Assignment 02 - Creating a synthesis replication

In spending time with logics ES2 Synthesiser, I decided to attempt to recreate the very subtle and classic lead line from Kraftwerk's 1983 single "Tour de France" -


An incredibly classy sounding lead line, it carried a whole ream of nuances hard to put a finger on exactly what to do, however, I motored on and started as follows.

Made up of at least three oscillators, I decided to start with a blank analogue ES2, this means loading from the "Analog Saw Init" preset, to clear the ES2 of any pre-determined settings.

After playing in the melody to logics sequencer, I started with a basic triangle wave in oscillator 1, followed by a Square in oscillator 2

Note: I detuned oscillator 2 to -12, an octave below it's brother, the triangle wave in Osc 1

During experimentation with filtering and cutoffs, I found it very tricky to remove the buzziness of the two, and decided to add a sine tone set two octaves lower, to create a more hollow, wooden tone to the synth

This, when mixed correctly, created a closer tonality, but I was still left with a very staccato synth tone, and so, I decided to then add decay and sustain to the signal. This, I suppose, was an attempt to replicate the reverbrial nature of the synth tone featured in the original track.

By removing most of the resonances and cutoff frequencies, I was able to colour the tone back to a totally natural, fuzzed guitar-like timbre.

I added an operation to subtly extend the note glissando.

The final synth patch:

and the most important part, a clip of how it sounds!