ES2 Synthesizer

ES2 Synthesizer

In this blog I will be telling you what does what and what things do (If that made sense to you, we're off to a good start!). Firstly I'm going to look at the top sections of the synth.

Oscillator Section

 The oscillators generate the waveforms. As you can see in the picture you can choose up to 3 separate wave forms. They can be turned on or off by clicking the numbers 1, 2 or 3; you can change the waveform by dragging the knob. In the triangle you will see a square, you drag that square depending on what you want to have most presence (to the corners). The knobs on the left tune each oscillators , you can fine tune them by dragging the numbers beneath them.

Global Parameters

This section here lets you select if you wanted the synth to be in Poly/Mono/Legato. These are all different a work in different ways. Poly allows more than one note to be played at once, Mono and Legato only allow one. the difference between the two is that the every time you were to press a note on Mono, the effect/setting it's set to restarts while Legato carries it on.

Glide

This knob here determines how long it takes from one note to transpose to the other. Instead of just going straight to the other note this bad boy changes the pitch until it hits that note.

Filters

We use the filters to modulate the sound. It can be switched on or off using the filter button. It can also be flipped using the filter configuration button, this makes filter one lay horizontally on top and the second channel lay horizontally beneath it.

At the top of the filter section is the Filter Blend, this allows you to choose the balance between the two filters.

The Filter 1 buttons switch Filter 1 between lowpass, highpass, bandpass, band reject, or peak filter type. The Filter 2 slope buttons change the kind of slope.

 

This knob here can be used to increase the fundamental sine wave. This can act as a sub bass!

 

This synth has its own effect processor and this is what it looks like.

You can only have 2 effects active at the same time! (Distortion and Chorus/Flanfer/Phaser)

You control the mix using the X,Y parameters.

Just below the filters is a control which can be used to create random patches. All you do is adjust the slider to how random you want it and it does the work for you. This can be very creative and can come out with some interesting sounds and if not that. It may amuse you!

Envelopes generate a level that changes over time

ATTACK - When a note is triggered the envelopes level goes from zero to the maximum level. You can set how long you want this transition to be (time).

DECAY - After the note has reached the maximum level, it will start to decay until it hits the sustain level.

 SUSTAIN -This is the level at the end of the decay stage. You set the sustain level and the envelope level will sustain while the note is held.

RELEASE - Once the note is released, it will enter the release stage. This is the amount of time it will take it to go from the sustain level to zero.