ES2 Wheelsyncer setting in MainStage

Never obsolete—and undergoing a renaissance in electronic music—are sync sounds.

Wheelsyncer is a single-oscillator lead sound; all other oscillators are switched off.

Although oscillator 2 is the only one actively making any sound, it is directly dependent on oscillator 1.

If you change oscillator 1 pitch or tuning, the overall pitch of the sound goes out of tune or is transposed.

The pitch of oscillator 2 provides the tone-color (or the harmonics) for the sync sound. Pitch changes are controlled by modulation routing 7—oscillator 2 pitch is assigned to the mod wheel.

If you move the wheel, you can scroll through the spectrum of harmonics that have been programmed—for real-time changes. Any modification here starts with the pitch of oscillator 2 itself, which is set to 3 semitones below the overall pitch. Feel free to start with a different pitch for oscillator 2; it won’t affect the tuning of the sound.

The next modification may be modulation routing 7 intensity (or the interval). The maximum value has been chosen—if this is too extreme for your needs, feel free to reduce it.

Another modification lies in the tone color of the lead sound itself. oscillator 1 is switched off, because the patch is OK as it is. If you switch it on, all oscillator 1 waveforms—including Digiwaves, standard waveforms, or a sine wave (which can be further modulated by FM)—are available for use.

All real-time controls are via the mod wheel, which is used for opening the filter on modulation routing 6, a panning movement on modulation routing 8, and acceleration of panning movement on modulation routing 9. If you have deeper modulation ambitions, a similar setup is used for a Leslie speaker simulation in the Wheelrocker setting (see ES2 Wheelrocker setting).

Download the guides:

MainStage User Guide: PDF

MainStage Instruments: PDF

MainStage Effects: PDF

Helpful?