oscillators which
I'm going to do and then you can also
say I want the source to be something
I'll say LFO 1 and for the via parameter
for now I'm just going to option click
on that to turn it off so since we've
chosen LFO 1 as our source
let's go down to LFO 1 the LFO LFO 1 is
a LFO that cannot be synchronized to the
beat clock so we can only adjust its
rate in Hertz so I can pull this up I
can pull this down typically vibrato is
usually between about 2 and 6 Hertz so
I'll make this about three and a half
Hertz there you go and then you can
choose a waveform for it you can choose
triangles sawtooth reverse sawtooth
unidirectional square bidirectional
square there's a step and hold sort of
random effect as well as a smooth random
what we need to do to actually get
vibrato is I need to pull up the depth
of the modulation because right now with
this green fader right on 0 we
have everything set up for vibrato but
we're not actually gonna hear the
vibrato until we pull it up so if I play
a note here no vibrato but if we
actually pull this fader up a bit we'll
start to hear vibrato and the more you
pull this up the the deeper the effect
will be so we get more of like a siren
effect there so let's try something a
little more useful let's try this with
volume and to do this with volume you
choose amp or amplitude or amplify or
whatever you want to call it so with amp
instead of pitch moving up and down for
vibrato now we're going to create almost
like a tremolo effect
[Music]
and we can try one of our other
waveforms as well let's try the Sawtooth
here
[Music]
what you'll find is that because Osler
lfo1 is not synced to the beat clock
it's difficult to synchronize to the
tempo of a song it's also a polyphonic
LFO which means that each note
essentially has its own LFO so if you
don't play all the notes at the exact
same time the kind of motion of the LFO
effect will be off but if you play them
all at the same time they'll all be
together the way around this is to
actually use LFO to instead of LFO 1
because LFO 2 not only lets you sink to
the beat clock to musical values it also
is monophonic which means that every
single note shares the same LFO motion
so instead of LFO to one here I'm going
to choose LFO 2 so let's try LFO 2 at an
eighth note pace and then we'll choose
we'll go ahead and use the sawtooth as
well
[Music]
so no matter what rhythm I play no
matter when I play a particular note the
motion of the LFO effect always stays in
time just for this let me just pull the
attack time down a bit and the release
time down a bit just so we can hear this
a little better and let me go ahead and
pull the amount all the way up so we get
a full volume effect so again no matter
what rhythm I play that effects always
gonna stay stay in time let's try
something else
let's try modulating our filter cutoff
for the cut-offs there's two options
there's actually three options there's
actually there's four options
there's cut off one cut off two cut off
one and two and then cut off one in
verse two with cut off one you're
talking about modulating the filter cut
off one of the cut-off of filter one cut
off two is the cut off of filter to cut
one and two is both of them and cut one
in verse two is basically this one this
one goes up this is gonna go backwards
that's all that is
so let's try this on cut one and I'm
gonna put this on the triangle wave for
this example
[Music]
so just affecting cut off one here let's
try cut off - let's try both of them cut
off one an - and let's try cut off one
inverse - yeah I find that I think cut
one and - sounds the best here one other
thing I really like to use often on LFO
- because it's a succinct LFO is I'd
like to use the square waves here I'm
gonna go with the bi-directional square
wave because the the effect is a little
bit deeper and you can create really
cool sort of like stuttered effects with
this let's go with like a sixteenth note
here so we have a very quick sixteenth
note filter sweep so you can create a
patch that not only creates you know
like a tonal choral idea but also gives
sort of like a rhythmic idea to your
song
[Music]
and you can also layer up these
modulation effects let's say I want LFO
to to control volume amplitude here to
create a stutter effect but then I want
on a second router I want LFO one to
control the cutoff of one and two and
then maybe do that a really slow rate
you can do that as well so you got this
really slow filter sweep going on in the
background but then we've got this
really rapid sixteenth note pulsing
effect going on at the same time what
you can do with the via parameter is
this is a way to control the depth of
the modulation with either like a
continuous controller or some other
control source let's say that I want to
control the amount of this stutter
effect based on the placement of my
modulation wheel so we'll go to the via
and we'll choose mod wheel what that
does is it splits up the fader into this
dual fader I'll click just on the zero
here to Center it and you can create a
top and bottom range for the modulation
so if basically when the fader it when
my modulation wheel is all the way down
the effect is going to be here toward
the green triangle and when the
modulation wheels all the way up the
effect is going to be more up here
toward the orange triangle so let's give
that a shop so modulation wheel down
[Music]
I'll push the modulation wheel up and
[Music]
then toward the end there I pushed the
modulation wheel back down again so
that's kind of cool let's move over to
the envelopes envelope three like I said
before as a dedicated volume envelope
envelopes one into our envelopes that
you can use for modulation effects so
just for now I'm going to bypass my
first two routers because I want to
control my resonance of my second filter
with my envelope here so what I'll do is
I'll say target control resonance number
two there's resonance one as well with
envelope number two and if I want this
to kind of be a slow motion you pull up
the attack time pull down the decay time
a bit maybe set the sustain where ever
you want it and remember that the
release time is going to be in part
based on when your volume envelopes
release time is so I'll pull those the
attack and release up over here and
let's see what that sounds like now
so we get a little bit of that little
Airy high-frequency sound in there but
the the main difference between an LFO
and an envelope is that an LFO repeats
itself over and over again an envelope
doesn't the envelopes just happened once
and then then they're done now let's add
both of these other two routers in there
at the same time and let's see what that
does to the signal now the big long
sweeping sound is a result of having
both a filter cutoff sweep as well as a
resonant sweep at the same time I don't
quite want that much I'm just gonna pull
the fader down just a little bit but
that's essentially the effect that was
going for
[Music]
and I can always pull the resonance down
a bit more too if I don't want to hear
quite as much of that so you'll see
really you can see really quickly that
although we have 10 ma modulation
routers a lot of times you only have to
use 2 or 3 or 4 to get the sound that
you're looking for but this is one of
the reasons why I love the es 2 is it
has so many modulation routers it allows
you to do almost anything you'd want to
do alright so I'm not done yet with the
es 2 but I am done for this video I
learned my lesson in the previous
episode that making 50 minute long
YouTube videos is bad because it takes
forever to upload them so I'm gonna cut
this video short here and I will pick up
the second half of the es 2 overview in
episode 49 so thanks for watching