Haha, you bastards requested it so here it is. How to make some delicious pads with the pro 53.

First step in any tutorial with the Pro 53 will be to clear your settings. I dont work from presets. Working from scratch lets you control every aspect of the sound. So press load, and find empty(1).p5a in your presets directory.

If you want a little whiney pad that sounds like a weasle screaming because it has just caught the early flight home and walked in on it's wife in bed with your best friend's brother, you're done, congratulations! If you want real pads though, its gonna need tweaking.

Step 1: Turn the second oscilator's saw wave on (the first is already on).
Step 2: Turn the kbd button on (god knows what this button is good for, it makes osc b play a constant tone). Make sure its the button in the oscilator panel, NOT the knob in the filter panel.
Step 3: The sound's way too detuned, so bring the "Fine" knob down a notch. You want it a little detuned because its a supersaw, and the detune is what makes it FAT.
Step 4: Here's one of the most important keys to making big sounds. Turn the unison button on and crank up the voices to 7 or more (7 is the number of saws used by the jp8080.)
Step 5: Now turn the analog knob up 4 notches. This button works a lot like the detune knob of a jp8080. It separates the 7 voices by detuning them all a certain # of cents away from the 4th voice, like this:

< 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 >

The analog knob controls how wide those spaces are inbetween the voices. Don't turn it too high or it gets really detuned though. Keep it around 4 to 5.
Step 6: Already the sound should resemble that of the JP, nice warm fuzzy sound. It's kinda muffled though, so to sort out that, we'll increase the resonance 1 to 2 notches, depending on how sharp the sound needs to be.
Step 7: Right, so it's still more of a lead than a pad. No big deal. In the amplifier panel, turn the attack up a little more than two notches. Supersaw pads should be impaling enough, but they shouldn't click like a lead does. Turn the velocity and release buttons on ("vel" and "release" to the left of the amplifier) and then turn the release up 3 notches.
Step 8: Sounds pretty good now, apart from being a bit dry, but it's still pretty cold and digital. The key to the Rank 1 sound and the warmth of the jp 8080 is FREQUENCY MODULATION. This can be a seemingly complex setup if you're a pro 53 newbie. Go over to the left part of the synth, you should see an LFO panel and a Wheel-Mod panel. You're gonna wanna turn the LFO up about 4.5 notches, and set the waveform to triangle. You're going to use the LFO to control the modulation. You do this by going to the Wheel-Mod panel and clicking "FrqA" and the "B" that follows it, which means frequency modulation for osc A and for osc B, respectively. Right now it probably sounds way too wavery. Now go to the modulation wheel, which is besides the pitch wheel at the bottom left. It defaults partially up, but the frq mod of the pro 53 is very very sensitive, so you need to turn it down so much that it almost looks off, it should only be a couple of pixels away from 0.

lfo: wheel mod: .

Weeeeeeeeee the general sound is done. You should probably save this now by clicking the save button, "Save Editbuffer," and placing it in your presets directory. Now you can call on it whenever you want.

This is only half of the battle though. Most of the work with sounds comes with effects. There are some onboard effects I like to do before I move on to the external effects within the sequencer. Here's a quick rundown:

Step 1: Turn the "Time" knob up 5 notches (this is in the Delay Effect panel all the way to the right). Turn Spread up 2 notches, Depth up 2 notches, and Rate up 2 notches.
Step 2: Turn the Feedback knob up all the way.
Step 3: Turn the "Wet" knob up 2 notches and press the "On" button to turn on the effects.

These are just the basic settings I use to get some of the dryness out of the sound from the start, you're free to experiment. Im much more comfortable experimenting with the external sequencer effects though. So moving on.....

EQ: There are lots of great effects we can now put on the sound, the most important of which being the EQ.You can either EQ first or EQ last, its up to debate, but I prefer to get the sound clean before I put reverb and stereo enhancers and what not. The other side of the debate is that with EQ last, you clean the whole sound and not just the source, but this can also lead to flatness. Up to you really.

Either way, you're settings will be the same. Because these are pads, we really can't have anything interfering with our bassline, so you're going to have to cut everything at 90 hz. And because we know 250 hz is the muddiness area, we're gonna cut a little bit here too. If your highs are clipping, you might want to cut a little bit at 16 khz with a relatively sharp bandwidth to remove some of that hiss.

Reverb: Any kind of default reverb will work really, if you have some kind of special preset you've made, have a ball. I stick with the default, gives the sound the wetness I need and I'm not really picky about it.

Delay: I throw an external delay on for added depth. Im a little more specific about the delay settings than the reverb, so I have a preset that I made for my pads. Again, experimentation is key. You don't want so much offset that it really echoes a lot, but you want enough that it thickens up the sound. I can't really give you specifics because everybody uses different plugins.

Stereo Separation: This is thrown on top to spread the sound around in the spectrum a little. It makes the pad sound wider and warmer. If you want an impaling pad, you might not want this, but if you want something wide and encompassing, definitely try this.

Last Tip: When using the pads, you might want to duplicate the pro 53 instance and play the pad on a lower octave (like a bass pad) to give support and harmony. The sound can be thin on its on, but with 2 instances of it playing chords + a solid sub bass pad, it will work great.

Yay we're done. Cigars and marshmallow ducks for all of you! Until next time....