How to build a dual-filter trance supersaw in Pigments
The usual supersaw patch is one oscillator, a pile of unison voices, and a single filter. It sounds big in the first bar. Open the cutoff for a build and the transient disappears, which leaves you with a wash that has no front end.
One filter is doing two jobs there. A synth that can run two filters i//n parallel lets you keep a plucky layer on one path and a wide opening layer on the other. I used to do this on the Access Virus. Pigments will do it if you split the engines and give each one its own filter and FX chain.
This is the approach in the video above. A trance supersaw in Pigments, built as two sounds that share a key, not one sound forced through one filter.
Why one filter thins the supersaw
A supersaw is mostly detuned saws and a low-pass. The trance part is the transient sitting in front of the wash: a short pluck that stays put while the tail opens. Close a single filter and you keep the pluck but lose the air. Open it and you keep the air but the attack goes with it.
People revere the JP8000 for trance which is fair enough, but I think the Virus had more impact on the sonic character of the trance movement than it gets credit for. The dual filter is big part of this. Serial or parallel, a high-pass on one oscillator and something else on the other. Once you have heard that, a single-filter pigments supersaw feels unfinished.
First layer: surgeon filter and a pluck you can ride
Engine one is the analog oscillator, voices up, detuned, through the arpeggiator. The filter is the Surgeon, a steep low-pass with no resonance. It is not pretty on its own, but it holds a transient.
I put the envelope on the cutoff, then a macro on the envelope amount so a build can open the sound without throwing the pluck away. A little of that same macro sits on the cutoff itself, only at the top of the throw, so the last bit of the ride actually opens. There is also a short volume bump on the attack of this layer only. The second engine does not get that, so the two layers stay distinct.
Split the engines before you add anything else
If both engines sit on filter one, you do not have a dual-filter patch. You have a stacked unison patch. In the mixer, split them to parallel and send engine two down FX B so the wide layer can have its own width and time-based effects. Then on the filter mix, park engine one on filter one and engine two on filter two.
Until that routing is set, you will keep hearing both layers through the Surgeon no matter what you do on filter two. Set the split first. The rest of the patch is taste on top of that routing.
Second layer: SEM that walks to a high-pass
Engine two is another detuned saw, thickened with pulse-width modulation on a free-running LFO, plus a bit of white noise into both filters. Filter two is the SEM. The useful part of a SEM is the mode: low-pass, through a notch, into a high-pass on one control.
Macro two opens this layer. I also put that macro on the SEM mode so the filter walks toward a high-pass as it opens. Cutoff starts lower than you think, and resonance a little higher, which gives you a flangey mid movement instead of another copy of the Surgeon.
A little random, in cycle, to voice pitch and fine tune, so each voice is not identical. Keep the amount small. Too much and it reads as chorus.
Two FX lanes, then a sub
Because the engines are already split, the effects do not have to match. I keep the first layer a bit narrower so it locks in the middle. The second layer gets the width and a touch of multiband for shimmer. Reverb and delay as sends, damping down a little, then a bit of gate-length random on the arp so the staccato pattern is not a grid.
The last move is the utility engine: a sub, an octave down, under the two filtered layers. Without it the pigments supersaw is wide and still a bit hollow.
FAQ
Do I need Pigments for this? No. Any synth with a real parallel filter path will do it. Pigments is just the one I am in at the moment, and the Surgeon plus SEM pairing is convenient.
Is this just Super mode on one oscillator? No. Super mode detunes voices. It does not give you two filter envelopes or two FX chains. That is why a one-engine pigments supersaw still goes thin when you open it.
Where is the preset? Saved in the session as Epic Transfer. It will sit on the Patreon and the blog once I put the file up. The newsletter still has wavetables and the free pack if you want something to start from.
Can I do this in serial instead? You can, and it is a different sound. Serial stacks the filters on the same signal. Parallel lets the pluck and the wash move separately, which is what I want here.
The video is the faster way to see the routing. If you try it, start with the split, not the detune.
Download the Preset
Grab the preset for the Super Saw patch here.
