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Lemon wiki

Lemon Trio

Lemon Trio is a straightforward synth: three oscillators you mix together. It’s a good first stop for basses, leads and simple pads, because everything it does is in front of you on one page.

It’s built into Lemon Studio, and also comes as a VST3 and CLAP plugin for other DAWs.

The Lemon Trio window: three cards, one for each oscillator

Get a sound quickly

Section titled “Get a sound quickly”
  1. Press F8 for the plugin palette and click Lemon Trio. It joins the instrument rack: click its name there to open it.
  2. Play some notes with your computer keyboard. It’s on by default, and Ctrl+T switches it off and on.
  3. On card 1, click a shape: sine for something soft, saw for something bright.
  4. Pick a different shape on card 2, and turn its COARSE knob to -12 to add an octave below.
  5. Use card 2’s and 3’s mix knobs to bring them in.

The cards

Section titled “The cards”

Each oscillator has its own card with the same controls.

Control What it does
Shapes Sine, triangle, square, saw, rounded saw and noise, plus a custom shape that plays a sample as one cycle of the wave. The invert button flips the wave upside down
PHASE OFS and DETUNE Two faders that move the right side of the oscillator away from the left, in phase and in tuning, for a wider sound
COARSE Tuning in semitones
FINE Tuning in small steps, for thickening a sound
Pan Where the oscillator sits in the stereo image
Mix How much of oscillators 2 and 3 is blended in. Oscillator 1 has no mix knob

Along the bottom

Section titled “Along the bottom”
  • AM OSC 3 makes oscillator 3 change the volume of oscillators 1 and 2 instead of being heard on its own. Its mix knob then sets how deep the effect is.
  • HQ switches to anti-aliased oscillators, so bright shapes such as saw and square sound cleaner on high notes.
  • PHASE RAND starts the left and right sides of each oscillator at random points in the wave on every note, so repeated notes sound less mechanical and a little wider.

The other pages

Section titled “The other pages”

Use the tabs at the top of the window:

  • Envelopes, LFOs and filter: an envelope and an LFO for each of panning, volume, the filter’s two controls (cutoff and resonance) and pitch, plus a filter with a choice of types. The panning LFO is greyed out.
  • Custom shape sample: the sample behind the custom shape. Choosing the custom shape opens a file dialog, and clicking the page loads a different sample.

Tips

Section titled “Tips”
  • For a fat bass, use two saws, detuned slightly with FINE and spread with the detune fader.
  • Put Lemon Filter or Pulp Filter on its mixer track if you want more movement.
  • Presets are in the window’s title bar, and you can save your own there.
Section titled “Related”