One saw is thin. Seven detuned saws are a trance lead. Fatness is not volume — it's controlled disagreement between copies of the same wave.
saw (freq pitch) |> unison 5 18 stacks five copies detuned across ±18 cents. supersaw is the same with the JP-8000's curve — inner voices clustered tight, outer voices wide.
Pipe order matters: |> binds looser than +, so parenthesize a unison stack before adding layers: (saw (freq pitch) |> unison 5 18) + ….
|> drive 0.4 saturates the stack — a tanh warmer that glues the detuned copies into one voice instead of five.
The last classic layer is a sub: a plain sine an octave down (sine (freq (pitch - 12Semitones)) * 0.4) carries the weight the detuned stack can't.
The starting point#
The lesson opens with this song in the editor. Every edit recompiles and plays.
-- Fatness: one thin saw pretending to be a lead. Stack it, glue it, weight it.
lead = patch {
source = saw (freq pitch),
ampEnv = adsr 5ms 180ms 0.5 150ms,
cutoff = 2500Hz,
gain = vel * 0.4
}
hook = play lead !"c3 ~ eb3 [g3 f3] ~ c3 bb2 ~"What to watch#
One saw draws a clean ramp. Detuned copies never line up, so the waveform swells and thins as they drift in and out of phase.
Goals#
The workbench checks these as you work; the solution is there when you want it.
- Stack detuned copies with unison or supersaw
- Glue it with drive
- Stretch: add a sub oscillator an octave down
Make it yours#
Sweep the spread: unison 5 at 6, 18, and 45 cents. Find where "wide" tips into "out of tune" — that edge is a genre boundary.
Further reading#
Unison and layered voices in the reference.