Making changes to your macro and MIDI controls

So let's take a look at the Macro controls we have in ES2. That's down at the bottom here. You can see there's a number of controls. And what these are is basically offsets. So when they are all in their center position, they are not affecting whatever sound we have created up here. But if I want to add more detuning to the oscillators, I can move this to right, and if want less detuning, I can move it to the left. So let's pull up one of the factory presets and then we can see sort of how it works. So in the menu here, under Synth Leads, the first preset is Big Trance Now, and this is just part of the Logic Factory Library.

So let's just listen to this sound. So we have got our big, trancy, detuned sawwave sound. If I want to add more detuning to this, I will use the Detuning Macro. (music playing) All right, so now I have got a lot of detuning. So maybe that's too much. So now if I want to set this back to it's original, I can just Option+Click and now we have the settings that we had in the preset. If we want less detuning in this preset, I can scale it back by moving the dial to the left.

So in the center, it's going to be untouched. I can do the same with the waveforms too. (music playing) Same with both filter cutoffs, so take a look at the filters 1 and 2. They are cut off. So now this Macro control controls the cutoff on both of them. Same with Resonance. The Modulation amount, so if you look at our modulation router, you can see the intensity is moving. Also with our envelopes, so I can adjust the attack of all three of them, the Decay, Sustain, Release, and also the overall Volume.

And then of course when I want to reset everything back, I can just Option+Click on each of these and it will move them back to the settings that were in this presets. So let's take a look the MIDI controls as well. So we have got this MIDI tab right here, and so I have got controls A through F, which I can assign, and these can be modulation sourced--that's the purpose of these. So I can use them in the Modulation router or in the XY pad, I can assign them. So if I want this to work with my MIDI controller, I either have to know what CC numbers the knobs and sliders on my controller are, but who knows that, really? So what I can do is learn it.

So if I click on this menu here, there is Learn, and so I click on that and then I just move a knob on my keyboard, so I have got this knob here, and I am moving it, and then you can see, it picked up that that's continuous controller 95. So now that's what Ctrl+A is assigned to. So if I want to use this in this preset, for example, so let's say I want my Controller A to modulate the filter cutoff, so what I will do is in our router, I will choose Controller A. And I have got this assign to modulate Cutoff 2 and I will give it some room, so I am going to bring down this cutoff here. And now I will play this sound, and I can adjust the knob on my MIDI controller.

(music playing) I am turning the knob right now, and it's adjusting the cutoff. And notice you don't see the cutoff knob moving. That's because anything that's routed through the modulation router, you usually hear the result, but you don't necessarily see it animated. That's just the sort of the way it's wired and works. So you can assign all of these different controls and use them in your modulation router and it's a way to have tactile control over different parameters of the synth, so it's definitely really useful. Now that we have taken a look at Macro controls and assigning MIDI controls and we have kind of got the big picture of ES2 how it works, let's hear ES2 in a musical example.