Lady Gaga stormed the charts last year with “Poker Face,” produced and programmed by studio ace RedOne. In our interview in the Oct. ’09 issue, he confessed to being a big user of the soft synths included with Apple Logic Pro, so we’ll tackle this tune’s massive, robotic bass riff using Logic’s ES2 synth. If you’re not using Logic, you can use any virtual or real analog synth you like, but use one with at least two oscillators and/or a unison mode, because this a huge patch! Scroll down for audio examples and extra notes on how I created this patch.


Step 1. Start with big, chewy oscillators. Osc 1 is set to square wave, Osc 2 is a sawtooth, and Osc 3 is set up for pulse width modulation (see next step). Osc 1 is tuned -24 steps (two octaves down), and Osc 2 and 3 are tuned to -12, putting them an octave above Osc 1. Oscs 2 and 3 are also tuned up and down 10 cents, respectively, for some natural chorusing.

Step 2. Osc 3 is set up for pulse width modulation. PWM lets you affect the width of a pulse wave using a modulation source to add timbral and pitch animation. Here I’ve set LFO2 to a triangle wave at 2.0Hz, and have it modulating the pulse width of Osc 3’s waveform.

Step 3. Set the mix level of the three oscillators to taste using the triangular mix grid. I pulled it toward Oscs 2 and 3 for a more “hyped” sound.

Step 4. Filter settings are simple. Move the Blend slider all the way to right so only Filter 2 is used. Click the 24dB (per octave, the filter mode) and Fat buttons. Cutoff is all the way open, and Resonance is up just a bit to add a bit of high frequency fizz.

Step 5. The volume envelope has the A and D sliders (attack and decay) at zero, S (sustain) full up, and R (release) at 160ms.

Step 6. In the voice assign section, click the Mono (one note a time) and Unison buttons. I set the Voices parameter to four — hitting each key actually triggers four notes that ES2 automatically detunes and pans across the stereo image. Since this is a three-oscillator patch, that means each note plays 12 oscillators! You can define how much the unison notes are detuned from each other using the Analog knob at the far left of ES2’s control panel. I set it to 0.459 — pretty seasick!

one_osc.mp3 - This is oscillator one only, set to a square wave and tuned to -24 (i.e. two octaves down). The filter is bypassed.  

two_osc.mp3 - Same as above, but I've added oscillator two, set to a sawtooth wave and tuned to -12 (i.e. one octave down). I also detuned 10 cents up for a little bit of natural chorus effect.

three_osc.mp3 - This is as above, but with the third oscillator added, this time set for a pulse wave which gets modulated by LFO 2 for a pulse-width modulation effect, adding timbral movement and a little pitch movement as well. Additionally, this is tuned 10 cents up for more chorus effect.

osc3_only.mp3 - Like the name says, oscillator three only. I included this to give a better idea of what pulse-width mod sounds like. Here's how to set it up:

1) Set the wave somewhere in the middle of the variable range of pulse waves (see the pic in the magazine piece if you need reference).

2) We'll use LFO2 as a mod source. Select the triangle wave and set the speed to around 2 Hz (speed setting isn't crucial).

3) In ES2's mod matrix, choose any slot, and set target to osc3, via to off, and source to LFO2. You can use LFO1 or LFO2- I only chose LFO2 because it fit in the screenshot better for the magazine! Now push the the little green triangle slider up until the pop-up display shows 0.14. Be careful not to turn the mod amount up too much or it'll turn the sound into audio jello.

(A brief history lesson: When dinosaurs roamed the earth and all synths were made from real physical electronic components, PWM was a sort of shortcut way of giving the audio illusion that a synth had more oscillators than it really did and was commonly used in single-oscillator synths like Roland's Juno series. But it still has a unique sound and allows big bass and string sounds in virtual and real instruments, especially now that most synths have a lot more oscillator firepower.)

three_osc_uni.mp3 - This is all three oscillators with the unison mode switched on and set to four voices with assign mode set to mono. This means you can only play one note at time (not an issue because we're playing a bass line), but each note is actually triggering four of the same note in ES2, detuned and panned across the stereo spectrum. You can define how much the unison notes are detuned with the analog knob at the far left of ES2's control panel. I set it to 0.459- about as much as you can get away with before the sound becomes annoyingly out of tune.

three_osc_uni_filt.mp3- Same sounds above, but with the filter enabled. It's in 24 db/oct mode and the cutoff knob is wide open (i.e. full clockwise). In theory, it shouldn't affect the sound much with the cutoff wide open, but I also clicked the fat button for extra girth and turned the resonance up to 0.11 which adds some "fizz", thus the filter does make a noticeable difference.

poker_bass.pst - This link takes you to my mirror site where you'll find the preset for the ES2 instrument in Apple Logic. It works only in ES2, but it should work fine in any version of Logic with ES2. You'll need to put it in the correct folder for make it show up in the patch list in ES2. The path is:

Users/Yourusername/Library/Application Support/Logic/Plug-in Settings/ES2

You can also make your own sub-folders for your own patches at the ES2 level.

mitchell@celebutantemusic.com
www.celebusite.com