Polarity - Music Producer & Teacher

Synplant 2 Phenotype Review: AI Text-to-Patch Synth

polarity — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 02:00:00 GMT

Tutorial | Jun 10, 2026

Learn how Sonic Charge Synplant 2 Phenotype turns text prompts into usable synth patches, giving fast sound design starting points with full synth quality.

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Quick Answer

Sonic Charge’s new tool is the free Phenotype script for Synplant 2 owners, and it turns text prompts like “big fat bass” or “lush ambient pad” into actual Synplant 2 patches rather than low-quality rendered audio.
Phenotype works inside Synplant 2’s top-right “Phenotype” interface: type a simple English sound description, press Execute or Return, and it generates a playable synth patch with full synth quality and editable parameters.
Best results come from short, clear prompts such as chiptune, acid bass, kick drum, snare, choir, or slow pad modulation reverb; complex scene-style prompts are less accurate because it is not a full large language model.
A key advantage over most AI text-to-sound tools is that it creates a real patch, not a baked sample, so the result can still be morphed, edited, layered, processed with effects, and used as a starting point for sound design.
Current limitation: it can unexpectedly change tuning and is constrained by Synplant 2’s simple 2-oscillator FM-style architecture, so the sounds are useful and directionally correct, but not as flexible as what a larger synth like Serum or Vital could theoretically offer.

Short Overview

Sonic Charge Synplant 2 Phenotype is a new prompt-based patch generation script that turns short text descriptions like “fat bass,” “chiptune,” or “ambient pad” into fully editable synth presets inside Synplant 2. Unlike text-to-audio tools that render low-quality sample output, Phenotype creates real synthesizer patches, preserving the full sound quality, modulation behavior, and workflow advantages of a native instrument.

This matters in practice because it provides a fast way to reach usable starting points without digging through large preset libraries or building every sound from scratch. On a simple but capable FM-based engine like Synplant 2, Phenotype shows how local prompt parsing can deliver musically relevant results for basses, pads, drums, leads, textures, and sound design.

Key Takeaways

Phenotype adds text-to-patch generation inside Synplant 2: launch it from the top-right “Phenotype” control, type a short sound description such as “big fat bass”, and it generates an actual synth patch rather than rendering a sample.
The generated result stays fully editable as a real Synplant patch: the workflow provides a usable starting point for specific sounds like bass, chiptune, brass, pads, kicks, snares, hi-hats, choir, acid bass, or rave lead, with normal synth-quality output instead of low-quality prompt-generated audio.
Re-running the prompt produces patch variations: pressing Execute again, or just hitting Return, appears to change an internal seed and generates a slightly different version of the same requested sound.
A notable limitation is unwanted tuning changes: different prompts can alter the patch tuning unexpectedly, which can make the generated result less convenient when trying to stay in tune with an existing track.
Phenotype works best with simple natural-language or keyword prompts: concise descriptions such as “slow pad, modulation, reverb” or “lush ambient pad with reverb” are more reliable than complex scene-style prompts like “a busy cafe heard from the street outside.”
The output quality is constrained by Synplant 2’s synthesis engine: because the instrument is a relatively simple 2-oscillator FM synth with a limited set of envelopes, filter, and reverb, the generated sounds are often basic but still usable with added processing.
Post-processing is an important part of the workflow: generated sounds become more effective when combined with external effects such as reverb, distortion, or layering, especially for pads, atmospheres, and synthetic percussion.
Phenotype complements Synplant 2’s earlier sample-matching workflow: alongside Genopatch, which analyzes an imported sample and approximates it as a Synplant patch, Phenotype offers a second fast sound-design path based on typed descriptions instead of dragged-in audio.

Sonic Charge’s Phenotype for Synplant 2: Text-to-Patch, Not Text-to-Audio

Sonic Charge has released a new script for Synplant 2 owners called Phenotype. It adds a prompt-based interface that generates actual synthesizer patches from short text descriptions such as “big fat bass,” “chiptune,” or “lush ambient pad with reverb.”

That distinction matters. Unlike many prompt-to-sound tools that generate low-quality audio samples and then process them further, Phenotype creates a real patch inside the synthesizer. The result is full synthesizer output quality rather than a rendered sample that can sound compressed or artifact-heavy.

What It Does

Phenotype appears in Synplant 2 as a selectable script and opens a simple prompt interface. Enter a description, press execute or hit return, and Synplant 2 generates a patch that matches the request as closely as possible within its synthesis architecture.

Examples that produce recognizably related results include:

big fat bass
chiptune
lush ambient pad with reverb
brass
kick drum
snare
hi hat
choir
psy trance bass
rave lead
acid bass
long evolving pad
vocal-like sounds
environmental textures such as waves in the ocean or rain on a tent

The results are not always exact, but they generally move in the right direction and provide a usable starting point.

How It Works

Phenotype does not appear to rely on a large external language model. According to Sonic Charge’s forum notes, the parser is not a full-blown language model. It works better with simple natural English and concise keyword-style prompts than with highly descriptive or abstract phrases.

A description such as:

“slow pad, modulation, reverb”

is more likely to work well than:

“a sound that resembles a busy cafe heard from the street outside”

This suggests a lightweight local text parser rather than a cloud-based AI system. The exact implementation is not described in detail, so anything more specific would be speculation.

Why This Is Different

Many so-called AI synthesizers are not really generating synthesizer patches. Instead, they generate audio in the background, often with diffusion-based methods, and then present the result through a playback or filtering layer. That workflow can produce sounds with a smeared, low-fidelity, or compressed character.

Phenotype takes a different approach:

it maps text to synth parameters
it generates a playable patch
it keeps the sound inside the synthesizer engine
it allows the user to edit, morph, and process the result like any other patch

This makes it much more useful as a practical sound design tool rather than a novelty generator.

Workflow

The main use case is speed. Instead of searching through large preset libraries, the user can type the sound they want and get a close approximation immediately.

A typical workflow looks like this:

Open the Phenotype script in Synplant 2.
Type a short prompt such as “acid bass” or “lush ambient pad with reverb.”
Execute the prompt.
If the result is close but not ideal, execute again to generate a variation.
Refine the result with Synplant 2’s own controls and external effects.

Repeated execution seems to function like reseeding or regenerating a variation. The generated sounds often remain in the same family while changing details.

One annoyance noted in practice is that the script may alter tuning in some cases. That is not always desirable, especially when trying multiple prompts or variations during arrangement.

Relationship to Geno Patch

Before Phenotype, Synplant 2 already included a notable feature called Geno Patch, which lets users drag in a sample and have the synth attempt to recreate it by setting its internal parameters accordingly.

Phenotype extends the same general idea in a different direction:

Geno Patch: sample-to-patch
Phenotype: text-to-patch

Together, they reinforce Synplant 2’s identity as a synthesis tool focused on fast sound acquisition rather than conventional preset browsing or manual programming alone.

Practical Uses

Phenotype is especially useful when a production needs a specific class of sound quickly:

a bass to anchor an arrangement
a brass-like stab
a synthetic drum hit
a pad for atmosphere
a rough vocal or choir texture
a synthetic noise bed or ambience layer

Even when the raw result is simple, it can still be effective after processing. Pads become more convincing with reverb. Percussive sounds can be shaped further with EQ, compression, and distortion. Basic synthetic tones can be layered, stacked, or resampled into richer material.

This makes Phenotype valuable less as a final-answer generator and more as a fast starting-point generator.

Why Synplant 2 Is a Good Fit

Synplant 2 is a relatively constrained synthesizer. Its engine is fundamentally simpler than large modular or wavetable instruments. That simplicity likely helps a text-driven patch generator work reliably.

A more open-ended instrument with many interacting systems, wavetable import, complex modulation routing, multiple synthesis modes, custom signal flows, would be harder to drive predictably from short prompts.

That is why this feature feels particularly effective in Synplant 2. The synth is limited enough to be tractable, but flexible enough to produce a wide range of musically useful sounds.

Limits

Phenotype is impressive, but its limitations are clear.

The synth engine is still the boundary

Synplant 2 is not trying to be every kind of synthesizer. The generated sounds are constrained by its architecture, which is relatively compact and FM-leaning. That means the results are often recognizable and usable, but not always deep, polished, or stylistically perfect.

Complex prompts do not seem to help

Since the parser is not a large language model, highly detailed narrative prompts are unlikely to improve the outcome. Short, practical descriptions work better.

Some categories are approximate

Sound effects, realistic textures, and vocal-like content can be suggestive rather than accurate. The tool can point in the right direction, but it does not replace dedicated sampling, physical modeling, or specialized synthesis methods.

Parameter behavior may be inconsistent

There are cases where the script changes tuning unexpectedly, which can interrupt a fast audition workflow.

Broader Significance

Phenotype is notable because it demonstrates a useful middle ground between manual patch design and generative audio systems. It does not try to replace synthesis with AI-generated samples. Instead, it uses text input to accelerate access to synthesizer states.

That approach has obvious potential beyond Synplant 2. A similar system in other instruments could become a practical productivity feature, especially for quickly creating basses, leads, pads, plucks, or drum-like sounds without trawling through presets.

At the same time, Synplant 2 may be unusually well suited to this approach because of its focused architecture. Porting the idea to more complex synths would be possible in principle, but likely harder to make consistent.

Final Assessment

Phenotype is a small but meaningful addition to Synplant 2. It turns text prompts into editable synth patches, keeps the results inside a real synthesis engine, and produces sounds that are often close enough to be immediately useful.

The generated patches are not always perfect, and the synth itself remains intentionally limited. But as a fast way to reach a sound category and begin shaping it, Phenotype is genuinely practical.

For existing Synplant 2 owners, it is an especially interesting free addition: not because it replaces sound design skill, but because it shortens the path to a workable result.

Transcript

This is the transcript of the video. The text was generated automatically and may contain small mistakes. The timestamps jump to the matching part of the video.

Click to expand transcript

[00:00:00] So back to Simplan 2. Sonic Charge just introduced a new script for Simplan 2 owners, which is called "Phenotype".
[00:00:07] And you can start this here at the top right corner called "Phenotype" and it loads in some kind of prompt interface where you can type in descriptions for your sound, I don't know, like big, fat bass, and then it comes up with the patch.
[00:00:28] So instead of like all the other prompt to sound tools where you type in a prompt and then you get a poor quality wave sound that sounds like an mp3, here it generates a real patch inside of a synthesizer and you get the full quality of a real synthesizer.
[00:00:47] Maybe without the effect. You get a big, fat bass. If you don't like the sound you can just execute here again and I guess there's some kind of seed that changes a random seed and you get a slightly different sound.
[00:01:05] Sounds almost the same.
[00:01:18] So a slightly different sound. What I don't like is that it fiddles around here with the tuning for some reason. Maybe we can change that. It doesn't change here the tuning.
[00:01:31] For some reason, if you type in a different sound here or different prompt, it always changes the tuning, which I don't like.
[00:01:38] But you get something very close to what you type here into the prompt interface and it's not like I couldn't do this myself inside of a synthesizer, but sometimes you just need the sound.
[00:01:51] Something specific and you need the starting point and here with this, instead of rousing tons of presets, you type exactly in what you want and you get something similar to what you type in.
[00:02:05] For instance, you can type in chiptune. I tried this out before. It figures out some settings and you get a chiptune sound.
[00:02:16] If you don't like the sound, you hit execute and you get different sound.
[00:02:24] Or you type in, I don't know, what's lush ambient pad with reverb.
[00:02:37] Let's see.
[00:02:42] You get exactly that lush, evolving ambient pad. I don't know if it changes something, but you get something different.
[00:02:55] It's slowly changing over time.
[00:03:04] And by the way, you still can use the mod wheel or this mod ring where when you create a sound, you get also a different, a second sound with it and you can morph from one sound to the other.
[00:03:17] You can also just take here one middle position that you like between the two sounds and then use this sound as a new sound.
[00:03:25] But I don't want to get into this. In this video, I just want to focus on the phenotype thing here because before that we had the geno patch thing where we could drag in samples into this synthesizer and it tries to figure out all the settings inside of the synthesizer to replicate the sample that you just dragged in.
[00:03:48] And sometimes I use this still to this day because I made this video, I don't know, two years ago and I still think this synthesizer, this small little synthesizer is the future of synthesizers still.
[00:04:01] But up until now, no one has done this besides Sonic Charge. Yes, there are still some prompt synthesizers or they call themselves synthesizers. But what actually happens is they generate some kind of sample in the background and put a bit of filtering on top.
[00:04:19] And it sounds very poor because it's always based on diffusion and you create this kind of MP3 sounding sound from it. I don't know how to call it, but this is something here I really like because you create a real synthesizer patch.
[00:04:39] I wish more synthesizer have this. Not like because I'm a noob and I don't know how to use a synthesizer, but sometimes you are inside of a song, you create something, you just need, I don't know, a brass sound or whatever.
[00:04:57] Brass, maybe in the style of trap. I don't know if trap works or if this is inside of the language model here. Let's try another one. Let's only try brass.
[00:05:24] So you get similar sounds. They are maybe not the best sounds because this is a limited synthesizer. It's just a two oscillator FM sound or FM synthesizer.
[00:05:35] So they are not very, you know, you don't expect the best sounds ever from a synthesizer. But you get something similar that what you type in into the prompt. So yeah, this is kind of nice. So I have kick. Let's try kick drum.
[00:05:55] There's a kick drum. Okay. Snare. This is a snare. Let's see hats or maybe hi hat. Another one maybe. This one is better.
[00:06:23] So it's something that you can use for something. Put a lot of processing on it and call it there. We can also try something like choir.
[00:06:44] If you put some reverb on that. Execute again. Let's use another one. And you can imagine if you just do this multiple times, you can stack multiple sounds with lots of reverb and you get a nice atmosphere out of this, hopefully.
[00:07:13] Let's try some noise examples. Let's see waves in the ocean. Let's try this one.
[00:07:38] On a tent. Let's see. It goes into it's similar. It's not the best rain on a tent ever, but you get the idea, right?
[00:08:00] So what else can we try out? Maybe side trance, bass. That's okay. Side trance, lead.
[00:08:26] Rave lead. Let's use an acid bass. You can just hit return. You don't need to press execute. Just hit return.
[00:08:55] Clearly it goes in the right direction. What else can we try? Long evolving pad.
[00:09:25] Yeah, with reverb everything sounds nice. Let's try some vocals.
[00:09:48] Let's try again. To me, this is very interesting. I know the sounds are very basic because like I said, it's just a two oscillator FM synthesizer.
[00:10:06] But still you can manage to do something with these sounds and put some processing on it and like I did here with the pad sounds, just put some reverb on it or whatever, some distortion and you get something nicer out of it.
[00:10:20] So here they talked about this in the forum of Sonic Charge. They were excited to release a new script for Simplan 2 owner. So it's free if you already own Simplan 2. Of course you need the synthesizer itself.
[00:10:40] Our synthesizer did this in the future. I know it's not easy and they basically prove that you don't need to use OpenAI or a big, large language model.
[00:10:53] You can do this locally on the PC itself in the box with a simple prompt parser. Here it says the text parser is not a full blown language model.
[00:11:06] So it will not understand very complex descriptions, but simple natural English generally works well. For example, don't expect a sound that resembles a busy cafe heard from the street outside to produce an accurate result.
[00:11:21] Description like a reverb-trenched pad with a slow attack and some modulation works better.
[00:11:27] You can also use shorter text style input, what I did here, slow pad, modulation, reverb and so on and you get something that sounds or resembles that description.
[00:11:38] In my opinion, it's very nice to have and if you already own Simplan 2, make sure you download this. I put the link in the description below.
[00:11:46] I think it's very interesting. I hope other synthesizer companies do this too. Imagine this in Xerum. I know Xerum is not really a synthesizer.
[00:11:58] It's more like an assembler where you load in wave tables and then you can do FM and you can do AM and you have too many options there. Here in Simplan, it's basically just two envelopes or three envelopes, two oscillators and filter and reverb.
[00:12:27] That's basically it. It's a very simple, very limited synthesizer and also the layout. You can't change the layout. It's not like you can do FM and you can do AM and you can do your own wave tables and whatever.
[00:12:43] It's too many moving parts basically for this type of Markov chain language model. I don't know how they did this. I guess it's just a very simple Markov chain type of prompt.
[00:13:00] Maybe they can give some insights to it or what they did or how they did it here would be interesting to know. Also, someone down here wrote, where is it? Someone had the same idea, of course. How can we use this in other synthesizers?
[00:13:20] Simplan 2 is now my favorite instant patch generator. Yeah, true. Just put a reverb on it, call it there. FM may be stupid. No, it's not stupid. The idea is, could we make the synth engine part of Simplan open source?
[00:13:32] Open source is, you probably don't want to give away your code, right? Because we know what happens then. We can port it to different hardware software, but keep the Gino patch infinite type part for priority. People need a licensed Simplan or whatever.
[00:13:51] It would be interesting to have maybe an exporter for other synthesizers like, let's say, Serum or whatever people use or for Vital or so on. You can just export here all the settings and then load this up into a different synthesizer instead of just being limited here to this very simple synthesizer.
[00:14:13] But it's still very impressive what you can do with a very simple 2-oscillator synthesizer and here this kind of language model that gives you all the options. So it's a very capable synthesizer still, but it's still also limited.
[00:14:31] Anyway, go into the description, link is there, download the phenotype script here. Very cool, very interesting. And let me know what you think in the comments down below. Thanks for watching. Bye.

Interstellar Journey: Soundscape for Sleeping on a Long Voyage

polarity — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 02:00:00 GMT

Music-Video | Jun 07, 2026

In this patch I created a slow-moving ambient soundscape for sleeping, built around a looping chord progression that unfolds very gently over time.

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It feels a bit like an interstellar journey, with soft watery textures, drifting noise layers, and little details that appear and disappear in the distance.

I’m using a lot of arpeggiators feeding into big reverbs, plus plenty of layered textures and evolving sounds to turn it all into one large patch that keeps changing slowly. It’s calm, atmospheric, and meant to be something you can just sink into. Free download as always.

Signal Drift

A slow looping chord progression keeps the whole piece floating forward, like a small spacecraft drifting through sleep with the lights turned low. Soft watery textures, hazy noise, and distant details fade in and out so gently they almost feel imagined. It lands somewhere between ambient music and careful sound design: calm, spacious, and just strange enough to make bedtime feel mildly interstellar.

Bitwig Grid Ambient Patching with Dorian Chord Drones

polarity — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 02:00:00 GMT

Grid Build | Jun 07, 2026

Build a Bitwig Grid ambient Dorian drone patch with slow chord progression, bass, shimmer diffusion, and random textures using compact sequencing workflows.

You can watch the Video on Youtube
Support me on Patreon if you like what you hear.
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Quick Answer

Patch type: Ambient/cinematic Bitwig Grid generative drone-pad in E♭ Dorian, built around a very slow 4-chord progression rather than a static single-note drone.
Main sound-design direction: A single-oscillator arpeggiated minor chord shape is blurred into lush harmony with long reverb/diffusion, plus a root+fifth drone, slowly swelling bass, watery/noise textures, and sparse random melodic accents for a sci-fi feel.
Important devices/modules: Poly Grid in monophonic mode, Merge as step sequencer, Counter, Trigger, Transport, Scale, Transpose, Pitch In, Stereo Merge/Split, Saw/Sine/Wavetable oscillators, low-pass/high-pass filters, Multiply, Mirror, Chance, Dice, AD/AR envelopes, delay/all-pass diffusion chains, Chorus, Peak Limiter, and end-stage MM Matcher / SC Dark processing.
Practical result: A large, evolving preset that sounds harmonically rich while staying patch-efficient, with chord changes every 8 bars, bass fades tied to transport phase, randomized detail layers, and a final polished ambient texture ready to record or download as a preset.

Build Overview

The session begins with a simple ambient concept: build a monophonic Grid patch in E♭ Dorian and let harmony emerge from sequencing rather than stacked polyphonic chords. A four-step note pattern acts as a broken minor chord, while a second slower sequence transposes that pattern every several bars to create a restrained chord progression. Reverb, delay, and diffusion are used to blur the arpeggiated motion into sustained harmony, while a separate drone layer reinforces the root and fifth. This keeps the structure compact inside the Grid while still producing the impression of wide, evolving pads.

From there, the patch expands into a layered generative texture. A bass voice follows the slow chord roots and is shaped with long amplitude and filter movement so each note fades in and out across the harmonic cycle. Additional shimmer, chorus, all-pass diffusion, sampled keyboard fragments, wavetable tones, filtered noise, and random melodic events are added to fill the spectrum and create motion without breaking the calm atmosphere. Much of the development comes from reusing timing signals, phase ramps, quantization, chance operations, and stereo utilities to derive multiple behaviors from a small set of control sources.

The value of the process for learning modular patching is that it shows how a complex result can grow from a few reusable ideas: one sequenced pitch source, one slow harmonic controller, and a handful of modulation signals distributed across many destinations. It also demonstrates practical modular thinking: conserving space by implying chords instead of fully voicing them, using scale quantization to keep transposition musical, and shaping form with modulation rather than manual automation. The result is less about a fixed recipe and more about understanding how timing, harmony, texture, and signal flow can be organized into a coherent self-playing system.

Patch Decisions

Set the Grid patch to monophonic and started with a peak limiter on the output as protection before building the rest of the signal flow.
Built the “chord” as a 4-step note sequence feeding one oscillator in arp-like fashion instead of stacking multiple oscillators: root, root -1 octave, +15 semitones, +7 semitones. This was a space-saving compromise, relying on reverb/diffusion to make it feel chordal.
Put the note sequence through a Scale module set for D# Dorian, so when the chord is transposed the notes are corrected to the mode rather than simple chromatic planing.
Created a separate 4-step chord-progression sequencer for transposition with values 0, +3, -5, -7, and advanced it using Transport-triggered timing: a trigger every 8 bars into a Counter (4 steps), with playback/reset tied to transport.
Added a background drone using a saw oscillator playing the chord root plus the fifth by packing two pitch signals with Stereo Merge: left = root, right = root +7 semitones, then converted back toward mono with a stereo utility/width stage because the hard L/R split was too obvious.
For bass, took the root from the chord-progression sequencer rather than the arp note sequence, so the bass follows each chord root only; then quantized/switched it to nearest and moved it into the desired octave before filtering.
Used the 8-bar phase ramp from transport timing for bass dynamics: passed it through Mirror to turn the ramp into a triangle-like rise/fall envelope, then into Multiply to fade the bass in and out across each chord, and also reused that shape to modulate the bass filter opening.
Built a large ambient smear with Chorus (8 voices, slow, wide) into a chain of 14 all-pass filters, then into another delay/diffusion stage and mixed it back in; the all-pass times were manually copied from calculated values as a practical but tedious workaround.
Added extra top-layer material with random triggering: a sampler of Triton keyboard sounds selected by Dice/random values, plus other noise/wavetable elements gated by Chance, filtered with high-pass/low-pass, and given small pitch wobble so repeated events felt less static.
Mixed the main layers into a mixer with separate branches (pad/drone layers and bass), left some intermediate amps in place for visibility/control, then planned the final tone with MM Matcher and an SC Dark / Master Balanced-style dynamics stage rather than fine-mixing every internal level.

Interesting Moments

00:01:10 - Arp-style minor chord built from one oscillator
00:05:55 - Slow 4-chord Dorian progression sequenced every 8 bars
00:09:06 - Root-plus-fifth drone made with stereo merge trick
00:29:21 - Bass tied to chord roots with 8-bar fade in/out motion
00:37:41 - Huge shimmer/reverb blob built from chained all-pass delays
00:45:22 - Random Triton sampler layer added for melodic texture
01:20:29 - Melody quantized to selected scale tones and transposed
01:46:27 - Final polish with MM Matcher and master balancing

What This Build Is Useful For

This Bitwig Grid build is useful as a template for generative ambient, drone, soundtrack, and experimental electronic work. It shows how to turn a simple modal idea into a full evolving patch with slow chord motion, root-note drones, shaped bass movement, randomized melodic events, and layered diffusion.

It benefits Grid users who want to study patch architecture rather than just copy a finished preset: ambient producers, modular-style sound designers, film/game composers, and intermediate patch builders learning how to organize larger self-playing systems.

Reusable techniques include arpeggiated “fake chords” into reverb, scale-quantized transposition for modal harmony, long transport-based chord sequencing, stereo merge/split tricks for compact pitch stacking, envelope shaping from phase signals, random event generation, and building dense texture with all-pass, chorus, delay, filtering, and post-FX matching.

This long-form process is more useful than a short tutorial when the goal is understanding decisions, troubleshooting, iteration, and layout strategy inside a large patch.

Transcript

This is the transcript of the video. The text was generated automatically and may contain small mistakes. The timestamps jump to the matching part of the video.

Click to expand transcript

[00:00:00] So the last video was pretty good, so let's just repeat it and do another grid.
[00:00:06] So this time I think I'm going not for major, I'm going for Dorian for some reason, maybe also EB Dorian.
[00:00:16] So I'm choosing this here, I don't need audio track and I use a poorly grid again.
[00:00:26] Again, very important that it's in monophonic mode, so it's just one voice playing, right?
[00:00:33] We don't need to activate the voices with the keyboard or anything.
[00:00:36] So that's the important point having this here on monophonic.
[00:00:40] So I probably start by using a peak limiter just in case, putting this down to dB.
[00:00:50] I'm starting by playing some kind of, so this time I want to use a chord progression that this was my idea a few minutes ago.
[00:01:00] I thought maybe instead of just using a drone that's playing all the time, why not use a very slowly progressing chord progression.
[00:01:10] So we can do this by using pitches, this module here.
[00:01:16] But I usually, my favorite is more like to go with the merge and create a step sequencer here, maybe four steps, something like this.
[00:01:30] And we do, what do I do? Maybe a root. So we get here the D sharp right from here.
[00:01:42] And then we say, we need to transpose.
[00:01:48] So we use the root note here as a sequence.
[00:01:52] Instead of playing a chord where I play multiple notes at once, that's usually what you do inside of the sequencer.
[00:02:02] The problem with this is that I need to have multiple oscillators for each voice here inside of the grid.
[00:02:08] And it clogs up a lot of space.
[00:02:10] I mean, we could do this, but I prefer actually lately just to use one oscillator and then playing this oscillator like an arp on arpeggiator.
[00:02:21] And then into a reverb and the reverb then diffuses the signal makes it longer.
[00:02:27] And it sounds like you are actually playing multiple notes at once, but it's not really the case.
[00:02:33] So this is the idea.
[00:02:36] So we go here for, let's say the root, then we have maybe the root, but one octave lower.
[00:02:45] So I just use that here, maybe minus one.
[00:02:50] Then we have, let's say, three up, which is a third of from the roots.
[00:03:01] It's a third up, a minor, minor third up.
[00:03:05] But instead of this, we go one octifier, which is usually just 15, but it's also a three plus one octave.
[00:03:17] Then we have here maybe seven up, which is just the fifth, right?
[00:03:25] So very basic.
[00:03:27] It's actually just a normal minor chord.
[00:03:30] The only difference is here we have done kind of an inversion where we have the third just one octave higher than usual.
[00:03:40] And here there's one root again.
[00:03:42] So root two times the root, one is one octave lower.
[00:03:45] So it's a basic minor chord actually, not very sophisticated.
[00:03:49] Go here into the pitch in.
[00:03:53] We don't need that because we don't want to play it on the keyboard.
[00:03:57] And we use here a scale, scale module.
[00:04:02] Where is it there?
[00:04:04] Because we want to later on pitch this up or down.
[00:04:08] And because we just plain what's the name planning or yeah, we just transposing the whole chord up or down.
[00:04:18] But on some roots, some of the notes need to change because we are in Dorian, D sharp Dorian.
[00:04:25] So we use here the scale.
[00:04:30] Let me use an amplifier here.
[00:04:37] Okay, and then we go through the sequence.
[00:04:40] First we just use what's the name trigger and the counter.
[00:04:48] We probably change this later on nearest.
[00:04:54] And then we use here four because we have four inputs.
[00:04:57] So every quarter note we skip to the next note, maybe every 16 notes or something like this.
[00:05:03] Let's see how this sounds.
[00:05:08] Right.
[00:05:09] And then we want to do a chord progression, which means we need to step here with the transpose up or down.
[00:05:20] Maybe go plus three.
[00:05:23] Then minus five.
[00:05:27] And minus seven.
[00:05:30] Then back to zero.
[00:05:33] This is the chord progression.
[00:05:34] Actually, this is the idea for the chord progression.
[00:05:36] Very simple.
[00:05:38] Nothing special.
[00:05:40] And the only thing that's special is we are not playing in minor.
[00:05:43] We are playing in Dorian.
[00:05:44] Dorian is kind of the same thing as minor.
[00:05:47] There's just one note is different.
[00:05:50] And this gives this kind of sci-fi feeling.
[00:05:55] So what we need to do now is we need to use a sequencer here to actually play the chord progression.
[00:06:01] We have already here a sequencer that plays the chord itself.
[00:06:06] So how do we do this?
[00:06:11] Maybe we just do the same thing.
[00:06:13] Merge.
[00:06:15] Go in here, out there.
[00:06:18] And the chord progression has also four notes.
[00:06:21] Use the transpose.
[00:06:25] So we go plus three.
[00:06:27] So a minor third higher.
[00:06:31] Then we go down to the fifth, but lower.
[00:06:37] So minus five instead of plus seven.
[00:06:40] And then we have here minus seven, which is actually plus five.
[00:06:45] Just one octave lower.
[00:06:47] So feel like that.
[00:06:49] Then we go into the transpose here.
[00:06:52] And then we change here this chord progression very slowly.
[00:06:56] So it's not like we make a fast chord progression.
[00:06:59] We want to even give the impression that there's no chord progression at all.
[00:07:07] We play each chord very long for a very long time.
[00:07:13] So this is this idea.
[00:07:15] So maybe we get a transport here.
[00:07:19] So with transport, it's nice because we can dial in your bar and can say
[00:07:24] every 16 bars we get here trigger, which is too long, but maybe eight bars.
[00:07:29] Every eight bars at 85 BPM, we get the trigger.
[00:07:35] And then we get the counter here.
[00:07:40] It's also four.
[00:07:42] Maybe we can reset it, maybe we use the playback here.
[00:07:45] So every time you press play on the transport, we reset the counter like this.
[00:07:54] Do we actually have here some kind of loop?
[00:07:56] Yeah, nice.
[00:08:00] This is the way.
[00:08:02] Let's see how this sounds.
[00:08:09] Let's play here. These are now four bars.
[00:08:14] Oh, it's actually looping.
[00:08:16] So we need also make this here at least eight bars long or 16 bars long.
[00:08:23] So when we reach this point here, it needs to switch to the next next chord.
[00:08:37] This long kind of works.
[00:08:54] Then it switches to the next chord progression.
[00:08:56] So this is pretty cool, but we also want to bring in maybe a saw here and the saw plays the root note.
[00:09:06] So this is the background drone, however you want to call it.
[00:09:21] So this plays the root and we want to play also, not only the root, we want to play the fifth on top, right?
[00:09:31] So seven semitones higher transpose seven.
[00:09:44] So because it's only one oscillator, we have to use two, which we can do, but we can also keep the patch small and use here this stereo merge where we can feed in left and right signals.
[00:10:00] So usually all of the signals in the grid, every kind of cable you can see here is a stereo cable, which means it passes left and right channel together in one line.
[00:10:15] But here with these stereo splits and stereo merge modules, we can actually combine different signals.
[00:10:21] So we can say on the left channel, we have the root and on the right channel, we have seven semitones up to transpose, right?
[00:10:29] Then we go into the pitch and it sounds like this.
[00:10:33] So now the oscillator on the right side is seven semitones higher and on the left, it's the root note, right?
[00:10:41] So we have left and right, which is a bit not pleasant.
[00:10:45] So what we do now is we use a stereo with this one here to make it mono.
[00:10:59] Something like that.
[00:11:01] And yeah, we have basically kind of an, what's the name drone?
[00:11:08] So then we use a low pass here, probably because we want to cut some of the frequencies away.
[00:11:18] Maybe I use it just to root.
[00:11:25] And we also want to play the stand in a reverb.
[00:11:28] So what I sometimes do is I use just my oldest or my recent grid patch here.
[00:11:40] This is what we built last time and just copy over some of the reverbs.
[00:11:48] Let me see.
[00:11:55] So this is the input here, this is the output.
[00:11:58] So we can just copy this over, disable that.
[00:12:03] So we go over here and we have here, let's say, let's keep the amplifier at the end.
[00:12:11] We go in there and then we have an output here.
[00:12:15] We bring this in there.
[00:12:17] So with this you have already.
[00:12:31] Maybe we also use your AD.
[00:12:35] You can use that.
[00:12:46] Every time we trigger this, we use a dice.
[00:12:52] And we randomize the skew.
[00:12:57] Or maybe we use a wave table this time.
[00:13:03] But when we use this wave table, we probably also need a filter because the saw produces too many overtones.
[00:13:15] But with the wave table oscillator, we can use your unison.
[00:13:35] And we can maybe try more delay before we go into the reverb.
[00:13:54] And a sample and hold.
[00:14:05] And we can use a chance module here.
[00:14:08] So it's not tricking all the time.
[00:14:25] That's not that good.
[00:14:42] Or maybe we only use the chance module or the stricter itself.
[00:14:59] Yeah, when we only use the wet signal, it's much better.
[00:15:14] Maybe here.
[00:15:36] Okay.
[00:15:44] You have already a nice sounding pad that plays a chord progression, a very slow chord progression.
[00:15:53] So now we can take the whole thing and use it again here.
[00:16:01] And do the same with this drone sound.
[00:16:10] Let's see how this sounds when we bring here this very, this displays just one note or two notes, the root and the fifth. And then we have this chord progression on top that basically gives friction.
[00:16:39] Maybe not that good.
[00:17:08] Maybe use a bandpass here and just modulate it slowly.
[00:17:14] Random.
[00:17:25] And then we use your chorus, of course.
[00:17:31] Or maybe after the modification.
[00:18:01] Maybe not too loud.
[00:18:06] Maybe try and use the different octaves. Let's see.
[00:18:23] Maybe it's lower.
[00:18:46] Okay, maybe use an SVF here again.
[00:19:11] It would be nice if I could change the volume.
[00:19:23] But I probably can.
[00:19:27] Let's use a stereo split here.
[00:19:42] There's some kind of stereo mixer here. I think I can remember something.
[00:20:11] It's not really doing what I want. Mix.
[00:20:18] A stereo merge or stereo split.
[00:20:21] Left channel goes in here, right channel goes in there.
[00:20:28] Now I can change the root and the fifth separately in loudness.
[00:20:58] That's maybe too much.
[00:21:15] Maybe I bring it in the background.
[00:21:21] It's a bit too static.
[00:21:24] Maybe change the volume here also.
[00:21:32] What a one.
[00:21:37] This one.
[00:21:41] There's a bit of fluctuation there.
[00:22:02] Maybe we use bipolar and we go +1, so it goes to +1 and 0 and -1.
[00:22:27] And let's try another delay + here at the end with a bit of feedback.
[00:22:56] Okay, I think we need the bass for next spectrum.
[00:23:11] We have this here. Give this a different color and this one here.
[00:23:35] Now we need to mutilate this.
[00:23:53] We get more overtones.
[00:24:09] You can see the drone and the melody, or the chords on top share a bit of the same space, but I kind of want to have some kind of diffused mesh up there.
[00:24:25] There's maybe a bit of room here for nice bass.
[00:24:30] I guess the chords here can take some kind of high parts.
[00:25:00] Maybe a good idea later on is when I take all the two signals and put them together in another reverb and then do a bit of low pass.
[00:25:19] So they stay better together.
[00:25:34] You can also randomize this here, so instead of using here an inversion, I use sometimes not an inversion.
[00:25:50] But it's completely random.
[00:26:10] Okay, so let's go back to the bass.
[00:26:16] Use a saw as a bass probably.
[00:26:21] Use an amp.
[00:26:24] We use an out.
[00:26:30] We need here the root.
[00:26:33] This one.
[00:26:36] No, we don't need the root. We need a sequence here, the chord progression root.
[00:26:44] This one.
[00:26:57] Let me just copy this over.
[00:27:04] And we need the root here.
[00:27:14] So I can't use this one here.
[00:27:17] I can't use this one because here I play different chord notes into this transpose.
[00:27:24] So I get not only the root, I only want to have the root for each chord, which is what we do here.
[00:27:34] Oh, we need to also switch this here to the nearest.
[00:27:42] This gives us the root here, and then we can scale this down with an octave, but you can also just switch here and say we want to have the root note, but octave zero, whatever.
[00:27:59] See what this is on?
[00:28:01] Now we need a low pass.
[00:28:04] MG. We can also take the note in here.
[00:28:15] Okay, short break.
[00:28:19] Maybe it's too low.
[00:28:42] Yeah, maybe you can take the bass here. Bring it in here. It's a very static bass.
[00:28:51] So we need to change this, of course.
[00:28:55] We just detune left and right channel and do also here stereo with this one.
[00:29:21] Yeah, and then we have here the transport. The transport triggers the counter, and the counter switches then from chord to chord to every eight bars.
[00:29:35] So every bass plays exactly eight bars long, right? This is the sequence.
[00:29:41] So the bass plays for eight bars, and then it switches to the next root note because we changed the chord.
[00:29:47] So we can take here from this one the face signal, which means this purple line or this purple ramp is exactly eight bars long.
[00:30:04] So we can sequence here this with what's the name mirror. So instead of having one ramp going up over eight bars, we have a second signal here, which goes up over four bars and then goes down over four bars.
[00:30:29] So it's a triangle instead of just ramp right here. It goes up and then it goes down over four bars.
[00:30:38] So with this, we can sequence the loudness of the bass much, much better.
[00:30:43] So I just use here a multiply and then I use that change here.
[00:30:55] So the bass slowly fades in, fades out slowly and then changes note and then it fades back in slowly.
[00:31:09] And yeah, we can use the band make this a bit smoother.
[00:31:19] So it's faster, louder and then stays loud for longer and then falls off faster.
[00:31:33] We can also use that for opening up the filter.
[00:32:04] Oh, this is actually wrong. This is wrong. We need to use the trigger to trigger the counter.
[00:32:23] Too many overtones here.
[00:32:35] Okay, we have already a lot of stuff here.
[00:32:39] We maybe need to sort this pretty soon.
[00:33:09] So this is all green.
[00:33:21] It's like a glove.
[00:33:40] So this becomes purple and we have the bass here.
[00:34:10] Bass is red.
[00:34:18] This was the bass here. Maybe we can cut out the purple a bit more, maybe 500.
[00:34:41] So maybe here instead of plus three, this is...
[00:34:51] Maybe go here and octave lower.
[00:35:10] That's better.
[00:35:20] Okay, so now that we have this, we can maybe create another output.
[00:35:28] We bring this in into a mixer.
[00:35:32] So this is mix one, mix two and the bass.
[00:35:51] Something like that.
[00:36:11] You probably don't need here the amplifiers, but I leave them there because I like the setting so far.
[00:36:20] We can see what's going on there.
[00:36:28] So I want to use this later to add some more post FX there.
[00:36:37] And sometimes a bit better to have a better overview of what's going on with the sound.
[00:36:44] What I do next is I probably want to use my calculator here.
[00:36:54] So here's a shimmer. Nine steps, maybe I use twelve also. And is much higher. I need to correct this here.
[00:37:16] Yeah, this is not good.
[00:37:22] 300 maybe, 300 milliseconds.
[00:37:27] And I start with one millisecond and we use more.
[00:37:41] So we have a lot of values here we can use.
[00:37:47] So we need to use, what do we use? 14 R passes.
[00:37:56] Okay, so we go basically here in here, or maybe we start by using the chorus first.
[00:38:05] Using the chorus eight voices all the way up, slow modulation, very wide.
[00:38:15] Okay, so then we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen.
[00:38:27] So we have to line them up.
[00:38:38] One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. We go in that one.
[00:38:47] Probably better way to do this, but I'm an old man. Don't judge me.
[00:38:58] Okay, so then we have that, and then we can go into another delay, maybe.
[00:39:09] Slight diffusion, and then we mix this back in.
[00:39:16] All we need to do now is to copy all the values, which is a bit tedious.
[00:39:26] I have to start to copy this.
[00:39:28] By the way, I think if you copy this in here with float values, they are not shown.
[00:39:35] It's rounded, right? So it's rounded to 1559.
[00:39:39] But if you copy this in, I think they are still using the internal values here, what you copied.
[00:39:47] So it's not just gone.
[00:39:59] I wish there would be better way, but that's how it is.
[00:40:03] The grid is not really interesting for Bitwig or for the majority of people.
[00:40:10] They all want to have the interesting, popular features of Ableton Live.
[00:40:20] No one cares about the stuff here besides me, probably. Maybe five others.
[00:40:28] But that's how it is.
[00:40:33] I think the grid is the best modular synth ever, in my opinion, because it's so fine-grained.
[00:40:43] But even when it's so fine-grained, it's still usable, hands-on, and it's fun.
[00:40:50] It's like Legos.
[00:41:03] So now we have this big blob of sound here.
[00:41:10] And yes, the bass, of course, is stereo, but I don't care at the moment.
[00:41:17] It sounds good on my headphones.
[00:41:20] It's not made for the four-club system anyway.
[00:41:28] So maybe you can change the loudness a bit, because it becomes louder, because we're adding up here a motor ball.
[00:41:57] It's not really important how it's mixed at the moment, because we put probably an MM Matcher at the end anyway.
[00:42:08] So the MM Matcher then changes the frequency spectrum much, much better.
[00:42:16] So it sounds like more all my other music patches on YouTube.
[00:42:28] Let's try again and bring in more overtones here.
[00:42:59] We can also play around here with the chance.
[00:43:28] So we have the mixer here in the near range of the frequency spectrum, which is maybe useful a bit.
[00:43:40] And we have the post FX.
[00:43:50] Do we need this here? No, we don't need this. It's doubled.
[00:43:55] Also this one here. That's why it's so loud.
[00:44:15] Damn, it fits.
[00:44:33] Okay, very simple actually so far.
[00:45:04] Okay, so now we can play around with some sounds on top, because at the moment we only have drones or pad sounds, however you want to call it.
[00:45:17] So it would be maybe nice to have some individual sounds on top.
[00:45:22] So what I reuse all the time is a sampler patch. So there's a sampler here. And I have here some Triton keyboard sounds sampled.
[00:45:37] These are basically only presets from the Triton synthesizer and only the keyboard or the keys category, which is all the important sounds in my opinion.
[00:45:55] And then we can just trigger this randomly. I give you here a taste of how it sounds like.
[00:46:06] AD triggers. We use a dice. Dice gives us a random number. Then we use a scalar. So we are in the scale of the track. We don't need this.
[00:46:26] We probably want to attenuate the dice something like this.
[00:46:36] We have an output. Let's use an amplifier here.
[00:46:52] These are just random pitches, but we also want to have different samples, because I have all the samples in here.
[00:47:01] And these are spread out with a select knob. So when we change the select knob, we change the sample.
[00:47:14] I change the select knob every time we trigger this.
[00:47:24] Cool. And then we don't want to do this all the time. So we just pull down the chance.
[00:47:33] And then we probably also only want to use higher octaves. So we go at least one octave higher.
[00:47:47] And then we can just go into this mixer here. Let's mute all of this.
[00:48:02] Maybe the length.
[00:48:12] Maybe two octaves higher.
[00:48:23] Maybe also interesting when I open this up here and see all the samples. These are basically plug sounds.
[00:48:31] Having a pretty strong tech phase. So what I do is I start later in the sample.
[00:48:46] And then use textures mode.
[00:49:00] And bring this down to 2%.
[00:49:21] And I put the chorus there.
[00:49:31] And maybe you can also modulate slightly with an LFO.
[00:50:02] That's too much.
[00:50:16] And it needs to run free. So every time we restart or re-trigger this, right, the LFO jumps to a specific point, you get some artifacts here.
[00:50:30] Maybe we also need here some filtering slightly.
[00:50:39] Maybe use this here. Maybe use this here. And this is maybe random.
[00:50:51] The problem here with this input is you can't see actually how much you modulate. Here you can see it much better.
[00:51:10] We also don't need this.
[00:51:18] And we need the VU meter.
[00:51:23] So this using just samples is basically the fastest way to get more variety in your overtones.
[00:51:30] Just use some random samples.
[00:51:34] Of course I do it mostly the hard way by using oscillators and then create overtones in various ways, but this is just a challenge for me.
[00:51:51] Actually all of this is not needed. You don't need to do this. This is just fun for me. That's why I do it.
[00:51:58] Sometimes people ask me why do you do this and you don't need to do this and so on, but it's just fun. I just make it because it's fun.
[00:52:08] Oh I need a high pass here.
[00:52:28] [Music]
[00:52:40] That's too loud.
[00:52:51] So again another sound source. We don't need to have this here.
[00:53:10] This is fit.
[00:53:27] Do this yellow.
[00:53:40] Nice. How long? Oh we have already one hour. Damn. I need to hurry up.
[00:53:50] So this is way too often so 50%.
[00:53:57] Maybe I saved this already. Generative.
[00:54:04] What's the date today? 7th.
[00:54:20] Sleep well.
[00:54:42] Try and make some kind of Vangelis type of stuff so I use a pause.
[00:54:52] We do basically the same thing here as we did here.
[00:55:01] Trigger dice. The dice gets random. We get this.
[00:55:16] Then we need to modulate that.
[00:55:26] Probably it's why do I use an internal module when I could just use that but sometimes I just like to use these modules. There's no big reason.
[00:55:43] And I have the modulator source directly besides what I'm modulating. That's also nice to have.
[00:55:53] Okay now.
[00:56:06] Trigger. We use a separate trigger here.
[00:56:12] Let's use the chance.
[00:56:20] And we want to use another separate.
[00:56:48] So we have here that. We can use a leg so it's a bit more glidey. The melody at least.
[00:57:17] Hey hey hey.
[00:57:46] I think we can just remove that.
[00:58:15] And I probably want to have a separate reverb for that.
[00:58:26] So maybe pull this down and then take it out here.
[00:58:57] Are you too high?
[00:59:26] Okay.
[00:59:53] Dying this in is always a pain in the ass because either it sounds like an echo or it's too metallic.
[01:00:20] So this is why I did this calculator.
[01:00:50] So this is way too often of course. So I go down to 10%.
[01:01:17] Or even lower. 5%. Because sometimes I let these patches play for one hour and if you have one sound coming over and over it's a bit annoying.
[01:01:37] So you need to spread it out.
[01:01:56] Okay let's put this together.
[01:02:18] Okay let's use another alpase.
[01:02:27] Bam.
[01:02:47] Okay so then we can put this maybe over here.
[01:03:12] So we can fill up the space in here a bit with some noise stuff.
[01:03:42] Okay.
[01:04:11] Okay.
[01:04:41] And a bit of high pass.
[01:05:11] I think this needs a bit of pitch wobbly here.
[01:05:32] Not too much. Just a tad.
[01:06:02] Let's use a high pass here.
[01:06:31] Okay.
[01:06:52] I can fill the space with a view meter.
[01:07:22] Okay.
[01:07:37] Noise. Noise.
[01:07:48] Hmm.
[01:08:10] Okay. I'm ready.
[01:08:14] Low pass.
[01:08:18] And maybe a chance module. Noise directly into chance.
[01:08:24] Let's see how this works out.
[01:08:54] Maybe it was a selling key.
[01:09:24] Let's see how this works out.
[01:09:34] Let's see how this works out.
[01:10:03] Okay.
[01:10:32] Sounds almost like a small of the stream.
[01:11:02] Okay. Maybe another one.
[01:11:31] Let's see how this works out.
[01:11:51] Let's see how this works out.
[01:12:20] Let's see how this works out.
[01:12:36] Now we need to randomize this.
[01:13:06] Let's see how this works out.
[01:13:35] It sounds very watery.
[01:13:50] So maybe I mix this together.
[01:14:20] Actually this is not needed.
[01:14:47] Bam.
[01:15:17] Maybe we can amplify the base a bit more or a bit better.
[01:15:33] Maybe this is a bit too loud.
[01:15:55] Not too loud because it's a bit annoying over time. Let's be honest.
[01:16:07] Maybe we can take some more modulators here to change the volume over time.
[01:16:36] Okay. Let's do some random things.
[01:17:05] So we're in the melody lines.
[01:17:35] Trigger.
[01:17:44] It's only three steps.
[01:18:09] And we do a gate or select.
[01:18:20] Delay.
[01:18:25] We do an art here.
[01:18:29] Amplifier.
[01:18:40] And then we do a random switch.
[01:19:00] Every, I don't know, four bars, maybe eight bars.
[01:19:11] Maybe we should get the trigger here.
[01:19:39] Oh, we need to.
[01:20:08] So every note of the scale is something, not my thing.
[01:20:29] So we need to take a quantizer.
[01:20:35] Only take the root, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
[01:20:48] So the root, the fourth, fifth, and the eleventh.
[01:20:57] And then we need to transpose it.
[01:21:11] And then we go into a scalar. Okay, that's probably better.
[01:21:40] Yeah, we need the reverb, at least.
[01:22:10] So we're going to do a random switch.
[01:22:39] Okay, so this one sign is a bit boring.
[01:23:08] We take this for modulation.
[01:23:27] Maybe use a wave table here.
[01:23:30] I have random wave tables here. I created this with zero at some point.
[01:23:38] They are pretty random, completely chaotic.
[01:23:47] I have completely randomized tables in there to use this position.
[01:24:15] But they have no real, what's the name, root?
[01:24:20] They have no fundamental.
[01:24:22] So you can use a sub oscillator here with the same pitch.
[01:24:29] And then we can use here a sign.
[01:24:59] And this pitch is also a bit too static.
[01:25:18] So maybe it was just timing it again. Bipolar. Then we modulate this just lightly.
[01:25:48] And of course we don't need to have this every time, so 5%.
[01:26:17] Okay, so we're going to do a random switch.
[01:26:37] Cool, so far. I really like it, but I have not that many things right there.
[01:27:06] What a sort of problem.
[01:27:36] We can do some random sounds here.
[01:27:53] There's a sign.
[01:28:23] We need random numbers for that.
[01:28:52] Thanks for that.
[01:29:20] Okay, we got random nice sounds there.
[01:29:49] Put the select there.
[01:30:09] We switch this on and off randomly then.
[01:30:26] Nice. Get random numbers.
[01:30:56] Okay, so we're going to do a random switch.
[01:31:25] And we need the high pass.
[01:31:36] And we don't want to have this all the time.
[01:32:06] Maybe use a chance instead of this.
[01:32:36] Okay.
[01:33:07] Yeah, we modulate this also. But heavily.
[01:33:34] Okay, so we're going to do a random switch.
[01:33:53] So here we need to add a static delay or static reverb.
[01:34:22] Okay, so we need to add a static delay or static reverb.
[01:34:51] Okay.
[01:35:18] Okay, so we're going to add a static delay or static reverb.
[01:35:46] Okay, so we're going to add a static delay or static reverb.
[01:36:12] Maybe too fast.
[01:36:42] Okay, so we're going to add a static delay or static reverb.
[01:37:11] Okay, so we're going to add a static delay or static reverb.
[01:37:39] Okay, so we're going to add a static delay or static reverb.
[01:38:03] I actually kind of like it how it sounds already.
[01:38:15] How do I make it fit on the screen? Maybe I put this over here.
[01:38:45] Okay, so we're going to add a static delay or static reverb.
[01:39:12] It would be nice to have some kind of auto-assort, auto-arrange.
[01:39:42] Does it fit on the screen later? Let's zoom in.
[01:40:07] Okay, so we're going to add a static delay or static reverb.
[01:40:37] Okay, so we're going to add a static delay or static reverb.
[01:41:04] Okay, so we're going to add a static delay or static reverb.
[01:41:34] Okay, so we're going to add a static delay or static reverb.
[01:42:01] Okay, so we're going to add a static delay or static reverb.
[01:42:30] Okay, so we're going to add a static delay or static reverb.
[01:42:58] Okay, so we're going to add a static delay or static reverb.
[01:43:29] Okay, so I think we need to fill out this space here a bit more.
[01:43:36] Then we have it.
[01:43:40] I mean, there's some stuff here on the side.
[01:43:44] Maybe we need to show.
[01:43:47] I wish Bitwig implemented some kind of liquid zoom.
[01:43:52] So at the moment we have only two this and this, but there's nothing in between.
[01:43:59] It's really hard to come up with patches that completely fill the screen.
[01:44:06] It's a challenge in itself.
[01:44:15] But you can see mostly all of the stuff just the stuff here is dropped.
[01:44:29] Put maybe here some kind of oscilloscope there.
[01:44:46] Something like this.
[01:44:55] Here we have a bit of room.
[01:45:11] Oops.
[01:45:16] Yeah, that's better.
[01:45:22] You can maybe add more alphas here.
[01:45:35] Like that.
[01:45:42] And this goes there.
[01:45:58] Actually, putting this on screen is a challenge in itself.
[01:46:05] What it kind of works looks neat.
[01:46:08] It's complex and interesting.
[01:46:11] Everywhere happens something and it makes sense.
[01:46:13] It's not like it's only show.
[01:46:15] It's really doing something.
[01:46:27] Yeah, and we need to use an MM Matcher here.
[01:46:35] I match this against my preset here, what I use for all of the patches I do.
[01:46:51] Maybe I use an SC Dark in front.
[01:46:58] Master Balanced.
[01:47:01] Then I have very long attack, very long release.
[01:47:27] Let's analyze this here for a moment.
[01:47:38] Put this there.
[01:47:49] This is basically what I filmed then or what I record for maybe one hour.
[01:47:59] And that's what you see on the video.
[01:48:13] It doesn't matter how big the interface is here, you can always only have two steps here.
[01:48:23] It would be so nice to have a liquid zoom.
[01:48:29] Let's see what's happening here.
[01:48:49] So now I have to find a noise here.
[01:49:03] And you can almost hear the chord progression.
[01:49:06] There's a chord progression in there.
[01:49:08] But because we have on top this kind of drone sound that only plays...
[01:49:15] This is a bit loud.
[01:49:19] There's a random noise thing here.
[01:49:29] Maybe I filled the space here.
[01:49:50] Yeah, perfect.
[01:50:02] So this is what I filmed.
[01:50:06] And then I upload the preset and you can download the preset.
[01:50:10] That's it.
[01:50:11] Thanks for watching.
[01:50:12] Let me know if you need to understand something better.
[01:50:15] Maybe if you have some ideas for what I can do next in the next patch, what you want to see.
[01:50:25] And maybe I'll do it.
[01:50:27] Thanks for watching.

My Soundscape for Sleeping Between Galaxies

polarity — Sun, 31 May 2026 02:00:00 GMT

Music-Video | Mai 31, 2026

In this Bitwig Grid patch, I tried to create the feeling of drifting somewhere between galaxies.

You can watch the Video on Youtube.
Support me on Patreon if you like what you hear.
Download Presets, Tools and Projects on my Dispenser

It’s built from noise, long reverb tails, all-pass delays, pitch shifting, and randomized notes on sine and pulse oscillators, all slowly blending into a deep generative soundscape.

The patch keeps moving on its own, never repeating in quite the same way twice. It’s calm, spacious, a little dreamy, and full of small details that appear and disappear in the background. Definitely one of those patches that feels more like a place than a song.

Signal Drift

Somewhere between a nebula and a late-night Bitwig session, this patch keeps drifting on its own logic. Noise, all-pass delays, pitch shifting, and long reverb tails smear sine and pulse synths into a slow-moving piece of ambient music that never quite lands on the same star twice. It’s moody, a little cosmic, and just random enough to feel like sound design with a pilot’s license.

Bitwig Grid Ambient Patching and Generative Workflow

polarity — Sun, 31 May 2026 02:00:00 GMT

Grid Build | Mai 31, 2026

Long Bitwig Grid patch-building session creating an ambient drone patch, with practical ideas for mono Grid setup, scale-quantized note generation, and noise-based textures.

You can watch the Video on Youtube
Support me on Patreon if you like what you hear.
Download Presets, Tools and Projects on my Dispenser

Quick Answer

Patch type: Long-form ambient Grid patch in Bitwig, built as a self-running mono Polysynth Grid at 85 BPM with Eb/D# minor as the tonal center.
Main sound-design direction: Starts from stereo pink noise and simple sine/pulse sources, then shapes them into rain, wind, drones, pads, bass, and sparse melodic events using filtering, random modulation, and slow movement rather than traditional sequencing.
Important devices/modules: Poly Grid / Polysynth in mono, Limiter, Noise, Low-pass / high-pass / band-pass / Sallen-Key filters, Amp, AD envelope, Trigger/Transport, Dice, Quantizer, Root, Counter, Merge, Random LFO, Lag, plus end-stage Matcher, loudness control, and peak limiting.
Key techniques covered: Keeping one voice always active with mono mode, building generative note sets with quantized random values, offsetting a C-based quantizer with Root to match the project key, and duplicating random/sequence structures to create repeatable but evolving modulation patterns.
Practical result: A medium-sized generative ambient patch suitable for recording long performances, sharing as a preset, or studying as a workflow for constructing evolving Grid-based atmospheres without relying on samples.

Build Overview

The session starts from a simple ambient premise: set a slow tempo, run Poly Grid in monophonic mode so one voice is always active, and let the patch self-generate without keyboard input. The initial sound source is not a conventional synth voice but stereo pink noise shaped through filtering, amplitude multiplication, and modulation to create rain-, wind-, and water-like textures. Harmonic material is introduced gradually with sine-based tones and quantized random voltages, using a constrained note set built from root, fourth, and fifth relationships, then transposed to the project root via Bitwig’s root-note signal. This establishes a drone-oriented tonal center rather than a fixed melody.

From there, the patch expands as a collection of semi-independent systems: evolving pads, sparse tonal events, bass movement, overtone layers, and additional noise beds. Random sources are repeatedly tamed through attenuation, quantization, smoothing, probability, and trigger timing so the result stays musical while remaining unpredictable. A recurring design pattern is the use of stored or repeatable random sequences for pitch and modulation, which keeps phrases coherent while still allowing variation in envelope shape, timbre, register, and timing. The build remains exploratory, with parts removed, duplicated, simplified, or repurposed as the overall texture reveals what the patch actually wants to be.

That process is useful for learning modular patching because it demonstrates patch design as system-building rather than preset hunting or linear composition. It shows how complex ambient results can emerge from a few core techniques, noise shaping, scale-constrained randomness, modulation routing, event probability, and layered signal paths, and how each decision affects behavior over long playback times. For learners, the value is not just the final sound but the way musical structure is discovered by listening, adjusting ranges, and balancing freedom against constraint.

Patch Decisions

Set Poly Grid to monophonic mode with voices pulled down to Mono, so one voice is always active and the patch runs continuously without needing any MIDI note to “wake up” the Grid.
Chose an ambient setup at 85 BPM and set the project/key context to E♭ minor (D♯), then used a Root module to offset pitch material from a C-based quantizer into the actual song root.
Started the texture with stereo pink noise, using separate left/right noise behavior, then shaped it with filters and amplitude multiplication to create environmental noise layers resembling wind/rain/water rather than broadband hiss.
Built one noise branch by filtering noise, then multiplying one filtered noise signal with another signal path to impose moving amplitude changes; this created a more natural, animated backdrop instead of static noise.
Used a Steiner-Parker / Sallen-Key-style steep bandpass filter on noise and modulated the filter frequency from internal signal movement, producing pitched, watery resonant tones from noise rather than from an oscillator.
For tonal content, generated notes with a Trigger + Dice + Quantizer chain: triggers fired 4 times per bar, Dice produced bipolar random values, and an attenuator before quantization narrowed the usable pitch range without breaking pitch mapping.
Restricted the quantizer to a small chord-tone set, primarily root, fourth, and fifth, then added the Root module offset so those intervals land in E♭/D♯; he explicitly noted this keeps things tonally ambiguous until a third is introduced.
Later switched from free random note generation to a repeatable 8-step sequence using Merge + multiple Dice modules + Counter, where a manual/randomizing trigger refreshes all stored step values at once, so the melody pattern stays fixed until regenerated.
Duplicated the same stored random sequence structure for modulation targets as well as pitch, because using a live Dice directly would not give repeatable per-step modulation; this was a deliberate compromise to keep variation structured.
On the mix/output side, inserted a Limiter early for safety, then near the end used Matcher with a personal “deep roller” preset to normalize tonal balance and loudness between uploads, reduced some overly loud layers manually, and accepted that the patch still needed more tweaking because some sounds remained “annoying.”

Interesting Moments

00:01:16 - Patch setup: mono Grid, 85 BPM, E♭ minor
00:03:03 - Building the rain/wind backdrop from stereo pink noise
00:05:35 - Sallen-Key filter experiment for watery tonal noise
00:07:27 - Random sine notes with quantizer and root-offset scale trick
00:11:16 - Switching from melody thinking to drone/pad layering
00:54:24 - Rare ambient event generator with trigger chance and sine layer
01:02:14 - Repeatable 8-note sequence using merge, counter, and stored random values
01:52:54 - Final mix pass with Match EQ, loudness consistency, and tweak review

What This Build Is Useful For

This Bitwig Grid build is useful as a real-time example of constructing an ambient generative patch from nothing into a complete, playable texture. It is most relevant for Grid users interested in drones, evolving pads, environmental noise layers, slow melodic systems, and self-running patches for long-form listening or recording.

Producers and patch builders who benefit most include ambient artists, modular-minded sound designers, generative music creators, and intermediate Bitwig users who already know the modules but want to see decision-making, iteration, and arrangement inside a single patch.

Reusable techniques include setting Grid to mono for always-active voice behavior, building rain/wind textures from filtered noise, quantizing random pitch sources to a scale, offsetting quantizers with the project root note, creating repeatable random sequences with stored values, layering simple oscillators into pads and basses, using chance-based triggers, and balancing the result with EQ matching and limiting.

This long-form process is more useful than a short tutorial when the goal is to study workflow, patch evolution, troubleshooting, and why certain ideas are kept, changed, or removed.

Transcript

This is the transcript of the video. The text was generated automatically and may contain small mistakes. The timestamps jump to the matching part of the video.

Click to expand transcript

[00:00:00] So on my second channel, I usually just show these grid patches, you know, let them play
[00:00:05] and for 10 minutes, one hour and people usually just ask me, how do you build these patches?
[00:00:12] And it's not interesting for the majority of people, so it's not a video for my main
[00:00:16] channel and it also doesn't fit on the music channel where I just let the music play.
[00:00:22] So I thought maybe I create another channel, another new polarity channel and just document
[00:00:29] these kind of buildings or these processes where I build these grid patches and maybe
[00:00:37] just talk over it and give you some insights.
[00:00:41] So it's probably a long video.
[00:00:42] It's not interesting for the majority of people, but some people are interested in it.
[00:00:46] So I don't think this channel will gonna fly, which is not my intention at all, but you
[00:00:53] know, just for the process and people can watch it and I link it in the main channel
[00:00:57] on the music channel under the videos then.
[00:01:01] So maybe let's document this and let's start by creating a grid patch and I probably want
[00:01:07] to create an ambient patch.
[00:01:09] So I usually go for 85 BPM for whatever reason, it's not really needed, but that's how I do
[00:01:15] it.
[00:01:16] Okay, so then we don't need here the clip launcher, I make this here a bit longer so I can let
[00:01:22] it loop like this, I probably dial in here EB minor because I like it.
[00:01:33] And then we use a pulley grid.
[00:01:36] And the most important part is that this polar grid is in monophonic mode so we can change
[00:01:41] the voices and we pull this down the mono.
[00:01:45] Because if this is in polyphonic mode here with five voices, we have to press a key to
[00:01:52] activate at least one voice, which is not what we want, we want to have at least one
[00:01:56] voice always active, which is the case in mono.
[00:02:00] And then we can build here something in the grid and it just runs.
[00:02:04] So you don't need to press a key or you know, need anything to activate one voice.
[00:02:10] So we don't need this and the question is always how do I start, right?
[00:02:16] So do I start with oscillators with melodies with pads with noises and for me, it's always
[00:02:25] different.
[00:02:26] I always start differently and a good way sometimes is to just use samples.
[00:02:32] So I create samples sometimes outside of the grid, put it into a sampler and then use the
[00:02:37] granular mode and scan through the sample for for a long, long time and then put something
[00:02:45] on top.
[00:02:46] So this is sometimes an idea.
[00:02:48] Sometimes I just start with noise.
[00:02:52] Maybe I put the limiter here at the end, something like this, pull this down, maybe five dB.
[00:03:01] I hope it's not too quiet.
[00:03:03] So we can hook this up here, right, and then we have immediately a sound and I go for pink
[00:03:10] noise and I want to use it in stereo.
[00:03:13] So the left and the right channel has a different noise generator or generates different noise
[00:03:17] sounds, which is really cool.
[00:03:19] It sounds cool.
[00:03:24] Maybe use an amp here also on that so we can change the loudness.
[00:03:28] So now that we have this, we probably want to filter out some of the noise to make it
[00:03:34] more like sound like rain or real life, real life noise or real life sound.
[00:03:43] So you can do this multiple ways.
[00:03:44] For instance, we can use a low pass on this noise, right, pull us all the way down.
[00:03:50] Now it's filtered already.
[00:03:53] And with this, we can then modulate for instance, or we can use the output of this to multiply
[00:04:01] this with the output of that, it's just changing the volume as we can do something like that.
[00:04:07] And then it sounds like this.
[00:04:14] So maybe we can also high pass this a bit more like that.
[00:04:30] And then we can use another low pass.
[00:04:32] I don't know if this makes any sense, but sometimes I really like to do this and figure
[00:04:37] out if I can just make something great sounding with some simple patches.
[00:04:44] And then we multiply this again, like this.
[00:05:08] Or maybe like that.
[00:05:13] I think that's better.
[00:05:19] So we get already sound or a bit of noise out of nowhere, out of something just with
[00:05:26] the process here.
[00:05:29] So we can keep this maybe for a backdrop.
[00:05:35] Can also take this and use a filter.
[00:05:38] Let's use the selling key filter because it has a very steep filter here.
[00:05:45] Bandpass 8p, for whatever reason, so we can feed the sound into that.
[00:05:51] It's a bit too quiet, huh?
[00:06:04] So this is kind of nice, so it has a tonality to it.
[00:06:07] But then we can use the output for that maybe and just try to modulate the pitch, the frequency.
[00:06:23] And then you get some water sounds, maybe this one.
[00:06:45] Yeah, I like this better.
[00:07:04] I'll start with some experiments here.
[00:07:13] Maybe we just leave that for now.
[00:07:18] Maybe I delete this later on.
[00:07:19] I have no idea.
[00:07:20] Maybe I just keep it.
[00:07:23] So there we can start.
[00:07:24] Maybe we need to bring in some harmonics.
[00:07:27] So we can use maybe a sign with that.
[00:07:33] And I could use an A/D, an output, also keep it very simple, maybe let's use a trigger
[00:07:46] here.
[00:07:47] So four triggers for each phase.
[00:07:49] One phase is exactly one bar long, so four triggers within one bar.
[00:07:55] We can trigger this here.
[00:07:58] And then we can say on each trigger, give me a random number between plus one and minus
[00:08:06] one.
[00:08:07] So here the negative part is also active, so it's bipolar, and then we get a random
[00:08:11] output, maybe I put here an amp already there.
[00:08:29] So this is pretty random.
[00:08:31] So what I want to do is I want to constrain the range, and I do this usually by using
[00:08:37] an attenuate here, putting this here.
[00:08:39] I can pull this down, you can pull this down, but then the whole pitch mapping is off.
[00:08:45] So what I do usually is I do this, and then I put here in between, let's say a quantizer
[00:08:55] like that, and I use C major.
[00:08:59] So all the white keys here as a reference, and so I only want to have the root note,
[00:09:04] and this is here, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, I probably want to have this and that.
[00:09:16] So this is the fourth, this is the fifth, and yeah, we have some quantization here happening,
[00:09:22] and because this is 100% or 120 semitones, the pitch mapping is not off.
[00:09:28] So you always hit the fifth or the fourth, I put this down here for a moment, so you
[00:09:38] always hit the fifth, fourth, and the root of C major, which is not what we use here,
[00:09:44] we use EB minor, so what I do then is I use root, which is a new module, gives me the root,
[00:09:53] it's D sharp, it's EB, basically it's the same thing.
[00:09:56] And I add this here to the C scale, so the C scale starts on 0, and then I add here this
[00:10:07] D sharp to it, so I'm offsetting the C scale to the scale we are currently using, which
[00:10:13] is here D sharp 3, which is on the keyboard, it's 3 semitones higher, so we pitch this
[00:10:18] up by 3 semitones.
[00:10:21] So I play here on C major, and then I push it up or add 3 semitones to it because we
[00:10:30] are on D sharp 3 here, 3 semitones up and then it's on the right scale, right, so now
[00:10:36] we play here in D sharp major, it's actually not major or minor because I just use the
[00:10:42] root and the fifth and the fourth, I need to use here the third to make it actually minor
[00:10:48] or major, now it's either one of both or neither, okay.
[00:11:00] So now we are basically in EB minor, I would say.
[00:11:16] Okay so the thing is I don't want to create a melody, I actually want to create a pad,
[00:11:22] one of the pad, I want to create a drone with multiple notes in it, so instead of making
[00:11:29] here the sine partial play longer notes, what I usually do is I just play this into reverb
[00:11:38] and you can create reverb here with all paths, that's usually what I do, and maybe we go
[00:11:47] here into that, and what I want to do is I want to use here my website, all paths reverb
[00:11:53] calculator I use usually then Schimmer and then maybe 10 modules, I change the seed here
[00:12:01] until I like how this looks like, start MS, maybe I start lower, I start here maybe on
[00:12:09] I don't know, three or two, so the lowest millisecond is two milliseconds and the longest
[00:12:15] is 72, maybe I go up here to something higher, it takes a long time, can I actually type
[00:12:22] here something in, that's a problem, maybe 200, something like that, okay so we start
[00:12:33] on two and we end on 200, right, and then we scale here the all paths to different milliseconds,
[00:12:43] okay can I leave this open here actually, no, so we start with two milliseconds here and
[00:12:52] we use 10, so one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, damn, maybe this
[00:13:02] up here in a better way, would be really cool if we had some kind of sub modules, huh, okay
[00:13:19] this isn't wrong, so we have two and then we go to 93, then we go to 120, actually we
[00:13:30] could copy this here, then we go to 137, then we go to 150, then we go to 164, then we go
[00:13:57] to 174, 183, and 200, let's see how this sounds, so then we bring this back in here and we
[00:14:17] hold down shift, so we have a blend, you can already hear, let me bring this in here, that
[00:14:32] we have a very long nice reverb, and maybe we bring the attack higher here, so you can
[00:14:59] hear it sounds a bit metallic, so we can tweak maybe the settings or we can bring in, what's
[00:15:07] the name of chorus, so it brings in a bit of movement, sounds much better already, very
[00:15:20] low modulation speed here, what I also like to do sometimes is to
[00:15:50] use pitch, pitch shifter, so we got this pitch shifter here a while ago, and the grain rate
[00:15:57] is basically how long the buffer is, it doesn't go lower than that, I wish they make this
[00:16:06] a bit longer here, but we can just put this here in between, so the sound comes in here
[00:16:14] and then we maybe pitch it down or up, so it's a shimmery reverb, minus 12, then we bring
[00:16:23] in the mix here 50%, so we have a pitched up or normal dry signal and a pitched down
[00:16:30] signal, so we diffuse it a lot, and maybe this is here a bit too much, right, it's too
[00:16:52] much noise, but also sounds nice kinda, maybe to this here a different mode rate relative,
[00:17:05] so we have here this curve setting, so we can bring in here a chance module, so not
[00:17:20] every trigger triggers the envelope, only, I don't know, 30%, and then we get the dice
[00:17:30] module again, and every time we get a trigger, we also randomly modulate the skew by I don't
[00:17:40] know how much, not too much, 25%, and then there's the stereo detune here, so we can
[00:17:56] detune slightly the left and right channel to get more like a stereo effect, but we can
[00:18:01] also randomize this here a bit, why not too much, what we also can do is we can bring
[00:18:19] in here the scale module, so the scale quantizes again to the current scale that we dialed
[00:18:25] in at the top, so just to make sure we are absolutely inside of the scale, we can just
[00:18:31] bring this in here, and here the pitch quantized, like I said, only plays the fifth, the fourth,
[00:18:40] the third, maybe this one, the tenth, and this attenuate changes basically the range,
[00:18:59] how high notes go when you generate notes or how long, and if you keep this at zero,
[00:19:04] it only plays the root, okay, so this sounds kinda nice already, I probably want to bring
[00:19:19] in the chorus at the end, there's the output here, maybe here, oh, let's see how this sounds,
[00:19:38] I can also change here with this mix setting, I can say I only want to have the pitch down
[00:20:00] version, when I think there's too many overtones, too many high pitches, I just increase here
[00:20:09] the percentage, maybe 70, I can also do a delay, maybe a long delay, go into the delay,
[00:20:28] and blend it in, this is 100%, and then use an LFO, or maybe we can use here an random,
[00:20:40] let's use an LFO, it's more predictable, something like this, then we modulate, just slide it
[00:20:46] at the delay time, you can hear how it changes the pitch, but we don't want that too much,
[00:20:57] just a tad, bit of feedback here, by the way, the pitch wobble increases also when you make
[00:21:21] the delay buffer longer, make this longer, it sounds more drastic, even though we haven't
[00:21:28] changed the modulation, so we need to always do both, kind of, so now we have this pitch
[00:21:40] modulated version here, we can bring in the dry signal, and now we have again two signals
[00:21:47] overlapping, make things a bit more dense, and thick, and pleasant, maybe we can increase
[00:22:02] this a bit more, because we have now the dry signal here, which stabilizes everything,
[00:22:30] so then we have a problem here, as you can see, sometimes the envelope triggers while
[00:22:38] we are currently playing a note, so we are here at this position for instance, and we
[00:22:43] currently play the sign, and then we get a new trigger, and we get a new note information,
[00:22:47] and then the oscillator switches to a different pitch while we are currently playing the pitch,
[00:22:54] so that's not what we want, we want to wait until the envelope settles down to zero, so
[00:23:02] we can go to another pitch and restart the whole thing, I think we should get here a
[00:23:16] trigger when this is zero, and let's bring an end, oh this is not possible, because it's
[00:23:29] a feedback loop, so we need to use a delay here, okay let's try this, right, only when
[00:23:39] this envelope goes down to zero here, this trigger is allowed to actually trigger something,
[00:23:48] I hope this makes sense, so now we shouldn't get any triggers while one note is currently
[00:23:56] playing, so we get rid of these kind of clicks and crackles here and there, because we switched
[00:24:03] the pitch from one point to another point, anyway, it's not rocket science, it's the
[00:24:15] grid, oh it's a bit too much here still, so okay I like that we have here an LFO, but
[00:24:26] I still think it's a bit too static, so I bring in a render modulator here, so the render
[00:24:32] modulator gives us random values and it modulates the LFO speed slightly, just to get a bit
[00:24:39] of variation in there, we also can try as we can bring in here maybe the noise, let's
[00:24:59] see how this sounds, but only here, does this work, holding down shift, yeah, no it doesn't
[00:25:28] fit, oh maybe it fits, I don't know, can also try and
[00:25:58] use your delay in this position, like this, and then use a trigger, so we trigger here
[00:26:15] eight times each bar, dies, a random number, and we modulate here, this delay time heavily,
[00:26:33] see it switches from point to point, but we bring also in a leg, so we have a slight
[00:26:40] glide from one position to the other, okay let's see how this sounds, oh yeah we could
[00:27:02] use another dies, and then modulate the filter, like this, make it a bit faster, so we have
[00:27:32] that, it gives us a little bit of glitch sounds, oh maybe we should start higher, because lower
[00:27:54] we get these kind of metallic sounds, which I don't like, okay so then we have these sounds
[00:28:14] all the time which is a bit annoying, as we bring in here an amplitude envelope, and we
[00:28:25] use a chance, trigger this, 20%, oh maybe use a different trigger, maybe go to four,
[00:28:55] maybe it's not the best sound, okay, so we have this, we have this, and then we have this,
[00:29:25] and this is probably the most time intensive part that you need to find the right settings
[00:29:34] for everything, until it sounds nice, okay let's see if we bring in here an outpass,
[00:30:03] let's see if we can do that, okay, so we have this, and then we have this, and then
[00:30:32] we have this, and then we have this, and then we have this, and then we have this, and
[00:31:02] let's make it less, not too much, even less, 3%, only sometimes, probably delete this later
[00:31:23] on, okay, so now we have here a first small little part that we maybe like, so people
[00:31:46] always ask me why I do this in this kind of compact format, because it fits on the screen,
[00:31:53] and then I can just record the video instead of scrolling around, maybe make this one color,
[00:32:21] maybe it gives us also different color, something like this, okay, so let's create some lower
[00:32:41] bass sounds here, kind of in the same way, we probably want to do that too, and we want
[00:33:03] to pitch it down by an octave or two, right, the range is very narrow, so I want to generate
[00:33:14] around C3 some notes, but then I pitch it down to octaves, so I'm probably in C0 or
[00:33:19] something like that, and then I do the same thing here with that, I don't need that, so
[00:33:44] here I, maybe we want to have one note each bar, maybe go to 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 2, 3,
[00:34:14] 10, and maybe we use a saw here, and a filter, a MOOC filter, oh, what happened, I didn't
[00:34:32] do anything, it's not my fault, a MOOC filter, and maybe we need to hear a bit of stereo
[00:34:54] difference, and make it mono.
[00:35:10] And then, when the pitch changes, we want to have a slight glide, then we can use the
[00:35:36] pitch also here for the offset, oh, that's too much, maybe C4, one octifier, what's the
[00:35:54] next one, G4, G5, so basically going up here to harmonics, C3 is the root, C4 is one partial
[00:36:09] higher, second harmonic, third harmonic is then G5, I guess, or G4.
[00:36:36] Okay, so maybe we make this even slower, so I go for a transport, so instead of having
[00:36:47] one trigger for each bar, we can say bar, two bars, now we get a trigger for every two
[00:36:54] bars, and the oscilloscope, right, so we have here one ramp going up for one bar, okay,
[00:37:24] and then it goes down and starts again, so we can use this purple signal here for shaping
[00:37:32] actually the volume, so instead of using an amplitude envelope, we just use the signal
[00:37:37] to shape it, and we can take a mirror first, maybe give this different color, so we can
[00:37:45] see it better, oh, it doesn't give me a different color for some reason, okay.
[00:37:54] Alright so now the mirror, exactly at 12 semitones, gives me a ramp up, ramp down, over the whole
[00:38:00] course of this original ramp up, and then what I want to do is I want to average the
[00:38:09] signal maybe, or use a bend, a bend could be something like this, alright, you can see
[00:38:22] this triangle now is a bit softer around it, maybe something like that, goes up in volume,
[00:38:33] then the volume goes down, it's exactly what we want, so we can take the signal and use
[00:38:41] it here as an envelope, hope you can hear it, alright, volume goes down, you can see
[00:39:04] how the waveform goes down in volume, so yeah, it's an envelope shaper, or maybe it's too
[00:39:25] drastic, maybe use another bend, make it even steeper, oh it's happening here, oh it's probably
[00:39:51] too, it pushes the boundaries of, why is that, okay, this is a problem here I see, oh it's
[00:40:17] happening, so this is a bit smoother, maybe go for 4 bars, so each note, each bass note
[00:40:27] is now 4 bars long, okay, let's leave it at that, so this is the bass, so here the sound
[00:40:49] is kind of cool, I still like it, but having this only playing occasionally, it's annoying,
[00:41:04] so I bring in a bit of a different noise, high pass, and low pass, so that's it, that's
[00:41:24] (dramatic music)
[00:41:54] - So this sounds like a bit distant rain,
[00:41:58] but it's a very constant distant rain,
[00:42:00] so we need to modify that.
[00:42:02] Slightly modulating here.
[00:42:24] (dramatic music)
[00:42:55] Okay, let's try again with some low pass.
[00:42:59] Use a chance.
[00:43:06] It's a bit too loud, huh?
[00:43:12] And then we use an AD.
[00:43:14] Trigger with this chance here, this AD.
[00:43:24] (dramatic music)
[00:43:27] And then I love nubba filter.
[00:43:31] (dramatic music)
[00:43:54] (dramatic music)
[00:43:56] Yeah, I need the dice.
[00:44:01] I need to modulate this, so mount.
[00:44:25] (dramatic music)
[00:44:27] That's too much.
[00:44:28] (dramatic music)
[00:44:52] Yeah, maybe we can also modulate this.
[00:44:54] (dramatic music)
[00:44:57] Not too much.
[00:45:02] (dramatic music)
[00:45:22] (dramatic music)
[00:45:25] Yeah.
[00:45:29] (dramatic music)
[00:45:31] (dramatic music)
[00:45:52] (dramatic music)
[00:45:55] Maybe we can bring in a leg.
[00:46:04] Oh, this one.
[00:46:07] (dramatic music)
[00:46:09] And we dice this also.
[00:46:14] (dramatic music)
[00:46:22] (dramatic music)
[00:46:25] Cool.
[00:46:34] (dramatic music)
[00:46:37] Okay, let's make this a bit more compact here.
[00:46:45] (dramatic music)
[00:46:52] (dramatic music)
[00:46:55] Oh, we could also modulate the loudness of that.
[00:46:58] (dramatic music)
[00:47:00] This is cool.
[00:47:01] (dramatic music)
[00:47:03] Just a bit.
[00:47:05] (dramatic music)
[00:47:07] So it changes over time, so it's not like a static noise
[00:47:13] floor, it changes and modulates and evolves over time.
[00:47:17] (dramatic music)
[00:47:22] (dramatic music)
[00:47:25] (dramatic music)
[00:47:28] (dramatic music)
[00:47:30] (dramatic music)
[00:47:33] (dramatic music)
[00:47:36] (dramatic music)
[00:47:39] (dramatic music)
[00:47:41] So we could theoretically do this again
[00:47:47] with a different setting to make it a bit more dense.
[00:47:50] (dramatic music)
[00:47:53] Yeah, that's...
[00:48:00] (dramatic music)
[00:48:20] (dramatic music)
[00:48:23] It's probably not necessary,
[00:48:49] but...
[00:48:50] (dramatic music)
[00:48:53] Maybe bring it more in the background.
[00:48:58] (dramatic music)
[00:49:01] (dramatic music)
[00:49:20] (dramatic music)
[00:49:24] So we have two noise generators here
[00:49:26] and a bit of wind and rain.
[00:49:30] (dramatic music)
[00:49:32] So we can try and do another one, but a bit different.
[00:49:38] (dramatic music)
[00:49:41] Same trick as before, we use your low pass on pink.
[00:49:47] (dramatic music)
[00:49:49] (dramatic music)
[00:49:52] Maybe use a different filter.
[00:49:53] (dramatic music)
[00:49:56] We use noise as an input, but yeah, we use that.
[00:50:01] (dramatic music)
[00:50:04] Amplify and out.
[00:50:08] (dramatic music)
[00:50:11] (dramatic music)
[00:50:19] (dramatic music)
[00:50:49] (dramatic music)
[00:51:19] (dramatic music)
[00:51:22] Also interesting could be to use here a scale
[00:51:30] to apply pitch to the right frequencies of the scale.
[00:51:38] But then we need here...
[00:51:41] This attenuate we need here.
[00:51:45] And here we need to have four.
[00:51:49] And this needs to be on C3.
[00:51:51] (dramatic music)
[00:51:54] So it always lands or goes to a frequency of D sharp minor.
[00:52:03] It doesn't make any sense here, but.
[00:52:06] (dramatic music)
[00:52:18] You see all the sounds.
[00:52:20] (dramatic music)
[00:52:49] (dramatic music)
[00:52:52] This may be better.
[00:52:55] (dramatic music)
[00:53:19] (dramatic music)
[00:53:22] Okay, this makes no sense.
[00:53:26] I think.
[00:53:27] (dramatic music)
[00:53:30] (dramatic music)
[00:53:48] (dramatic music)
[00:53:51] Does this sound good?
[00:54:00] I don't think so.
[00:54:01] (dramatic music)
[00:54:04] I will could use here just a sign.
[00:54:13] (dramatic music)
[00:54:18] (dramatic music)
[00:54:21] (dramatic music)
[00:54:24] Okay, so we use a trigger or not a trigger, a transport.
[00:54:29] Every four bars maybe.
[00:54:37] Let the chance at 50%.
[00:54:42] (dramatic music)
[00:54:49] (dramatic music)
[00:54:51] Let's see how it sounds.
[00:55:02] (dramatic music)
[00:55:05] (dramatic music)
[00:55:19] (dramatic music)
[00:55:22] Okay, so maybe you can copy here this kind of construct.
[00:55:27] (dramatic music)
[00:55:30] Over here.
[00:55:34] (dramatic music)
[00:55:37] Oh, let's go out here.
[00:55:43] (dramatic music)
[00:55:49] (dramatic music)
[00:55:52] Let's go back to 100% just for.
[00:55:54] (dramatic music)
[00:55:57] That was kinda nice.
[00:56:01] It just plays sometimes.
[00:56:05] (dramatic music)
[00:56:18] (dramatic music)
[00:56:21] (dramatic music)
[00:56:26] Yeah, let's use another modulation here.
[00:56:30] Slight modulation.
[00:56:31] Is this random?
[00:56:35] I'll use this one.
[00:56:36] Use the same one.
[00:56:39] Fine.
[00:56:40] (dramatic music)
[00:56:47] Okay, so now that we have this,
[00:56:49] we can maybe use a second sign.
[00:56:54] The same pitch.
[00:56:56] Maybe three harmonics higher.
[00:57:03] (dramatic music)
[00:57:06] Another dies.
[00:57:14] (dramatic music)
[00:57:18] And we modulate the amount here for each note.
[00:57:23] (dramatic music)
[00:57:26] And we modulate here the ratio by, let's say five.
[00:57:32] (dramatic music)
[00:57:35] Put it there.
[00:57:36] (dramatic music)
[00:57:38] Yeah, why not modulate the length?
[00:57:45] (dramatic music)
[00:57:49] Let's get some variety in there.
[00:57:51] (dramatic music)
[00:57:53] And here we get also slide the tuning.
[00:58:08] (dramatic music)
[00:58:15] And every time we trigger this,
[00:58:18] we get not for every note.
[00:58:20] For every trigger sequence, we get something different.
[00:58:27] And that's the scale of the notes.
[00:58:32] (dramatic music)
[00:58:36] So sometimes the note range is bigger,
[00:58:37] sometimes the note range is smaller.
[00:58:40] So it's not the same sequence every time.
[00:58:43] (dramatic music)
[00:58:46] Perfect.
[00:58:56] (laughs)
[00:58:58] Okay, so we have another block of stuff.
[00:59:04] (dramatic music)
[00:59:13] (dramatic music)
[00:59:16] So now the legal,
[00:59:36] legal wars, Tetris wars started.
[00:59:40] (dramatic music)
[00:59:44] (dramatic music)
[00:59:47] Maybe get into something here.
[00:59:51] (dramatic music)
[00:59:55] (dramatic music)
[00:59:57] (dramatic music)
[01:00:05] Damn.
[01:00:09] (dramatic music)
[01:00:14] (dramatic music)
[01:00:17] Oh, we can lift this out.
[01:00:19] Just use that.
[01:00:22] Minimal is better.
[01:00:27] (dramatic music)
[01:00:44] And here we can add the view meter for no reason.
[01:00:48] (dramatic music)
[01:00:51] (dramatic music)
[01:01:01] Yeah.
[01:01:11] (dramatic music)
[01:01:14] So make this event here a bit rarer.
[01:01:22] Rarer, rarer.
[01:01:24] Where's it?
[01:01:26] (dramatic music)
[01:01:29] Chance 40.
[01:01:37] Let's go to 20.
[01:01:39] (dramatic music)
[01:01:42] Let's use a pulse.
[01:01:46] (dramatic music)
[01:01:49] I could use some samples actually,
[01:01:53] but I want to show you the process what I do sometimes.
[01:01:57] It's actually fun to me to not use samples.
[01:02:00] Samples using is basically easy.
[01:02:02] You can just sample some random stuff with a lot of reverb,
[01:02:06] and then put it in a sampler and play it back randomly
[01:02:09] and you get nice ambient.
[01:02:11] (dramatic music)
[01:02:14] So let's generate nodes in a different way.
[01:02:19] Instead of using a dice module
[01:02:22] and just filtering this with a quantizer,
[01:02:24] why not use a merge like that?
[01:02:29] Let's say we want to generate eight nodes.
[01:02:37] And to use a trigger,
[01:02:39] when we push this button,
[01:02:42] we get a random value on each dice.
[01:02:46] (clears throat)
[01:02:49] (dramatic music)
[01:02:52] So every time we trigger this,
[01:02:59] we get a random value each time,
[01:03:01] but the sequence stays the same
[01:03:03] until we press the trigger, of course.
[01:03:07] As we go into that,
[01:03:09] we go into an attenuate because the range is too big.
[01:03:12] We go for quantize.
[01:03:22] Route fifth, fourth.
[01:03:35] And then, make this offset trick.
[01:03:40] Maybe we want to use an octave later.
[01:03:47] Change the octave.
[01:03:50] Let's leave that zero at the moment.
[01:03:52] Okay, we did an AD.
[01:03:59] Actually, do we want to use a pulse?
[01:04:02] Yeah, let's use a sign.
[01:04:06] Yeah.
[01:04:07] Out.
[01:04:10] We want to use also here this kind of stuff.
[01:04:14] Oops.
[01:04:21] So we go in here.
[01:04:28] This goes there, this goes out,
[01:04:30] and then we go back here.
[01:04:36] Wait a minute.
[01:04:38] That.
[01:04:42] We use an amp.
[01:05:06] (dramatic music)
[01:05:08] And we need, of course,
[01:05:10] go there through the sequence.
[01:05:13] We use a counter.
[01:05:14] We have eight positions.
[01:05:16] And we need to have this nearest interpolation.
[01:05:23] And then we want here.
[01:05:35] (dramatic music)
[01:06:05] .
[01:06:06] Small little melody.
[01:06:35] So now we could use here, let's say, a dice.
[01:06:38] Right, go into the dice,
[01:06:41] and then generate random positions
[01:06:44] for some of the modulations.
[01:06:46] But the problem is, it's not,
[01:06:48] you know, I want to have repeatable patterns.
[01:06:51] So I want to have on each note the same position here
[01:06:53] for some of the modulations.
[01:06:55] So what I do, I just duplicate this here.
[01:06:58] So this is for the pitch.
[01:07:05] (dramatic music)
[01:07:08] Something like that.
[01:07:16] So this is here, maybe the skew.
[01:07:19] New melody.
[01:07:23] (dramatic music)
[01:07:35] (dramatic music)
[01:07:38] Works great, in my opinion.
[01:07:43] Let's do the same thing again.
[01:07:46] Was it called decay?
[01:07:53] So this one here modulates the decay time.
[01:07:59] (dramatic music)
[01:08:06] (dramatic music)
[01:08:09] Does it make sense?
[01:08:26] So we have now a repeatable pattern
[01:08:33] for pitch and for the skew and for the decay time.
[01:08:37] (dramatic music)
[01:08:40] What you can hear, it's just eight notes repeating,
[01:08:50] which is a bit too annoying over time.
[01:08:52] Um, I don't need that.
[01:08:57] (dramatic music)
[01:09:04] So what we want to do is we bring in another sequencer here
[01:09:07] that does something different.
[01:09:09] So let's use a merge.
[01:09:12] (dramatic music)
[01:09:15] Maybe three positions, I don't know.
[01:09:22] And use a transport.
[01:09:24] This transport uses bars, so every one bar,
[01:09:31] we step to a different input.
[01:09:35] (dramatic music)
[01:09:37] So this is three.
[01:09:39] (dramatic music)
[01:09:58] All right, so we can now use that to bring in some changes.
[01:10:03] So let's use a dice here.
[01:10:05] (dramatic music)
[01:10:07] It's the same trigger.
[01:10:15] (dramatic music)
[01:10:18] And this modulates, or maybe use bipolar here,
[01:10:25] so it goes up and down.
[01:10:27] So this would be modulated by one, one up.
[01:10:32] (dramatic music)
[01:10:33] So by rare chance, what's repeatable every time
[01:10:38] the sequence is triggered, we go one octave higher
[01:10:43] or one octave lower, each bar.
[01:10:45] (dramatic music)
[01:10:48] And we need a sample and hold there.
[01:10:58] (dramatic music)
[01:11:26] To be honest, I don't think it's, it sounds great.
[01:11:29] (dramatic music)
[01:11:32] Maybe we reduce this to two, like that.
[01:11:38] (dramatic music)
[01:11:42] Or we completely scratch that.
[01:11:47] (dramatic music)
[01:11:50] And do this for every note.
[01:11:54] (dramatic music)
[01:11:57] That's bipolar for everything.
[01:11:59] (dramatic music)
[01:12:01] So we have this on every note.
[01:12:05] I think this is probably better.
[01:12:07] (dramatic music)
[01:12:08] Let's see.
[01:12:09] (dramatic music)
[01:12:24] (dramatic music)
[01:12:27] Or we could modify maybe at the counter.
[01:12:34] (dramatic music)
[01:12:37] Use a transport.
[01:12:44] (dramatic music)
[01:12:47] Make this two bars long, four bars long,
[01:12:54] go into the sine mode here.
[01:12:59] (dramatic music)
[01:13:03] Then use that.
[01:13:04] (dramatic music)
[01:13:24] (dramatic music)
[01:13:27] Oh, I need a sample and hold on each of these things.
[01:13:34] Damn.
[01:13:35] (dramatic music)
[01:13:38] Need one here.
[01:13:39] (dramatic music)
[01:13:42] Because it can change the modulation in between notes.
[01:13:47] (dramatic music)
[01:13:54] (dramatic music)
[01:13:57] Trust one was better, huh?
[01:14:04] Okay, I see.
[01:14:06] (dramatic music)
[01:14:24] (dramatic music)
[01:14:27] The minor second here.
[01:14:32] (dramatic music)
[01:14:36] Okay, so this melody all the time is probably annoying.
[01:14:42] So we bring in another sequencer.
[01:14:45] Can we use transport again?
[01:14:48] Yes, bar every 16 bars.
[01:14:54] (dramatic music)
[01:14:56] Do basically the same thing as with the bass.
[01:14:59] So this is a very long sequence here.
[01:15:02] (dramatic music)
[01:15:06] Here's the band.
[01:15:08] (dramatic music)
[01:15:11] Multiply.
[01:15:17] Um, here at the end.
[01:15:24] (dramatic music)
[01:15:27] So it's fade slowly in over 16 bars.
[01:15:30] (dramatic music)
[01:15:33] And every time we restart, we get here a trigger.
[01:15:42] (dramatic music)
[01:15:45] I'll make it very short.
[01:15:47] (dramatic music)
[01:15:50] And when we restart, we just re-trigger the sequence.
[01:15:55] We get a different sequence.
[01:15:56] So we fade in slowly over 16 bars, the melody.
[01:16:01] And then when we are at the end, we fade out
[01:16:03] and then we generate a new melody.
[01:16:07] And then it starts to fade in again.
[01:16:09] So what we do now here, this is at the end.
[01:16:14] So this makes no sense.
[01:16:15] Maybe we bring this in before
[01:16:20] the audio effects.
[01:16:22] So the delays and reverb can slowly.
[01:16:25] (dramatic music)
[01:16:29] Yeah, we do this here.
[01:16:30] (dramatic music)
[01:16:51] Then the delay and the reverb slowly fade out.
[01:16:56] Then it generates a new melody
[01:16:58] and then it slowly fades back in.
[01:17:00] I don't know if this makes sense.
[01:17:03] Let's see how the sounds will knock the fire
[01:17:04] because we have these kind of sounds here
[01:17:08] overlapping these sounds.
[01:17:09] (dramatic music)
[01:17:20] (dramatic music)
[01:17:23] Okay, let's make the note range a bit higher.
[01:17:45] (dramatic music)
[01:17:50] The modulate was, no, I modulate,
[01:17:52] don't modulate anything with that.
[01:17:54] So this is decaying.
[01:17:56] (dramatic music)
[01:18:20] (dramatic music)
[01:18:23] Um.
[01:18:27] I'm gonna make this lower, eight.
[01:18:33] (dramatic music)
[01:18:51] (dramatic music)
[01:18:54] Looks nice.
[01:18:56] (dramatic music)
[01:19:01] Maybe we high pass this here later on.
[01:19:10] I'll make this a bit quieter.
[01:19:12] (dramatic music)
[01:19:21] (dramatic music)
[01:19:23] This could be much better here.
[01:19:29] Not really happy with this.
[01:19:31] (dramatic music)
[01:19:50] (dramatic music)
[01:20:20] (dramatic music)
[01:20:23] Oh yeah, this is maybe a good idea.
[01:20:27] So maybe we change the note range here at some point.
[01:20:34] Hmm, this could be something.
[01:20:41] (dramatic music)
[01:20:48] So we use a dice here.
[01:20:51] This dice is retriggered every 60 bars.
[01:20:57] So we get the random value here.
[01:20:59] (dramatic music)
[01:21:02] And then we modulate this here.
[01:21:09] So it starts with zero and then goes
[01:21:13] to a random other value, slowly,
[01:21:16] over the curves of,
[01:21:18] where is it?
[01:21:22] Yeah, the curves of 16 bars.
[01:21:27] So it slowly moves from zero to the dead, maybe.
[01:21:31] (dramatic music)
[01:21:47] (dramatic music)
[01:21:49] So it goes slowly higher.
[01:22:01] (dramatic music)
[01:22:04] Also interesting.
[01:22:11] (dramatic music)
[01:22:16] (dramatic music)
[01:22:19] Oh, I try again with the sign.
[01:22:27] So we take the sequence of 16 bars
[01:22:31] and go through the sign mod,
[01:22:33] which gives us a random,
[01:22:35] (dramatic music)
[01:22:39] and we've used that.
[01:22:40] (dramatic music)
[01:22:46] (dramatic music)
[01:22:49] That's maybe better.
[01:22:58] (dramatic music)
[01:23:01] It's not really important.
[01:23:15] (dramatic music)
[01:23:17] So this is not used at the moment here,
[01:23:28] so we use it maybe for the fold.
[01:23:29] (dramatic music)
[01:23:45] And I think it's better to use a mirror here.
[01:23:49] So we fade in faster,
[01:23:53] but then we slowly fade out.
[01:23:58] (dramatic music)
[01:24:15] (dramatic music)
[01:24:17] And maybe we make this a bit longer.
[01:24:28] 32 bars.
[01:24:29] (dramatic music)
[01:24:32] Okay, and then I wanted to do something
[01:24:44] with the pools.
[01:24:48] (dramatic music)
[01:24:50] This pools just plays some random notes occasionally.
[01:24:55] (dramatic music)
[01:24:57] Let's use a range scale.
[01:25:02] (dramatic music)
[01:25:14] (dramatic music)
[01:25:16] This is the right here?
[01:25:37] Yeah.
[01:25:38] (dramatic music)
[01:25:41] Looks okay.
[01:25:42] (dramatic music)
[01:25:45] Okay.
[01:25:52] (dramatic music)
[01:25:54] Back here, trigger.
[01:25:55] (dramatic music)
[01:25:58] One trigger, each bar, at least.
[01:26:01] (dramatic music)
[01:26:04] And with a chance.
[01:26:08] (dramatic music)
[01:26:13] (dramatic music)
[01:26:14] Random note.
[01:26:15] (dramatic music)
[01:26:18] It's octave.
[01:26:22] (dramatic music)
[01:26:23] Plus one, maybe.
[01:26:25] (dramatic music)
[01:26:27] So we get this here.
[01:26:32] (dramatic music)
[01:26:35] A bit slower.
[01:26:36] (dramatic music)
[01:26:43] What else do we need?
[01:26:45] (dramatic music)
[01:26:48] We want to have here also reverb, maybe.
[01:26:53] (dramatic music)
[01:27:12] (dramatic music)
[01:27:15] Okay.
[01:27:31] It's exactly how I imagined how it sounds.
[01:27:36] (dramatic music)
[01:27:42] (dramatic music)
[01:27:44] We need the pitch here.
[01:27:45] (dramatic music)
[01:27:47] So this is on the center.
[01:27:49] (dramatic music)
[01:27:50] Okay.
[01:27:51] (dramatic music)
[01:27:53] Then we can use that.
[01:27:55] (dramatic music)
[01:27:56] Actually, change the pitch slightly, maybe one.
[01:28:00] (dramatic music)
[01:28:03] Oh, do we want to do that?
[01:28:06] (dramatic music)
[01:28:12] Let's make this longer.
[01:28:14] (dramatic music)
[01:28:16] (dramatic music)
[01:28:27] Mm.
[01:28:34] (dramatic music)
[01:28:38] What's the name bent?
[01:28:41] (dramatic music)
[01:28:43] Does it change anything here?
[01:28:44] (dramatic music)
[01:28:47] Yeah, does something.
[01:28:52] (dramatic music)
[01:28:54] Modulate out, we can take this, just pitch it down.
[01:29:00] (dramatic music)
[01:29:11] (dramatic music)
[01:29:13] Okay, this is the minus 50, it's maybe too much.
[01:29:32] But we can change how much we modulate this
[01:29:36] by attenuate here.
[01:29:37] And this is decided by randomness.
[01:29:41] (dramatic music)
[01:29:43] I would say.
[01:29:44] (dramatic music)
[01:29:47] (dramatic music)
[01:30:11] (dramatic music)
[01:30:13] But it's too much, so we go to 10%.
[01:30:26] So it's not playing all the time, 'cause it's annoying.
[01:30:29] (dramatic music)
[01:30:31] And 100% wet.
[01:30:35] So, way in the background.
[01:30:39] (dramatic music)
[01:30:41] I don't like the bass, the bass is a bit too static.
[01:30:49] Where's the bass?
[01:30:51] It's here.
[01:30:52] (dramatic music)
[01:30:54] (dramatic music)
[01:31:09] (dramatic music)
[01:31:12] So would be nice also if this is also not happening
[01:31:20] every time.
[01:31:21] (dramatic music)
[01:31:24] So, what brings in the volume?
[01:31:34] The volume brings in this one here.
[01:31:36] Okay.
[01:31:37] (dramatic music)
[01:31:38] So, we use the select.
[01:31:40] (dramatic music)
[01:31:43] Only the second input drives actually the volume up.
[01:31:50] (dramatic music)
[01:31:53] So then we have, what's the name latch?
[01:31:57] So the latch is either in zero or in one.
[01:32:04] And then we have a dice.
[01:32:05] (dramatic music)
[01:32:08] Or maybe a chance.
[01:32:10] (dramatic music)
[01:32:12] And at least, where's the transport here?
[01:32:19] This one.
[01:32:20] At least the transport switches not every time,
[01:32:26] either to zero or to one.
[01:32:27] So it would be every 64 bars then.
[01:32:31] (dramatic music)
[01:32:38] (dramatic music)
[01:32:41] But to the other hand, if it stays on one,
[01:32:48] it plays probably the sequence multiple times,
[01:32:51] one after the other, which is also not what I want.
[01:32:54] So maybe every time we,
[01:32:56] hmm.
[01:33:00] I'll just leave it at that.
[01:33:04] (dramatic music)
[01:33:07] For now.
[01:33:09] (dramatic music)
[01:33:12] It's just for the video, okay?
[01:33:19] Don't need to make rocket science out of this.
[01:33:24] (clears throat)
[01:33:27] So let's make this here a bit more compact.
[01:33:31] (dramatic music)
[01:33:38] (dramatic music)
[01:33:41] Oops.
[01:33:43] (dramatic music)
[01:33:46] Oh.
[01:34:00] (dramatic music)
[01:34:03] It's a color.
[01:34:07] (dramatic music)
[01:34:09] So maybe we can make this here a bit.
[01:34:28] (dramatic music)
[01:34:37] More dense.
[01:34:38] Okay, so we can put this there.
[01:34:42] (dramatic music)
[01:34:46] And move this up.
[01:34:47] Move this over there.
[01:34:52] (dramatic music)
[01:35:05] Okay, there's space in the middle.
[01:35:08] (dramatic music)
[01:35:10] There's probably one sound throughout the whole video.
[01:35:33] It's completely annoying, so nobody watches this, probably.
[01:35:36] Because I have it on my headphones,
[01:35:38] and nothing peaks out, but that's probably something.
[01:35:43] (dramatic music)
[01:35:45] Okay, can we make this here a bit more?
[01:35:49] (dramatic music)
[01:35:54] Would be great to have some kind of automate make this nice.
[01:36:00] Automating make this nice looking.
[01:36:03] (dramatic music)
[01:36:06] Okay, what else can we put into that?
[01:36:34] (dramatic music)
[01:36:36] So here needs to be something
[01:36:44] that shows the place, the space.
[01:36:48] (dramatic music)
[01:36:50] We can use an empty label.
[01:36:54] The space in it.
[01:36:58] Put this there.
[01:37:01] (dramatic music)
[01:37:04] Can use a spectrum in here.
[01:37:30] (dramatic music)
[01:37:32] Looks weird to have this in different height.
[01:37:41] (dramatic music)
[01:37:44] (coughing)
[01:37:53] Oh, that's a deep base.
[01:37:55] (dramatic music)
[01:38:00] (crashing)
[01:38:02] I like it.
[01:38:12] (dramatic music)
[01:38:30] (dramatic music)
[01:38:32] Oh, do we have the blue in here?
[01:38:51] No.
[01:38:52] (dramatic music)
[01:39:00] (dramatic music)
[01:39:02] So yeah, the base is at least below the pads.
[01:39:13] (dramatic music)
[01:39:16] (dramatic music)
[01:39:31] Oh, this one here needs some high pass.
[01:39:34] There's a lot of rumble down there.
[01:39:40] (dramatic music)
[01:40:00] (dramatic music)
[01:40:02] That's better.
[01:40:07] (dramatic music)
[01:40:27] We could also add here another sign also later,
[01:40:31] or maybe here then.
[01:40:32] (dramatic music)
[01:40:35] (dramatic music)
[01:40:57] (dramatic music)
[01:41:00] Ah, this needs to be unipolar.
[01:41:05] (dramatic music)
[01:41:08] Let's see how this sounds over time.
[01:41:14] (dramatic music)
[01:41:26] I have no idea what's going on.
[01:41:28] So, can we move this over here?
[01:41:32] Yes, we can.
[01:41:35] (dramatic music)
[01:41:57] Now we can use also the scope here again.
[01:42:00] (laughs)
[01:42:02] Just to fill the space.
[01:42:03] (dramatic music)
[01:42:26] (dramatic music)
[01:42:29] Not range.
[01:42:37] (dramatic music)
[01:42:40] (dramatic music)
[01:42:54] Okay, we have some place down here to build something there.
[01:42:59] (dramatic music)
[01:43:02] So, maybe we take the base, the base frequencies,
[01:43:16] and bring in some overtones.
[01:43:17] Um...
[01:43:20] (dramatic music)
[01:43:24] (dramatic music)
[01:43:27] And we need...
[01:43:50] (dramatic music)
[01:43:54] The base is actually using here the skate signal right.
[01:43:58] (dramatic music)
[01:44:00] What do you think this one?
[01:44:14] (dramatic music)
[01:44:16] (dramatic music)
[01:44:25] (dramatic music)
[01:44:27] (speaking in foreign language)
[01:44:31] (dramatic music)
[01:44:34] (dramatic music)
[01:44:42] Um...
[01:44:49] That's what I need.
[01:44:55] (dramatic music)
[01:44:57] Ah, and I need an octave, so I can change the octave here.
[01:45:01] (dramatic music)
[01:45:04] Maybe we can use a wavetable or something like that, yeah.
[01:45:21] (dramatic music)
[01:45:24] (dramatic music)
[01:45:27] (dramatic music)
[01:45:51] (dramatic music)
[01:45:54] Um...
[01:45:58] (dramatic music)
[01:46:02] We use a random LFO here.
[01:46:05] Random LFO smoothing all the way up.
[01:46:08] Just modulate this, just very simple.
[01:46:12] (dramatic music)
[01:46:19] And then, use 3A here.
[01:46:22] And maybe a notch filter.
[01:46:25] (dramatic music)
[01:46:29] (dramatic music)
[01:46:49] (dramatic music)
[01:46:52] Yeah, let's try a lag here.
[01:46:55] Oh, yeah, let's use this lag.
[01:47:00] (dramatic music)
[01:47:03] (dramatic music)
[01:47:08] Trigger.
[01:47:18] (dramatic music)
[01:47:20] So every four, every quarter notes.
[01:47:26] (dramatic music)
[01:47:31] We change the octave, but only upwards.
[01:47:38] (dramatic music)
[01:47:41] And the glide.
[01:47:44] (dramatic music)
[01:47:49] Ah, two is enough.
[01:47:50] (dramatic music)
[01:47:53] (dramatic music)
[01:48:05] (dramatic music)
[01:48:18] (dramatic music)
[01:48:20] (dramatic music)
[01:48:28] It's a bit too wild.
[01:48:39] (dramatic music)
[01:48:48] (dramatic music)
[01:48:50] Yeah, but maybe you also do again the reverb.
[01:49:10] If I have more time, I sometimes do different reverbs
[01:49:17] or different things, things, but for now, it's okay.
[01:49:22] (dramatic music)
[01:49:25] (dramatic music)
[01:49:47] (dramatic music)
[01:49:50] (dramatic music)
[01:50:17] (dramatic music)
[01:50:20] Okay, let's use this here and that.
[01:50:35] (dramatic music)
[01:50:38] (dramatic music)
[01:50:48] (dramatic music)
[01:50:51] Now we want to stay on saw, not too much.
[01:51:01] So we don't want to go too much into the pulse position.
[01:51:05] (dramatic music)
[01:51:15] Okay, so now we have a bit of stuff here we can use here
[01:51:20] in this space.
[01:51:21] (dramatic music)
[01:51:24] Okay, let's fill this up.
[01:51:43] Got some more on pass here.
[01:51:46] (dramatic music)
[01:51:48] (dramatic music)
[01:52:14] (dramatic music)
[01:52:17] Ah, it sounds evil, just like a pet.
[01:52:32] I mean, it is a pet sound.
[01:52:34] I actually wanted to make an evil overtone for the bass.
[01:52:43] Okay, so it's a medium-sized patch.
[01:52:46] It's not a super big patch.
[01:52:49] I built some bigger ones.
[01:52:51] (dramatic music)
[01:52:54] I still kinda like it.
[01:52:55] So what I do is then sometimes as I,
[01:52:57] or not sometimes, most of the times,
[01:53:00] I just put a matcher on that.
[01:53:01] And I have here my deep roller preset
[01:53:05] and analyze the frequencies.
[01:53:07] Oh, there's a lot of deep bass there.
[01:53:09] (dramatic music)
[01:53:13] (dramatic music)
[01:53:16] Just analyze this here for a moment
[01:53:18] until I get all the frequencies in.
[01:53:20] (dramatic music)
[01:53:41] (dramatic music)
[01:53:44] I'm not really happy with the bass.
[01:53:49] I guess E.B. is too low.
[01:53:52] (dramatic music)
[01:54:11] (dramatic music)
[01:54:14] Yeah, and then I just put this here on 50%.
[01:54:21] It even changes the loudness.
[01:54:24] So the thing is, I want to keep basically
[01:54:29] between all my videos on the music channel,
[01:54:31] I want to keep a similar kind of level from loudness
[01:54:35] and frequency so you can listen, you know,
[01:54:39] one video after the other and it's not like,
[01:54:42] oh, here's a lot of bass and there's no bass at all.
[01:54:46] And this one is loud and this one's quiet.
[01:54:48] So keep the consistency.
[01:54:49] This is why I'm doing that.
[01:54:51] (dramatic music)
[01:54:52] Also interesting, maybe you see my thing,
[01:54:56] matched curve.
[01:54:59] (dramatic music)
[01:55:02] Like that.
[01:55:04] (dramatic music)
[01:55:09] (dramatic music)
[01:55:12] Or maybe use here a preset for loudness, maybe.
[01:55:24] Very slow attack.
[01:55:31] Then match it again.
[01:55:39] (dramatic music)
[01:55:42] It's maybe too much, yeah.
[01:55:44] (dramatic music)
[01:55:46] Yeah, and then I record a video.
[01:55:51] That's it, basically.
[01:55:53] (dramatic music)
[01:55:56] (dramatic music)
[01:56:09] (dramatic music)
[01:56:12] It's okay, but some sounds are a bit annoying
[01:56:25] so it needs a bit more tweaking.
[01:56:28] Maybe one hour of tweaking, setting all the sounds right.
[01:56:32] This one is a bit too loud.
[01:56:38] It's the 60%.
[01:56:39] (dramatic music)
[01:56:42] Maybe 45.
[01:56:44] (dramatic music)
[01:56:47] Maybe you can make the pitch wobblier a bit more drastic.
[01:56:57] (dramatic music)
[01:57:09] (dramatic music)
[01:57:11] Okay, so that's enough.
[01:57:27] And then maybe a peak limit on here.
[01:57:32] (dramatic music)
[01:57:39] (dramatic music)
[01:57:40] Oh, we can actually change here the,
[01:57:42] from the bass, the beating frequency.
[01:57:47] We can modulate this a bit.
[01:57:49] (dramatic music)
[01:57:52] (dramatic music)
[01:58:08] (dramatic music)
[01:58:10] I'm not sure about the sound, but I leave it in.
[01:58:26] Maybe turn this a bit down, 24.
[01:58:28] Yeah, the first sound we started with one was not the best.
[01:58:33] (dramatic music)
[01:58:38] (dramatic music)
[01:58:40] That's the wobble.
[01:59:05] (dramatic music)
[01:59:08] . (dramatic music)
[01:59:38] (dramatic music)
[01:59:40] So this one is also something different.
[02:00:00] (dramatic music)
[02:00:08] (dramatic music)
[02:00:10] It's a bit annoying that I have here space in the middle.
[02:00:19] (dramatic music)
[02:00:21] Could bring in here some alpars.
[02:00:28] (dramatic music)
[02:00:38] (dramatic music)
[02:00:40] That's better.
[02:00:58] (dramatic music)
[02:01:08] (dramatic music)
[02:01:10] Yeah, I can use a BU meter.
[02:01:31] That's how I feel it.
[02:01:33] (dramatic music)
[02:01:36] Damn, done.
[02:01:39] (dramatic music)
[02:01:42] Ugh, okay.
[02:01:49] What do we have?
[02:01:52] Two hours and one minute, or two minutes.
[02:01:56] Okay.
[02:01:56] (dramatic music)
[02:01:58] So I probably just take this, record the whole thing,
[02:02:03] let it run, and then I save the preset,
[02:02:08] give it a nice name, put it on my dispenser,
[02:02:13] and then you can download this,
[02:02:14] and you can watch the video, how I build it.
[02:02:17] Okay.
[02:02:19] (dramatic music)
[02:02:21] That's it, thanks for watching.
[02:02:22] Let me know what you think.
[02:02:24] I think it's better to put this on a different channel,
[02:02:26] on a separate channel than using my main channel
[02:02:29] because most people don't watch that for that long,
[02:02:34] and you know, it just brings the views down,
[02:02:36] and people are confused, what's that,
[02:02:38] and I don't watch this.
[02:02:40] Two hours, I don't watch two hours, right?
[02:02:43] But there are some maniacs who want to watch it,
[02:02:45] so I put it on a different channel, that's the idea, okay?
[02:02:49] Thanks, and see you next time.
[02:02:51] And of course, let me know in the comments down below
[02:02:53] what you think.

Bitwig Grid: Recreate Serum Hyper and Dimension

polarity — Fri, 29 May 2026 02:00:00 GMT

Tutorial | Mai 29, 2026

Recreate Serum Hyper/Dimension in Bitwig Studio or VCV Rack with Chorus+, FX Grid micro-delays, panning, and modulation for wide stereo unison.

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Quick Answer

Yes, Serum’s Hyper/Dimension can be recreated closely with simple modules in Bitwig Grid or approximated fast with Bitwig Chorus+: Hyper is essentially a multi-voice micro-delay chorus, and Dimension is roughly 4 short delay lines with slow amplitude modulation and stereo spreading.
To build Hyper in Bitwig Grid: use a Delay modulated by an LFO, set the patch to 7 voices (or more), apply per-voice modulation, then use Stack Spread to give each voice a different LFO phase or random offset, plus a second Stack Spread to distribute voices across the stereo pan field.
To mimic the quick Hyper sound without patching: load Chorus+, set it to about 8 voices, then adjust mix, rate, and depth until it matches the desired Serum-style widening; the difference is small if settings are close.
A better custom Hyper patch can outperform the stock effect: keep the low end dry with a crossover around ~500 Hz, apply the chorus/unison effect only to the highs, and reduce the added level with gain compensation since stacking many voices increases loudness a lot.
To build Dimension in Grid: use about 4 very short delay lines, give each voice a slightly different delay time, then modulate each voice’s gain slowly with an LFO and add subtle stereo panning; this creates the soft pseudo-stereo diffusion associated with Dimension.

Short Overview

Recreating Serum Hyper/Dimension in Bitwig Studio with simple Grid modules is entirely possible using chorus-style micro delays, voice stacking, stereo spread, and slow modulation. Hyper is essentially a multi-voice micro-delay chorus, while Dimension can be approximated with four short delay lines, out-of-phase summing, subtle amplitude modulation, and light panning.

This matters in practice because it delivers the same wide, animated stereo character without relying on Serum’s built-in effect section. A Bitwig Grid version also gives more control over voice count, modulation behavior, stereo placement, and crossover routing, making it easier to keep low frequencies mono while widening only the upper range.

Key Takeaways

Serum’s Hyper section can be approximated with a multi-voice micro-delay chorus: use a very short delay per voice, modulate delay time with an LFO for pitch movement, and spread voices across the stereo field.
In Bitwig Grid, recreate Hyper by stacking 7 voices, setting the delay modulation source to per-voice, and using Stack Spread to offset each voice’s LFO phase so the chorus voices do not move identically.
For a less predictable and more diffuse chorus, replace evenly phased modulation with randomized per-voice modulation, and optionally vary LFO speed per voice in addition to phase.
Add stereo width by inserting a pan control after the delay and modulating it with a second Stack Spread set to -1 to +1, so each stacked voice lands at a different stereo position.
Stacked chorus patches can become much louder because multiple voices are summed; compensate with a gain stage or use Voice Stack filtering/muting so only one voice carries the dry low band.
A practical improvement over the stock effect is to exclude bass from the chorus/unison treatment: split the signal with a crossover, process only the high band with the stacked delay chorus, and pass the low band through mostly untouched.
A quick stock-device substitute for Hyper is Bitwig Chorus+ with about 8 voices, adjusting speed and depth to taste; the transcript notes that the result is very close, with differences mostly coming from parameter choices.
Serum’s Dimension section is interpreted here as four short delay lines with slow amplitude modulation, not pitch modulation: use 4 voices, give each a slightly different delay time, modulate gain slowly with an LFO, and apply mild stereo panning for width.

Recreating Serum’s Hyper and Dimension Effects with Simple Modules in Bitwig Studio or VCV Rack

Serum’s Hyper/Dimension effect can be approximated with basic building blocks available in environments such as Bitwig Studio’s Grid or VCV Rack. The two halves of the effect are conceptually straightforward:

Hyper is essentially a multi-voice micro-delay chorus
Dimension is a pseudo-stereo widening effect built from short delay lines with slow amplitude modulation

The underlying ideas are documented in Serum’s manual and are simple enough to rebuild with standard delay, modulation, voice stacking, and panning modules.

What Hyper Does

According to the manual, the Hyper section is a micro-delay chorus with a variable number of voices, from 1 to 7. It also includes a retrigger option so the effect can restart on each MIDI note, which helps simulate a unison-style ensemble effect.

In practice, this means Hyper behaves like a dense chorus made from multiple slightly detuned or differently modulated copies of the signal. Historically, this kind of effect was useful for giving mono synths a wider, stereo character without needing multiple oscillators or expensive hardware.

Main Hyper controls

The transcript identifies these core parameters:

Rate: speed of modulation for the Hyper voices
Unison: number of chorus voices
Tune: amount of pitch movement or modulation depth
Retrigger: restarts modulation on each MIDI note
Mix: wet/dry blend

How to Approximate Hyper

A simple reconstruction starts with a short delay line whose delay time is modulated by an LFO. That modulation creates the subtle pitch drift associated with chorus.

Basic signal path

A minimal Hyper-style patch looks like this:

Input signal
Short delay
LFO modulating delay time
Duplicate that path across multiple voices
Offset the modulation per voice
Spread the voices in the stereo field
Sum and mix with dry signal

Why delay-time modulation creates chorus

When a delay time is modulated continuously, the delayed signal changes pitch slightly. That moving pitch offset is the core of traditional chorus. With only one modulated delay, the result is a simple chorus voice. With many such voices, the effect begins to resemble unison or ensemble processing.

Workflow for a Hyper-Style Patch in Bitwig Grid

1. Create a short modulated delay

Use a Delay module with a very short delay time and modulate it using a standard LFO. A sine LFO is the classic choice, though random modulation can also work well.

2. Stack the patch into multiple voices

Set the patch to 7 voices to match Serum’s maximum Hyper voice count. At this point, all voices will initially behave identically, which is not yet useful.

3. Apply per-voice modulation offsets

Enable per-voice modulation so each stacked voice can receive unique values.

Then use a Stack Spread modulator to distribute values across the voices. One effective use is to assign the spread to the phase of the LFO. That way, every voice runs at the same modulation speed but starts from a different point in the LFO cycle.

This already produces a recognizable unison-style spread.

4. Pan each voice differently

Add a Pan control after the delay path and use another Stack Spread modulator, this time in a bipolar range such as -1 to +1, to distribute voices across the stereo field.

Because pan is bipolar, this type of spread places each voice at a different point from left to right.

5. Consider random modulation instead of a regular LFO

Instead of a repeating sine LFO, a random modulation source can make the movement less predictable and more diffuse. This often feels smoother and less obviously cyclical.

It is also possible to vary the modulation speed per voice, rather than only the phase. That adds further variation, though too much difference can sound exaggerated.

Keep low frequencies out of the chorus

One useful improvement is to avoid modulating the bass region. Chorusing sub or bass frequencies often weakens the center image and can introduce undesirable movement in the low end.

A practical solution is:

Split the signal with a crossover
Leave the low band dry
Apply the Hyper-style modulation only to the high band
Recombine both bands at the output

A crossover point around 500 Hz was suggested as a workable starting point.

Control gain build-up

Summing many voices increases level significantly. Seven or more stacked voices can produce a large gain increase, so the patch should include gain compensation.

This can be handled with:

a gain module after summing
or more careful level management per voice

Without compensation, the processed version can sound “better” only because it is louder.

Increase voice count beyond Serum

Unlike Serum’s fixed Hyper voice count, a modular patch can be expanded beyond 7 voices. For example, 16 voices are possible in Grid. This makes the effect denser, though it also increases CPU load and raises the need for careful gain control.

How Close Is It to Serum?

A stock chorus such as Bitwig Chorus+ can already get quite close.

Using:

around 8 voices
suitable speed
suitable depth
proper wet/dry mix

produces a result that is very similar in character to Serum’s Hyper section. The differences largely come down to parameter tuning rather than a radically different algorithm.

A custom Grid patch offers more flexibility, especially for:

excluding low frequencies from modulation
choosing different modulation shapes
adjusting voice-specific behavior
extending voice count
taking advantage of Grid’s oversampling and routing options

What Dimension Does

The manual describes Dimension as a pseudo-stereo effect made from four delay lines, summed out of phase and slowly amplitude modulated to create subtle motion.

The goal is not obvious chorus pitch movement, but a gentle widening and diffusion of an otherwise mono signal.

How to Approximate Dimension

A practical reconstruction uses:

Multiple short delay lines
Slightly different delay times per voice
Slow LFO modulation of gain, not delay pitch
Slight stereo panning per voice

Core idea

Where Hyper relies on delay-time modulation and resulting pitch movement, Dimension appears closer to:

fixed or near-fixed short delays
slow movement in amplitude
phase interactions between channels
gentle left/right distribution

That combination creates width without sounding as obviously chorused.

Workflow for a Dimension-Style Patch

1. Use four voices

Set the patch to 4 voices to reflect the manual’s description of four delay lines.

2. Give each voice a slightly different delay time

Use a Stack Spread or equivalent distribution to assign different short delay values to each voice. The delays should remain subtle and close together.

3. Modulate gain slowly

Add an LFO and use it to modulate the gain of each voice. Keep the rate slow. A phase offset between voices helps ensure that not all voices rise and fall together.

This amplitude movement contributes to the subtle motion associated with the effect.

4. Apply gentle panning

Use another spread modulator to place the voices slightly across the stereo field. This should usually be more restrained than in the Hyper patch.

5. Compensate output level

As with Hyper, summing several voices adds level. A gain stage after the effect keeps comparisons fair and prevents loudness from masking the true character of the patch.

Practical Uses

A reconstructed Hyper/Dimension setup is useful for:

widening mono synths
creating a unison-like spread without heavy oscillator unison
preserving CPU compared with high unison settings
adding motion to static waveforms
keeping bass centered while widening only the upper spectrum

The Hyper-style patch is especially effective on simple waveforms such as a saw wave, where the chorus movement is immediately audible.

Limits

These reconstructions are approximations, not verified one-to-one clones.

A few caveats:

Serum’s exact internal implementation is not fully exposed in the manual
matching loudness is essential when comparing results
different modulation settings can make two similar algorithms sound more different than they really are
filters, delays, and crossover stages alter phase, so phase plots are not especially useful here
the exact meaning of some Dimension parameters, such as how “size” maps internally, remains uncertain from listening alone

Even so, the overall architecture is clear enough to reproduce the essential behavior convincingly.

Bottom Line

Serum’s Hyper can be recreated effectively as a multi-voice modulated micro-delay chorus with per-voice phase or speed offsets and stereo spread. A standard chorus such as Bitwig Chorus+ already gets close, especially with several voices and moderate depth.

Serum’s Dimension can be approximated with four short delay lines, slight per-voice variation, slow amplitude modulation, and restrained stereo panning.

For quick results, a built-in chorus may be sufficient. For more control, especially over stereo distribution, modulation behavior, and frequency-dependent processing, a modular environment such as Bitwig Grid offers a more flexible and often more refined approach.

Transcript

This is the transcript of the video. The text was generated automatically and may contain small mistakes. The timestamps jump to the matching part of the video.

Click to expand transcript

[00:00:00] So recently someone asked me if it's possible to recreate the hyper and dimension effect of 0 and 2 with some simple modules, maybe inside of Bitwig Studio or VCV REC.
[00:00:11] And yes, this is kind of possible because hyper is kind of a chorus and dimension is something like an amplitude modulation.
[00:00:20] And I know that because it's in the manual.
[00:00:24] So the manual says your hyper dimension, the hyper dimension module is a micro delay chorus with the variable number of voices 1 to 7.
[00:00:32] So it's a 7 voice chorus.
[00:00:35] In addition, you can configure the hyper dimension effect to retrigger on every MIDI note, which adds a potential simulation of unison.
[00:00:42] Conserve CPU, consider using the hyper effect as an alternative to high unison settings.
[00:00:48] So back in the day when everything was very expensive on hardware, you could just use this kind of effect on mono synthesizers and then have some kind of stereo effect.
[00:01:00] So we have a rate knob here, speed of each various hyper voices, oscillate, unison, the number of chorus voices, the tune, the amount depth of the hyper voice oscillation, so it's the modulation depth, retrigger, mix level.
[00:01:15] OK, so this is hyper.
[00:01:18] So first I show you how it sounds.
[00:01:20] So bring down here the mix of hyper and we have here just a very simple saw.
[00:01:42] So it sounds like a chorus, right?
[00:01:44] You can almost just use the chorus of Bitwig Studio, chorus plus and use, let's see, 8 voices here.
[00:01:54] Then bring up the mix.
[00:02:11] It gives you already kind of the same sound.
[00:02:15] It's a bit, not a bit loud.
[00:02:23] But it's kind of the same sound.
[00:02:25] I mean, it's not very different.
[00:02:28] But if you want to recreate this in the grid, you can do this also.
[00:02:34] And here you have more options, you can do more things or things differently for a different sound.
[00:02:42] So what the chorus does is it probably uses a delay like that.
[00:02:48] It modulates this delay with an LFO.
[00:02:52] So let's go for the classic LFO.
[00:02:55] And we modulate the delay time like this and it sounds not very different, probably just, you know, a pitch modulation.
[00:03:08] But that's what we want.
[00:03:09] We want to have a pitch modulation.
[00:03:11] We want to have multiple voices and each voice has a different pitch kind of or different pitch modulation.
[00:03:17] So at the moment we have only one voice and the effect of zero has a maximum of seven.
[00:03:25] So we go here maybe to seven already.
[00:03:27] So we have this seven times.
[00:03:29] So we duplicated the seven times.
[00:03:31] So we have seven voices doing the same delay, doing the same delay modulation.
[00:03:36] That's not what we want.
[00:03:37] We want to have a different modulation on each voice.
[00:03:39] We select the modulator, go to the left side and use per voice.
[00:03:43] So now you can see we have seven dots now, which indicates we have the same modulation on seven voices.
[00:03:51] That's also not what we want.
[00:03:53] We want to have a different modulation.
[00:03:55] So we use here a stack modulator or a stack spread modulator like this.
[00:04:01] And it says zero two plus one, which is okay, which means it spreads out the numbers between zero and one for each voice differently.
[00:04:14] So we can modulate here, let's say the face.
[00:04:17] It looks like this.
[00:04:19] Let's go to 100.
[00:04:22] 100%.
[00:04:23] So now each voice has the same LFO, the same LFO speed, but a different starting point inside of the face of the LFO sequence.
[00:04:34] So already sounds like a unison setting.
[00:04:52] Okay.
[00:04:53] So now that we have this, we need to spread it out in the stereo field or on the stereo pen or we need to set every voice to a different pen setting.
[00:05:04] Or we want to place it differently in the stereo spectrum.
[00:05:07] I don't know how to call it.
[00:05:08] You know what I mean.
[00:05:09] So we bring in here a pen knob.
[00:05:14] So again, this whole patch here is duplicated virtually seven times.
[00:05:19] And what we do here with the stack spread is basically that we give each voice a different parameter, a different value, a different modulation.
[00:05:30] So now we use another stack spread here, a second one, because here we don't want to use zero two plus one.
[00:05:38] We want to use minus one to plus one.
[00:05:40] This is the modulation value.
[00:05:42] So we can modulate now the pen knob by 100%.
[00:05:49] And because we say minus one to plus one and we modulate this by 100%, and the pen knob here has a parameter range of minus one to plus one.
[00:05:57] So it's bipolar.
[00:06:00] It goes in both directions, negative and positive.
[00:06:03] And this is negative and positive, right?
[00:06:06] We modulate this by one percent.
[00:06:08] We spread it out over seven voices equally.
[00:06:11] So each voice lands in a different spot in the stereo pen or stereo field.
[00:06:18] Sounds like this.
[00:06:20] This is mono.
[00:06:29] 100%.
[00:06:37] Okay, so it's still a bit evenly because we have here this LFO.
[00:06:44] And if you like the sound, you can leave it, but you can also switch this here to randomized or random.
[00:06:51] So now each voice gets a different random modulation.
[00:06:56] As you can see here, it's not that evenly, even more, and it sounds probably better.
[00:07:08] We can also say we want to have not only in each voice a different phase position, which makes no sense anymore because it's random now.
[00:07:20] But we can also say we want to have a different speed on different voices, right?
[00:07:25] You can see here it's still low and the higher we go in voices, the faster the modulation appears to be.
[00:07:33] But it's maybe a bit too much.
[00:07:36] Let's go for this.
[00:07:38] You can also switch this back here to LFO to a sine wave, which is probably also okay.
[00:07:50] So it has more like a diffused character.
[00:08:04] It's not like you can, or your brain figure out, oh, there is some kind of pattern, right?
[00:08:11] So this is more complicated and it diffuses the signal better, in my opinion.
[00:08:16] But you can do whatever you want, whatever you like.
[00:08:19] Maybe you like the sound of having a repeatable pattern, right?
[00:08:23] And you can recognize there is actually something repeating.
[00:08:28] Okay, so now that we have this, what else can we do?
[00:08:33] We can say maybe it is a bit too loud because we have seven voices here, duplicated or summed together.
[00:08:42] Like this.
[00:08:46] And also problem is probably when we use your EQ Curve Analyzer like this.
[00:08:53] You can see it's pretty loud.
[00:08:58] Without, we have a nice signal here, 0 dB.
[00:09:02] And then we amplify here the signal very much.
[00:09:05] So let's bring in a gain knob, bring the gain down.
[00:09:11] And we can also influence here the sound heavily and where we modulate by the initial delay time here.
[00:09:21] And we can also increase the voice tag here to 16 voices instead of just seven.
[00:09:30] So what we can do now is we can just remove the low end from the whole equation.
[00:09:37] Because you probably don't want to have a pitch modulation in the bass on the sub frequencies.
[00:09:42] So we can use a crossover, which is also not possible in the Serum effect because there you modulate the sub and top end.
[00:09:54] So here we use a crossover and we maybe want to set the crossover frequency to, I don't know, 500 hertz.
[00:10:01] You can see we have here the modulation only at the top end.
[00:10:05] Low end does nothing because we connect this now, mix low end goes in, top end goes in output.
[00:10:15] And you can see we have a lot of gain here because we use 16 voices.
[00:10:19] We use 16 times the low end and add it together to increase the gain, of course.
[00:10:25] We can pull down here the gain to make it back to normal or we can use the voice talk thing here like this.
[00:10:34] Put it in there and say we only want to pass through the first voice and the other voices, you know, just muted.
[00:10:43] And then we can put this here on the roti B. You can see it's perfectly straight line.
[00:10:50] Okay, so now we only have unison on the top end and the low end here is pretty fine.
[00:10:56] Don't talk about the face because this is fucked up anyway because we have a filter in here and, you know, and doing a lot of delay and filtering.
[00:11:05] So yeah, don't talk about the face.
[00:11:09] Yeah, but you can keep the bass out of the equation, which is probably nice to have.
[00:11:16] So with this, we have already kind of a better way of creating unison.
[00:11:28] So this one is much louder.
[00:11:30] We don't compensate here for the for the gain or maybe we use zero dB or it's actually always minus six, right?
[00:11:41] Something like this.
[00:11:42] Okay, let's put this into a chain.
[00:11:46] Then we can listen here to the sound.
[00:11:59] Yeah, it adds here 15 dB of loudness, just having the effect on so they don't compensate basically for the loudness.
[00:12:08] So that's that.
[00:12:10] Then we put this into FX layer, maybe switch this to FX selector.
[00:12:16] So this is serum.
[00:12:20] Then use our FX grid here, the grid version and use maybe chorus plus all the way up.
[00:12:31] Maybe put a chain on that too.
[00:12:33] So we are on equally testing grounds here.
[00:12:38] Let's use the chain or this is the chorus plus.
[00:12:56] Okay, that's nice.
[00:12:57] Then we have the grid version here.
[00:12:59] We also use a chain, put this in there and let's test this one.
[00:13:16] Okay, this one is more detuned because I have to tune all the way up.
[00:13:37] So I would say sound wise it's kind of the same thing, it depends on what you dial in on the settings, on the tuning and the starting offset.
[00:13:48] I would even say the grid sounds the best because of the over sampling and because we can leave out here the bass frequencies or the low end frequencies.
[00:13:58] And also with the grid you have a lot of influence on how it sounds by just changing what I said here on delay.
[00:14:28] So you have more influence on how you want to have it to sound.
[00:14:43] Okay, chorus plus is also pretty fine.
[00:14:46] Just use that.
[00:14:47] If you just need this hyper effect, use chorus plus, use eight voices here, change the speed setting and the depth and you're good to go.
[00:14:57] Very minimal difference, but the difference is only because I have different settings in zero and chorus plus.
[00:15:26] But in my opinion, it sounds kind of the same.
[00:15:30] It's the same thing.
[00:15:32] I put you the grid version here also in the description below if you want to use that.
[00:15:39] Yeah, okay, let's go maybe here to the dimension thing.
[00:15:46] So this one is a bit different.
[00:15:48] I think this is just a modulation of the volume instead of the pitch.
[00:16:07] I don't know, let's use here the analyzer again and see what's happening there.
[00:16:22] It could be that the size is actually the delay time again and then it modulates the loudness, not really sure.
[00:16:41] Okay, let's try it out.
[00:16:43] Let's disable this.
[00:16:46] Let's use the NFX grid.
[00:16:51] So the manual says dimension effects is pseudo stereo effect consisting of four delay lines summed out of phase and slowly amplitude modulated to provide a subtle amount of motion to the effect.
[00:17:06] This is useful for adding perceived width to an otherwise mono signal size as an extra layer of phase delays.
[00:17:15] I don't know what this means if you actually can increase the number of delays, but it says here it's actually only four delay lines.
[00:17:25] So I don't know what this means.
[00:17:28] So let's use a delay time and then use four voices.
[00:17:41] Each voice gets a different delay time, I would say something like this.
[00:17:52] First voice is pretty short.
[00:18:03] And then we modulate the LFO very slowly, let's use the classic.
[00:18:14] First voice and then we modulate here the gain, maybe.
[00:18:30] And we change the phase here to 75 maybe.
[00:18:39] So only one voice is only all the way up.
[00:19:01] This is better. And then not too fast, just very slow.
[00:19:09] And then we need to have a pan also probably.
[00:19:15] And then we do the same thing here, stack spread minus one plus one.
[00:19:20] Just make it pan just by 25% or something, not too much.
[00:19:36] It sounds kind of a bit more diffused.
[00:19:42] We need to compensate here for the loudness probably.
[00:19:56] Okay, that's okay. And here we compensate again.
[00:20:10] Yeah, the phase is probably different.
[00:20:14] Let's see, we have 75.
[00:20:32] I think 75 is fine.
[00:20:36] Maybe we use more voices.
[00:20:54] Maybe it's better instead of going up, going down.
[00:21:20] I would say this goes also in the same direction, maybe some of the settings are not correct.
[00:21:28] But this sounds more diffused. It even sounds like there's an all-pass delay or something on that.
[00:21:52] Yeah, maybe it's more like that.
[00:21:54] Okay, so this would be dimension.
[00:21:58] I would say this is something like that.
[00:22:00] So just multiple voices and just delaying each voice slightly and then modulating the loudness or the gain of each voice with an LFO.
[00:22:12] So we have like a movement in there and also pan settings.
[00:22:16] So each voice is differently panned slightly.
[00:22:18] So we have this stereo effect.
[00:22:20] Yeah, so I put this in the description below if you want to download this, of course, it's not much.
[00:22:26] You can build this for yourself in a few minutes if you want to.
[00:22:30] But I put it in the description below or on my dispenser so you can download all this stuff.
[00:22:36] So yeah, if you have some critique, some feedback, let me know.
[00:22:42] Maybe you already tried to rebuild this and have a much better understanding of what's going on.
[00:22:48] Let me know, but this is what I came up with on the fly.
[00:22:54] Okay, by just reading the manual and listening to the sound.
[00:22:58] Anyway, thanks for watching. See you next time. Bye.

Polarity SC Update: Curve Matching and Threshold Presets

polarity — Fri, 22 May 2026 02:00:00 GMT

Tutorial | Mai 22, 2026

Learn how Polarity SC spectral compressor uses threshold curve presets, curve matching, and a corrected pink-noise analyzer to tame resonances fast.

You can watch the Video on Youtube
Polarity-SC Download & Website
Support me on Patreon if you like what you hear.
Download Presets, Tools and Projects on my Dispenser

Quick Answer

Polarity SC is a free, open-source spectral compressor/suppressor for Windows, macOS, and Linux, currently available as VST3 and CLAP plugins; AU is not available yet.
The new update adds threshold curve presets such as equal loudness, drum bus, master bus, and bass bus, so useful spectral compression shapes can be loaded quickly.
It now supports custom threshold curves: draw or paint a curve, save it as a preset, reload it later, and delete custom presets when no longer needed.
A new Match feature analyzes incoming audio for about 5 seconds and creates an average frequency curve from the material, helping suppress resonances without broadly changing the track’s overall EQ balance.
The analyzer was updated to be more accurate and easier to read: pink noise now displays as a straight line, threshold slope values now show real dB-per-octave values, and the UI includes tooltips plus a more compact layout.

Short Overview

Polarity SC is a free, open-source spectral compressor and spectral suppressor for Windows, macOS, and Linux, available in VST3 and CLAP formats. It matters in practice because spectral dynamics processing can control resonances and harsh peaks more precisely than broad EQ, helping keep tonal balance intact while reducing unstable or overly dynamic frequency content.

The latest update adds threshold curve presets, savable custom curves, and a curve-matching function that captures the average spectrum of incoming material for more transparent suppression. It also improves analyzer calibration so pink noise displays as a straight line and threshold values reflect real dB-per-octave behavior, making setup clearer and results easier to trust in mixing and bus processing.

Key Takeaways

Polarity SC is a free, open-source spectral compressor / spectral suppressor available on Windows, macOS, and Linux as VST3 and CLAP only; AU is not planned in the next few months due to implementation complexity.
The update adds predefined threshold curve presets for common use cases, including equal loudness, drum bus, master bus, and bass bus, so the threshold shape can be loaded quickly instead of drawn manually.
Users can now draw custom threshold curves and save, reload, reuse, or delete them as presets directly from the preset menu.
A new Match function listens for about five seconds and generates a threshold curve from the average frequency content of the current material, which can then be saved as a reusable preset.
A practical workflow is to match the source spectrum first, then set compression to act only slightly above that matched curve, which helps suppress dynamic resonances or peaky outliers without broadly reshaping the EQ balance.
The analyzer has been corrected so pink noise displays as a straight line, aligning the visualization with tools like FabFilter Pro-Q, instead of showing the previous slight tilt.
The threshold slope and related controls now display absolute values, with 3 dB per octave shown as the true straight-line pink-noise reference; the threshold center / rotation point defines the frequency where the global threshold is anchored.
In sidechain compression mode, the default visual/threshold reference switches to a white-noise-style tilted display, which is presented as more suitable for sidechain tasks such as kick-to-bass interaction; the tilt can still be adjusted manually.

Polarity SC update: presets, curve matching, and improved analyzer behavior

Polarity SC is a free, open-source spectral compressor and spectral suppressor. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and is currently available in VST3 and CLAP formats. AU support is not currently planned in the near term because of the implementation overhead.

This update adds several workflow-focused features around threshold curves, improves analyzer behavior, and refines parts of the interface.

What it does

Polarity SC works as a spectral dynamics processor. Instead of compressing the whole signal with one broadband detector, it analyzes the signal across frequency bands and suppresses or compresses energy selectively by frequency. In practice, this makes it useful for taming resonances, controlling harsh or peaky content, and shaping dynamic spectral balance without relying entirely on static EQ.

A key part of that workflow is the threshold curve: a frequency-dependent threshold that determines where compression or suppression begins across the spectrum.

New features

Threshold curve presets

The plugin now includes predefined threshold curve presets for common use cases, including:

Equal loudness curve
Drum bus
Master bus
Bass bus

These presets provide starting points for different material types and can be used immediately without manually drawing a curve.

Custom curve presets

User-drawn threshold curves can now be saved and recalled as presets. This makes it possible to:

draw or paint a custom threshold shape
save it for later use
reload it on other tracks or sessions
delete presets that are no longer needed

This is especially useful when a particular threshold profile works well across similar sources.

Curve matching

A new Match function analyzes the current material for about five seconds and builds an averaged frequency curve from the measured bins. That resulting curve can then be used as a threshold reference and saved as a preset.

This helps when the goal is not to EQ the source into a different tonal balance, but to preserve its overall spectrum while controlling only excessive or unstable peaks. In that workflow, the matched curve acts as a baseline, and compression can be applied only to energy that rises above it.

How it works

Matching the source spectrum

Curve matching measures the average spectral distribution of the incoming audio and turns it into a threshold shape. This can be useful because spectral suppressors often start acting like dynamic EQ when gain reduction becomes heavy. That may be desirable sometimes, but not always.

With a matched threshold curve, the processor can be set up to:

follow the existing spectral average of the source
suppress only dynamic outliers above that average
retain the overall tone more naturally

This is a practical way to tame resonances or excessive peaks while keeping the source close to its original balance.

Threshold center and slope

The update also clarifies how threshold controls behave.

Threshold center is the anchor frequency for the global threshold value.
Threshold slope defines how the threshold tilts across the spectrum, expressed in dB per octave.

The interface now displays these values as real, absolute values rather than offset-style values. A straight line in the current pink-noise-oriented view corresponds to 3 dB per octave, which aligns with common expectations for spectral displays.

Improved analyzer behavior

One of the most important technical changes is the analyzer calibration.

Previously, feeding pink noise into the plugin produced a slightly tilted display. That behavior has been corrected. The analyzer now shows pink noise as a straight line, which aligns more closely with the visual conventions used in many modern EQ and analyzer plugins.

This matters because pink noise is often used as a perceptual reference in audio tools. A display that renders pink noise as flat is generally easier to interpret for tonal balance work.

The update also changes the background bin display so that the visual scaling reflects real values more clearly.

Pink noise and white noise behavior

The plugin now defaults to a pink-noise-oriented presentation for its main spectral view, where:

pink noise appears flat
white noise appears tilted

This is intentional and generally more useful for mixing-oriented analysis.

However, in sidechain compression mode, the display switches to a white-noise-oriented tilt by default. That may be more practical for some sidechain applications, such as kick-to-bass interaction. The tilt can still be changed manually if needed.

Workflow

A typical workflow with the new features looks like this:

Load Polarity SC on a track or bus.
Start with a predefined threshold curve preset if the source fits a common category such as drums, bass, or master bus.
Alternatively, press Match to capture the average spectrum of the current material.
Use the resulting curve as the baseline threshold.
Apply compression or suppression so that only material exceeding that line is reduced.
Save the resulting custom curve if it is useful for reuse on similar sources.

This makes the plugin more practical both as a quick-start tool and as a more deliberate spectral control device.

The update also includes several UI improvements:

a more compact layout
tooltips and parameter help overlays
FFT window controls arranged in a single row
clearer presentation of technical parameters such as analysis resolution and FFT settings

These changes do not alter the core function of the plugin, but they make the interface less cluttered and easier to interpret, especially for settings that many users adjust only occasionally.

Practical uses

These additions make Polarity SC easier to use in several scenarios:

Resonance control: suppress narrow, dynamically excessive frequency content without imposing a strong static EQ curve
Bus shaping: use predefined threshold curves for drum, bass, or master material
Material-adaptive control: match the source spectrum and compress only peaks above its own average balance
Preset-based workflows: build and reuse curve libraries for recurring source types

Limits

Current plugin format support is limited to:

VST3
CLAP

AU is not currently available.

The update focuses on threshold curve handling, analyzer calibration, and interface clarity. No other major processing changes are described beyond those display and workflow improvements.

Summary

This Polarity SC update makes the plugin easier to deploy in real sessions and more predictable to read visually. The key additions are:

predefined threshold curve presets
saveable custom threshold curves
spectrum-based curve matching
corrected analyzer behavior for pink noise
clearer value representation for slope and threshold controls
small but useful UI cleanup

Together, these changes make Polarity SC more practical as a spectral taming tool that can preserve tonal balance while controlling dynamic frequency build-up.

Transcript

This is the transcript of the video. The text was generated automatically and may contain small mistakes. The timestamps jump to the matching part of the video.

Click to expand transcript

[00:00:00] So this plugin has some new features I want to show you in this video, but before I start
[00:00:06] I give you a quick overview.
[00:00:08] So polarity SC is a spectral compressor or a spectral suppressor, which is completely
[00:00:16] free, open source, it works on all platforms, Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and is available as
[00:00:22] a VSE 3 and clap plugin.
[00:00:25] Some people want AU, but it's not something I can implement in the next few months or
[00:00:29] so.
[00:00:30] It's a heavy task.
[00:00:31] Okay.
[00:00:32] So only VSE 3 and clap at the moment.
[00:00:34] So before we dive in into the new features, I want to give you a quick overview.
[00:00:38] What's new?
[00:00:39] So we have now threshold curve presets, predefined ones, equal loudness curve, something for drum
[00:00:46] bus, something for the master bus, something for the bass bus and so on.
[00:00:50] Some predefined threshold curves here, right?
[00:00:54] Then we have custom curves you can save now as a preset so you can paint in or draw your
[00:00:59] own threshold curve, save it, reload it and reuse it.
[00:01:04] So some people wanted that.
[00:01:06] Then we have curve matching.
[00:01:09] We have now a button here called match and you can press the button and then it figures
[00:01:13] out after five seconds what the frequency curve is of the current material and then
[00:01:19] you have a new curve and you can save the curve, reload the curve, reuse it and so on.
[00:01:25] Then we have a clearer analyzer before we had like, when we played pink noise into the
[00:01:30] plug in, we had like a slightly tilted visual of these bins here and this is not, you know,
[00:01:39] this is not up to, I would say, industry standard.
[00:01:42] If you open up a Pro-Q4 and you play pink noise into it, it's a straight line on the
[00:01:48] visualizer.
[00:01:49] So I corrected that.
[00:01:50] So now it's a straight line for pink noise and also here these sliders represent the
[00:01:57] real value.
[00:01:59] Before that it was an offset.
[00:02:00] Now it shows you a 3 dB bar octave so it's an absolute value.
[00:02:04] It shows you exactly what you dialed in with the tilt setting for the threshold and also
[00:02:10] here some tooltips and some more compact layout for some of the sliders.
[00:02:18] So this is what I changed, the link to this website here is in the description below.
[00:02:22] You can just press download here or watch the video again and download here all binaries
[00:02:30] or go to GitHub or whatever you want to do it.
[00:02:33] Okay.
[00:02:34] So this is the quick overview and I want to show you how this looks like in Bitwig here.
[00:02:38] So here we have already a track loaded.
[00:02:43] Sounds like this.
[00:02:44] And you can choose for instance something like equal loudness curve then compress it or choose
[00:03:01] something different - drum bars, bass bars, smoothing, clear that.
[00:03:20] So this is the preset, predefined presets.
[00:03:25] We can also now hit here let's say match and then it says matching curve and then it gives
[00:03:30] you after five seconds an average of each of these bins here as a curve, as a frequency
[00:03:37] curve and this is very helpful if you don't want to EQ your tracks because sometimes if
[00:03:44] you use these resonance suppressors a lot or with heavy gain reduction you're almost
[00:03:51] or mostly EQing so you change the EQ or the overall spectrum which is not always what
[00:03:57] you want.
[00:03:58] Because sometimes just want to suppress some resonances.
[00:04:02] So with this you can figure out what's my frequency average at the moment and then say
[00:04:09] slightly downward compress everything that goes over this line.
[00:04:14] So you can only suppress very heavy dynamic material or peaky outliers going over the threshold
[00:04:25] and then you can bring it back.
[00:04:27] So we can tame more or less or exactly tame that's usually what you want to do with these
[00:04:33] kind of tools to tame your frequencies and bring everything down to a normal state I
[00:04:40] would say.
[00:04:41] Okay, so this is the curve we can also clear this here.
[00:04:45] We can maybe do match again just for the lows and then say this is my frequency curve and
[00:04:54] you can save this here let's say custom preset or maybe what's the name of this startup I
[00:05:02] think this track name let's call the startup save and then you have here a new entry inside
[00:05:08] of the preset box that you can use in other tracks or whatever.
[00:05:14] So this is not the end I have more ideas for this type of stuff for these curves here there's
[00:05:20] a lot of more features I want to implement but I give you the state of the plug in right
[00:05:25] now so you can try it out and give me feedback on some of the features before I implement
[00:05:30] a lot of things right and just not overwhelm everyone.
[00:05:38] Okay so this is the curve preset we have predefined ones like I said and also custom curves you
[00:05:44] can define here which is nice to have.
[00:05:47] You can also delete this stuff so for instance this one here I made this earlier hit delete
[00:05:52] then it's gone also this one I want to delete nice clear okay.
[00:05:59] So that's that smoothing is also still in from the last time I showed you this in the
[00:06:06] last video and I want to give you also here an idea of these sliders which are also new
[00:06:13] so you can see here this is the rotation point which gives you some kind of tool tip or overlay
[00:06:19] or help pop up however you want to call it threshold center is this frequency where the
[00:06:25] global threshold value is anchored which means if you turn this here right this is the anchor
[00:06:31] point and also this here the threshold slope shows you the real value so at the moment
[00:06:38] here it's a straight line which means it's 3 dB per octave before that in the original
[00:06:44] one let's call up this one it looks like this we have here threshold slope 0 dB per octave
[00:06:58] which is not true it's actually pink noise in the pink noise mode which means this line
[00:07:03] represents actually 3 dB per octave which is yeah pink noise so I want to show you this
[00:07:09] here with a test tone device that's called as a pink noise so you can see in the original
[00:07:19] one we have a slightly tilted visual which is not cool and here in this new update we
[00:07:26] have a straight line for pink noise which is whatever we plug in does right now if you open
[00:07:32] up the pre-prue Q4 for instance it also shows you a straight line for pink noise and there's
[00:07:44] a girl I think the pink noise of test tone is slightly it's not not you know standardized
[00:07:50] but you can see it's almost a straight line you can change this of course the tilt setting
[00:07:55] here in this plug-in but most people I would say keep it on 3 dB per octave maybe they
[00:08:01] change it for 4.5 dB per octave or 40 dB per octave they have more like a warm sound but
[00:08:07] usually it's 3 dB per octave so here in pink noise it's 3 dB per octave also here but here
[00:08:16] now it shows it that right and like I said in the beginning also change the visuals here
[00:08:22] for the bins in the background when we bring in here white noise it looks now tilted and
[00:08:30] here it's straight line so no one wants to mix with white noise I would say so it's much
[00:08:35] easier having this here slightly tilted for or adjusted for pink noise in my opinion a
[00:08:42] problem is when you switch this now to side chain compression it goes to this tilted setting
[00:08:50] here which is white noise which is probably better for yeah side chaining for instance
[00:08:58] kick with the bass or something like this so it's here tilted you can change this of
[00:09:03] course if you want to but the default state is white noise threshold curve here it's also
[00:09:10] different here it's a straight line so this is the difference between the original one
[00:09:15] and my new update I think mine is better or it's more what you expect from how these type
[00:09:23] of things work and it aligns better with what you see in other plugins so this is why I
[00:09:29] did it also here this is so white you can't even look at it anymore so white yeah so this
[00:09:40] is the difference and nothing else changed beside that I just made it more compact you
[00:09:46] can see also FFT window here is now in one row and it gets these kind of tooltips when
[00:09:52] you hover over these values to see what's going on because this is a very technical
[00:09:58] parameter it's not something you need to change all the time and you don't need to know what's
[00:10:03] going on there you can change the resolution of course for the bins how many bins you analyze
[00:10:09] and so on but most people probably don't change this too much they maybe go to four or change
[00:10:17] between two and four so I made this on one row so it's not cluttering up here the interface
[00:10:23] too much okay so this is what's new it's available right now on the website like I said let me
[00:10:31] know what you think what you experience if you have problems with this stuff download
[00:10:36] this here click the download button head over here and download the binaries and yeah that's
[00:10:43] that's the update for today and of course let me know what you want to have what you want
[00:10:47] to see as features I have a lot of features already noted from the last videos but still
[00:10:53] people come up with new stuff I know it you know it we all know it okay so that's it thanks
[00:11:00] for watching and I'll see you in the next video I would say next week see ya and have
[00:11:05] Have a great weekend!

This Patch Sounds Like a Blade Runner City Dreaming in the Rain

polarity — Sun, 17 May 2026 02:00:00 GMT

Music-Video | Mai 17, 2026

Blade Runner City with lots of rain! This patch is obviously inspired by Blade Runner.

Especially the scene where Deckard uses the ESPER image computer to analyze stuff. All the sounds are generated. I do sprinkle in a few samples from the movie here and there, but it’s mostly limited to the computer sounds and Deckard’s voice talking to the machine. Everything else comes from the synth.

For the weird sound effects, I used a feedback system that’s constantly clipping and overdriving itself, creating all kinds of strange artifacts. It kind of sounds like distant city noise... aircraft, traffic, that sort of thing. On top of that there are drones and pads running through a massive reverb. The FM bass also randomly plays a few notes from the current scale every now and then.

You can watch the Video on Youtube.
Support me on Patreon if you like what you hear.
Download Presets, Tools and Projects on my Dispenser

Signal Drift

Neon haze, endless rain, and a skyline that never quite sleeps, this patch wears its Blade Runner influence proudly. The mood lands somewhere between ambient music and late-night sci-fi daydream, with synths drifting like steam off wet pavement. It’s polished enough for serious sound design, but still has that slightly haunted glow that makes music production feel like wandering a future city after midnight.

Mesh Plugin Review: VST Patching and Feedback Loops

polarity — Fri, 15 May 2026 02:00:00 GMT

Tutorial | Mai 15, 2026

Learn what Mesh is, how it compares to VCV Rack and FL Studio Patcher, and how to build VST feedback, modulation, and sampler patches fast.

You can watch the Video on Youtube
msh website and download
Support me on Patreon if you like what you hear.
Download Presets, Tools and Projects on my Dispenser

Quick Answer

Mesh is a new modular VST patching environment launching May 25, designed mainly for routing existing VST instruments/effects, adding built-in modulators and utilities, and creating/shareable plugin patches.
It is not a visual coding system like Plug Data/Reaktor, not a VCV Rack-style Eurorack ecosystem, and not as fine-grained as Bitwig Grid; it’s closer to FL Studio Patcher with drag-and-drop plugin chains, modulation, and routing.
Key features include built-in modules such as oscillators, envelopes, LFOs, distortion, EQ, multiband compression, convolver, sampler, and random/dice generators, plus support for modulating both built-in tools and VST parameters.
A major focus is feedback sound design: Mesh lets users build feedback loops between effects, and includes an integrated sampler/buffer so experiments can be captured and dragged out to a DAW, sampler, or file.
Pricing mentioned: $149 preorder, rising to about $200 after launch; it comes in instrument and FX plugin versions, supports patch sharing through an account/login system, and is aimed at users who want more experimental plugin routing without learning a full modular programming environment.

Short Overview

Mesh is a new modular VST patching environment designed to route plugins in flexible signal chains, add built-in modulation, and create feedback-based sound design setups without requiring low-level visual programming. It sits closer to FL Studio Patcher than VCV Rack or Reaktor, making it practical for producers who want to combine existing VST instruments and effects with LFOs, random generators, envelopes, EQ, distortion, multiband processing, and convolution tools in one patch.

In practice, Mesh matters because it simplifies advanced plugin routing, makes feedback experiments more usable, and includes an integrated sampler for capturing and exporting results. It also supports patch sharing through an account-based browser, which makes it useful not just for building custom processing chains, but for exchanging reusable creative setups built around familiar third-party plugins.

Key Takeaways

Mesh is a modular patching host for VSTs rather than a low-level modular synth environment: it is positioned closer to FL Studio Patcher than to VCV Rack, Plug Data, Reaktor, or Bitwig Grid, with the main workflow centered on wiring together existing plugins plus built-in utility/modulation modules.
Two plugin formats are available inside the DAW: Mesh FX for audio-effect use and Mesh as an instrument, where the instrument version is intended to support polyphonic voice handling from MIDI input.
Creating a patch starts by double-clicking in the canvas to add modules; built-in modules include things like oscillators, envelopes, LFOs, distortion, multiband compression, EQ, sampler, convolver, and random/dice generators, alongside installed VST instruments and effects.
Modulation is assigned by dragging a modulator onto a target device and selecting a parameter from an overlay, allowing built-in modulators such as LFOs or macros to control both internal modules and third-party VST parameters.
The built-in oscillator supports additive and waveshaping-style sound design: it offers sine/saw/pulse/triangle/noise-style bases, editable harmonics/partials, and warp modes such as fold and soft clip, making it usable without external synth plugins.
Mesh supports feedback patching by routing plugin output back into earlier stages, including routing an effect like Supermassive or Serum FX back into itself, but the transcript notes the usual latency-dependent pitch behavior in feedback loops as a core limitation the software is trying to address.
An integrated sampler continuously captures experiments into a buffer, and recorded material can be selected and dragged into the DAW, a sampler, the hard drive, or turned into a convolver impulse, which makes unstable feedback/sound-design results easy to reuse.
There are some usability and behavior quirks in the current beta: selection uses Shift-drag rather than standard click-drag, the canvas pans by default, some plugins lack a dedicated expanded UI overlay, and a test with two oscillators using PM/FM appeared to reduce expected polyphonic behavior.

Mesh: a modular environment for patching VST plug-ins, modulation, and feedback

Mesh is a modular audio environment centered on patching existing VST instruments and effects together rather than building everything from tiny low-level modules. Its design sits somewhere between a modular host and a sound-design sandbox: it combines plug-in routing, built-in modulation tools, feedback experimentation, and patch sharing.

The current positioning is important. Mesh is not:

a visual programming language such as Plug Data or Reaktor
a Eurorack-style modular system built around many small paid modules, such as VCV Rack
a deeply fine-grained internal patching environment like Bitwig Grid, where complex devices are assembled from many low-level building blocks

It is closer in spirit to FL Studio Patcher: a place to connect plug-ins, insert utility modules, add modulation and randomness, and build reusable signal chains.

At the time described in the transcript, Mesh was in pre-order at $149, with an expected regular price of $200 after launch.

What It Does

Mesh focuses on three core ideas:

Patching VST plug-ins into modular signal chains
Adding built-in modules for modulation, dynamics, distortion, EQ, randomization, and synthesis
Making feedback workflows more accessible

It also includes an account system for uploading and downloading patches, suggesting that preset and patch sharing is a major part of the ecosystem.

Built-in modules mentioned in the transcript include:

oscillator
amplitude envelope
LFO
distortion
multiband compression
EQ
random generators such as a dice/number module
convolution
sampler
reverb
waveshaping and filter-related utilities

How It Works

Mesh can be loaded as either:

Mesh FX, an audio effect with audio input
Mesh, an instrument intended for note-triggered and polyphonic use

A new patch begins as an empty canvas. From there, modules or VST plug-ins are added by double-clicking into the workspace. Mesh appears to assist with routing automatically in some cases, reducing setup friction.

The interface includes:

a patch browser for downloading shared patches
upload capability for sharing patches
patch naming
layout and centering tools
account login
settings for plug-in locations and general behavior

The basic interaction model is modular:

MIDI connections carry note and control data
audio connections carry signal between instruments, effects, and output
modulation connections map sources such as LFOs or macros to parameters

Built-in synthesis and modulation

A simple starting patch can be created from built-in modules alone. For example:

an oscillator receives MIDI input
an amplitude envelope shapes loudness over time
the signal goes to audio output

The built-in oscillator supports more than a single basic waveform. The transcript shows:

sine
saw
pulse
triangle
noise
additional waveform editing via harmonic control

That makes it usable not only as a basic oscillator but also as a kind of additive oscillator, where overtones can be adjusted directly.

Warp modes are also available, with options such as folding and clipping-style transformations. These are timbral modifiers that reshape the waveform and introduce harmonics.

Modulation works by dragging a source such as an LFO onto a target module, then selecting a destination parameter from an overlay. This is conceptually similar to modulation assignment systems in modern synths and DAWs. The LFO appears to offer adjustable rate and shape controls, with a workflow resembling segment-based modulation tools.

Polyphony and FM/PM routing

Mesh supports polyphonic instrument behavior, but one specific patching example in the transcript produced unexpected results when combining two oscillators in a phase modulation (PM) or frequency modulation (FM) relationship.

The demonstrated setup was:

duplicate the oscillator
route MIDI into both oscillators
send the audio output of one oscillator into the PM or FM input of the other

This creates classic modulation synthesis behavior, where one oscillator modulates another at audio rate. However, in the example, playing multiple notes seemed to affect polyphony in a less predictable way. The exact reason was not established, so this should be treated as an observed behavior in that patch rather than a confirmed limitation.

Even so, the result was musically useful, especially for aggressive or bass-heavy sounds.

Morphing between plug-in states

A notable feature shown in Mesh is the ability to create A/B snapshots of a plug-in state and then morph between them.

In the example, Valhalla Supermassive was inserted into the patch. Mesh exposed two states:

A macro control could then be assigned to the plug-in’s morph parameter, allowing interpolation between the two saved states. This is especially useful for plug-ins with continuous parameters such as knobs.

A few caveats apply:

smooth interpolation works best for continuous controls
stepped controls such as switches or dropdowns remain quantized rather than smoothly blended

This kind of state morphing can turn a static effect into a performable sound-design tool.

Feedback as a core workflow

One of Mesh’s strongest differentiators is its emphasis on feedback routing.

Feedback occurs when a signal is routed from later in a chain back into an earlier point. This can create resonances, drones, unstable tones, and self-generating textures. In conventional DAW routing, feedback is often difficult or restricted because of latency and safety concerns.

The transcript notes the core technical problem: once signal travels through a processing chain and is sent back to the start, the chain’s latency affects the loop. That delay strongly influences the pitch and behavior of the feedback system, limiting what can be achieved.

Mesh attempts to make this kind of experimentation easier. One demonstrated example simply routed the output of a reverb-like effect back into its own input. Additional processing such as waveshaping could be inserted to increase energy in the loop and shape the resulting tone.

The outcome was an eerie, self-sustaining drone. Parameters such as delay time in the loop altered the perceived pitch, since the loop length determines the oscillation period.

An automatic gain option is also present, though its exact behavior was not fully established in the transcript.

Integrated sampler and capture workflow

Mesh includes an integrated sampler/buffer that continuously captures output from experiments. This is especially useful in feedback-based sound design, where interesting moments can be brief and difficult to reproduce exactly.

Captured material can be:

selected from the buffer
dragged directly into the DAW
dragged into a sampler
exported to disk
turned into convolution material

One example used the recorded audio to create a convolver, meaning the captured sound became an impulse-like source for convolution processing. Another example involved dragging the result into Bitwig’s sampler and attempting root-key detection for keyboard playback.

This makes Mesh not just a patching environment, but also a sound harvesting tool.

Workflow with third-party plug-ins

A central appeal of Mesh is the ability to use familiar VSTs in unfamiliar routing structures.

The transcript demonstrates this with:

Valhalla Supermassive
Serum FX

Because Serum FX accepts audio input, it can be placed inside a feedback loop and used as a multi-effect processor. In the example, its internal delay, Hyper/Dimension, flanger, EQ, and filters contributed to a more complex feedback texture.

A representative signal chain looked like this:

source or generated sound
into Serum FX
through convolver
through multiband compression
back into Serum FX
out to final output

This kind of circular routing is exactly where Mesh differs from ordinary linear insert chains in a DAW mixer.

Practical uses

Mesh appears especially well suited to the following tasks:

experimental sound design
feedback-based drones and resonators
nonlinear effect chains
modulating VST parameters from built-in sources
snapshot morphing between plug-in states
capturing and resampling accidental or emergent sounds
building reusable modular effect and instrument patches
sharing those patches with other users

It may be particularly attractive to producers who:

already own a library of VST plug-ins
want more flexible routing than a standard DAW insert chain allows
are curious about modular workflows but do not want a full visual programming environment
find systems like Reaktor or Plug Data too complex for quick experimentation

Limits and rough edges

The transcript also points to a few limitations or uncertainties:

The software was still in beta, and bugs were mentioned.
Some interface interactions felt unconventional, especially selection versus panning behavior.
Certain patching behaviors, especially around polyphony with oscillator modulation, were not fully clear.
Some plug-ins may expose only limited or awkward parameter interpolation, especially for stepped controls.
The overall price may feel high for users who are only casually interested.

There was also uncertainty about whether a trial version would be available.

Position in the market

Mesh occupies a specific niche. It is less about designing DSP from scratch and more about remixing the capabilities of existing plug-ins through modular routing. That makes it distinct from pure modular synthesis systems, code-based audio environments, or DAW-native devices.

The combination of:

VST-centered patching
built-in modulation and utility modules
feedback-friendly routing
integrated sound capture
community patch sharing

gives it a clear identity as a creative sound-design platform rather than a traditional modular programming environment.

Bottom line

Mesh looks like a strong fit for producers and sound designers who want to push their VST collection beyond standard linear signal chains. Its strongest ideas are the ease of routing plug-ins into modular structures, the snapshot-morph workflow, and the built-in support for feedback experimentation and resampling.

For users interested in strange textures, evolving effects, and self-generating patches, it offers a fast way to build complex systems without requiring the low-level construction style of more technical modular platforms.

Transcript

This is the transcript of the video. The text was generated automatically and may contain small mistakes. The timestamps jump to the matching part of the video.

Click to expand transcript

[00:00:00] So it looks like there's a new modular environment coming out pretty soon launching May 25th here
[00:00:06] It's called Mesh and before we dive in I know a lot of people say you need to start with the sound at the beginning of the video
[00:00:12] But I don't care
[00:00:14] So before we dive in I want to tell you what it is and what it's not
[00:00:18] So it's not a visual programming language like plug data or reactor
[00:00:23] It's also not something like a VCV rack where you have to use a lot of paid
[00:00:29] Small little Eurac modules. It's also not something like the grid where you need to patch up a lot of small little fine-grained
[00:00:37] Internal modules to create bigger patches. It's more like something like FL Studios patcher where you
[00:00:45] Create patches with your already in place VST plug ins and you add in built-in modules to
[00:00:54] Modulate and to create randomizations and so on. So here you can see there are built-on modules like distortion, multi-band compression
[00:01:02] Equeuing or you have like a dice number generator on LFO and then you can you know
[00:01:08] Modulate some parameters on your VST plug ins or on these other built-in modules
[00:01:15] So yeah, the main focus is really on patching VST plug ins
[00:01:20] Also sharing these patches here with others. So there's a log in or an account that comes with the bit the tool
[00:01:26] So you can upload and download other patches. That's also a main focus. Also, they try to tackle the problem with feedback
[00:01:35] So every time you use feedback, there's a problem where you have like a lot of latency from your chain
[00:01:41] For the processing of the chain and then you want to go back into the beginning of the patch
[00:01:48] And then you have this latency and then you are limited with the pitch you can achieve with that and so on so to try to tackle this
[00:01:53] There's also an integrated sampler that you can use so everything you do have every experiment is saved inside of this buffer
[00:02:02] and then you can select it and
[00:02:04] Drag it out into your door into your sampler into your or to your hard drive or whatever
[00:02:10] Yeah, so this is the main rundown and
[00:02:15] This is at the moment in pre-order here and it costs 149 bucks and the real price is 200 bucks
[00:02:22] I think after the lounge. Okay, so if you want to use this be quick
[00:02:27] So in bitwig we can use this here as a plug-in
[00:02:30] It's called mesh and there are two versions here mesh FX is audio effect
[00:02:35] So we have an audio input and this is an instrument where the main focus is of course
[00:02:40] When you press multiple notes on the keyboard you create multiple voices at the same time
[00:02:45] So this is something you need to do. So this is completely empty here
[00:02:50] We have a browser here at the top where we can download other patches from other people
[00:02:55] We don't want to do this now you can upload we can reorganize what's happening on the screen and you can center it on the main
[00:03:03] elements at the left side here we can name this patch we can say tutorial
[00:03:09] Valority or something like this. So this is the name of the patch. We have here some
[00:03:13] Settings to save and create a new patch report the bug change some settings. We can log in here with our
[00:03:21] Account or the plug-ins I have in their locations. So there's a lot of stuff you can change
[00:03:28] But we want to start here by creating a new thing in the empty
[00:03:38] Environment so you have to just double-click here
[00:03:40] You can see all the built-in modules and also your VST plug-in so you can filter on the left side for built-in
[00:03:46] instruments and
[00:03:48] VST plug-ins here or effects
[00:03:50] So we can start with built-in
[00:03:53] You can see there are a lot of modules already here in place. They're probably more coming soon. I have no idea what the plan is there
[00:04:00] So let's use here an oscillator
[00:04:03] You can see it's it's hooking up here already oscillator with the MIDI input and with the audio output
[00:04:09] And we have an amplitude envelope changing the level the loudness of the
[00:04:15] Oscillator so it's kind of you know similar to what you expect from the grid or maybe
[00:04:21] VCV rack we can play this here
[00:04:24] Already on the keyboard
[00:04:27] It's also polyphonic
[00:04:32] Okay, so this kind of rocks we can zoom in here with the mouse wheel
[00:04:38] Also in this these type of things we can zoom in. I think some of the plug-ins have a dedicated
[00:04:45] overlay
[00:04:48] Not this one here also not this one so you can double-click on that
[00:04:51] So you have the oscillator already has some neat features at the moment. It's here a sign
[00:04:59] Partial or sign wave. Yeah, and we can also switch this here to this kind of tool
[00:05:06] So we can change the harmonics if you want to if you don't like them
[00:05:11] The sign wave here, so it works a bit like serum in itself. We have all the overtones here
[00:05:18] Go down to 16
[00:05:22] So it's also like a yeah additive synthesizer if you want to call it this
[00:05:28] We also have an integrated saw
[00:05:30] force try noise and
[00:05:34] Whatever this is
[00:05:36] There are some warp modes. So let's go go back to sign here what modes a lot of staff fold, right?
[00:05:43] And then you get these additional knobs here. You can change soft clip
[00:05:47] So a lot of options with the oscillator already where you can
[00:05:52] Create sounds but we can also insert here. Let's say an LFO this one and
[00:05:58] Then you can drag it down
[00:06:01] To this device here, and then you get this parameter over
[00:06:05] Overlay where you can search what you want to mutilate
[00:06:08] For instance here the waveform, right? Then you have this mutilated. We can double-click this change the
[00:06:17] speed of the LFO or the shape of the LFO here
[00:06:22] I haven't tried this out already. But you get the idea. It's basically like segments in Bitwig and
[00:06:28] Then you mutilate stuff in here to remove this. I usually just
[00:06:34] Use remove modulation or you just click it once and then you delete and then it's gone
[00:06:41] Yeah, so this is basic stuff we can also create a second oscillator
[00:06:50] And by the way, I try to select everything here by just clicking and dragging but it's not working because you move the
[00:06:57] The whole view around in my opinion should be middle mouse button because I'm so used to how it works in the grid
[00:07:04] But here you can select by just holding down shift and then you can
[00:07:08] drag
[00:07:10] here this kind of
[00:07:12] Selection around it and then you hit control and D and we just duplicate this here
[00:07:18] Maybe you put this here and we
[00:07:20] Connect MIDI in here to this
[00:07:24] Yeah, MIDI in to MIDI in
[00:07:26] We can just double-click here and it makes a connection automatically, but we can also just click here and drag it
[00:07:33] It's also possible. So now we get the pitch from the
[00:07:37] From the MIDI input, of course on these two oscillators here. Maybe you move this over here
[00:07:44] And we have here an audio output
[00:07:48] And this audio output we can use for the PM input. So phase modulation or
[00:07:55] Frequency modulation if you want to do that. So I go for let's say PM first and you can see at the PM
[00:08:02] Knob gets highlighted or it's not grayed out anymore. So we can change the amount here
[00:08:09] Or maybe let's try
[00:08:16] Here FM. So now PM becomes unavailable and FM is enabled
[00:08:21] And then we change the octave here on this one
[00:08:26] Let's go back to PM
[00:08:31] But there's something wild going on when you have two oscillators in there and you play multiple notes
[00:08:40] It feels like the polyphony is is not available anymore and you just play
[00:08:46] Two notes at once. I have no idea. Maybe I need to switch something here, but this is basically one note
[00:08:52] And then I play two notes
[00:08:55] And it sounds like this, but just kind of cool. It sounds cool, but I don't know what's going on
[00:09:01] It's probably pretty nice for bass sounds if you want to do that
[00:09:11] So, yeah, we can change the envelope amplitude envelope which has an influence on when and how
[00:09:17] You phase modulate the first one
[00:09:20] Then we go and go to warp mode here Jaby Jaff maybe warp this a bit
[00:09:39] Okay, so
[00:09:41] Yeah, you can do a lot of things already just with the build in module
[00:09:46] So you don't need to use the VST plugins, but you can use the VST plugins if you want to so I want to use your maybe a
[00:09:55] supermassive
[00:09:58] Reverb right then I just move this over here and it's doing some of the connections alone
[00:10:04] I don't need to press anything. It just you know does it could also puts it in between here
[00:10:10] The connections can double click you can open up the
[00:10:14] Reverb here and we maybe use let's say
[00:10:18] Reverb here, let's see all the sounds
[00:10:28] Okay, also interesting with this plug-in is that you have multiple
[00:10:34] What's the name?
[00:10:37] Snapshots you have like a and B here, right? So you can say oh this setting here everything I dialed in this is
[00:10:45] Setting a and then I dial in a different setting maybe this delay time here very short delay time
[00:10:53] This is B
[00:10:56] and then you can do something like
[00:10:59] What can we do here use a macro?
[00:11:02] so this is just a knob and
[00:11:05] You move this over here and then there's this morph thing
[00:11:09] So this basically fades between the two states between a and B
[00:11:14] With this knob here
[00:11:23] Right so this is a long delay time and this is the short delay time here the second a snapshot and if you want to redo this
[00:11:31] You just dial in here. I don't know a different setting
[00:11:35] Can we can we go actually to one this is the long delay time so I can say this is a I want to use maybe this
[00:11:42] Oh, it's okay. I see
[00:11:44] You probably have to clear a and then you dial in a
[00:11:50] Different setting here
[00:11:53] Like this and then you hit a
[00:11:55] so now we have
[00:11:57] Two different settings so you can morph between different states of a plug-in and it's not available on
[00:12:04] Supermassive is on available on all
[00:12:07] VST plug-ins, of course
[00:12:10] We have like these
[00:12:12] Linear movements if you have a switch right where they switch between different types or like it
[00:12:20] What's the name a drop-down or something like this? Of course, you can interpolate between these settings
[00:12:26] It's always stepped. It's always quantized. But if you have these knobs here, we have like a
[00:12:31] Linear movement in there. You can do this pretty easily. So instead of a macro you can of course use here an LFO if you want to
[00:12:39] Something like this
[00:12:42] I'm connected to morph
[00:12:46] I think these these type of things add up if I'm not wrong and double click this hurts make it slow
[00:12:55] So yeah, I have a constant movement now
[00:12:59] Yeah, it's constantly modulating
[00:13:10] Okay, so now that we have this we can go to
[00:13:16] Feedback so we can just go out of the supermassive and back into the supermassive and
[00:13:22] It adds here some kind of delay because you always need to delay because delay kind of decides how
[00:13:29] How big the
[00:13:33] What's what's the name?
[00:13:36] The wave cycle is how long?
[00:13:39] So to show that the wave cycle is of course the higher the pitches
[00:13:44] So let's try this out. So there's also here an automatic game knob
[00:13:48] Maybe we bring in here wave shaper to make it with louder. Yeah, let's do this
[00:14:13] And
[00:14:15] Which creates already a sound without having a sound playing
[00:14:43] Maybe we delete this and keep it static
[00:14:47] Yeah, so you get a nice little eerie drone
[00:15:01] There's also here
[00:15:05] Auto gain out to automatically integrate it so you can press out again. I don't know what it does
[00:15:10] It probably changes the output
[00:15:13] Gain or matches the output gain to the input gain, which is not really helpful here
[00:15:18] But yeah, there's auto gain included diff only. I think this is Delta
[00:15:23] If I'm not wrong, I haven't tried it
[00:15:26] So yeah feedback possible with this and as we talked about this here
[00:15:35] This is already recorded all the time so you can just select this and then drag it out into your door if you want to do that
[00:15:42] Of course, we can create a convolver with this
[00:15:46] Save it to library. So there are already a lot of use cases included or
[00:15:52] Pretty easy accessible from the get-go. So you don't need to do that much
[00:15:58] So yeah, this is feedback here. So let's do something different
[00:16:05] Let's delete all of that here and let's create. Let's say a serum a lot of people use serum
[00:16:12] You can use serum, but you can also use just serum FX
[00:16:17] which is an
[00:16:20] Version of serum but the audio input
[00:16:22] So let's use that and
[00:16:25] You can connect your the media in to serum FX
[00:16:30] And the only difference is here that oscillator A and B is just disabled
[00:16:35] We can also enable just noise here and use
[00:16:39] analog
[00:16:42] Some kind of random noise
[00:16:44] Let's see
[00:16:46] So yeah, we can make this pretty short
[00:16:52] And do the same thing here with the delay is there actually
[00:16:59] We have a convolver we can use and we can use
[00:17:03] Multi-band compression
[00:17:11] And we go maybe into convolver then a multi-band compression and then we go back into
[00:17:18] Serum FX because it's an audio effect. So it has audio input
[00:17:24] It doesn't do that much, but you can put then here effects on the feedback coming back into the plug-in again
[00:17:32] Maybe let's do this short
[00:17:35] Yeah, okay so far so good
[00:17:46] Maybe we don't want to have the pure output of the serum FX
[00:17:50] We just want to go through every effect and then we go out
[00:17:55] Sounds maybe a bit better
[00:17:57] And here we put hyper dimension on it and the flanger and maybe an EQ
[00:18:25] So it gives you already a nice sound
[00:18:28] Maybe we make the delay time a bit longer so the pitch goes down
[00:18:52] Kind of nice probably not for you, but can we actually insert here?
[00:18:59] Or is it is it in there
[00:19:05] Remove your song of the resonances
[00:19:20] Yeah, but then the whole fun is going out of the window, right if we remove the resonances from the resonances, I mean
[00:19:27] So yeah, so this is a small little
[00:19:40] Interesting what you lie environment and you probably have a lot of fun with this if you are into feedback and sound design
[00:19:49] and creating
[00:19:51] very
[00:19:54] Interesting
[00:19:55] patches with VST plugins or you're kind of bored with your linear setup of
[00:20:00] Having VST plugins just in a linear way where I have like a chain and you put it into the chain and that's it
[00:20:06] Or if you are not using Bitwig if you don't use able live or just something like Q-Base and you want to experiment more with VST plug-ins and
[00:20:16] weird patches
[00:20:18] this is maybe something for you, right and
[00:20:21] Yeah, also, maybe something for you if you don't if you if you're not into
[00:20:26] Plug data or reactor. I think this is way too complicated
[00:20:30] This is much much easier because you're used to your plug-ins and how they work and here you can use them in
[00:20:38] New ways I have to say
[00:20:42] Can we change at the convolver everything I change changes the sound because it's feedback
[00:20:49] You
[00:20:51] Maybe I bring in here in between super massive
[00:21:02] And maybe an EQ
[00:21:18] Maybe here
[00:21:20] SQ here secure
[00:21:23] Yeah, nice so you can use the FX here from serum just to create nice
[00:21:40] Feedback loops and use multi-panel also
[00:21:48] Oh
[00:21:50] Oscillator we have filter
[00:22:02] Yeah, serum was a lot of nice filters included moment
[00:22:10] Probably have to use
[00:22:19] Actually using the filter when you go with the audio in I haven't used serum with as an audio effect yet
[00:22:28] We probably have to activate something to use the filter
[00:22:31] But anyway, yeah, I want to show you this
[00:22:36] I'm not using this for too long. It's still in beta. There are some bugs
[00:22:41] But it's it's great to use and experiment experiment with certain
[00:22:49] VST plug-ins and effects. Oh, there's also reverb included here. What's that?
[00:22:54] Situations this is a sampler. There's also sampler in there
[00:22:59] Can we actually use here this stuff create convolver so we have a convolver from that what we just sampled
[00:23:08] Okay, that's too much
[00:23:18] But you get the idea, okay
[00:23:20] We can also modulate your stuff inside of serum FX if you want to so we can use an LFO
[00:23:27] Drag this in then you can see all the parameters here. We probably want to use the flanger
[00:23:34] flanger level
[00:23:38] Flager rate
[00:23:40] Yeah
[00:23:42] more or less
[00:23:44] This here exactly you can change the amount the position
[00:23:50] Of course here the speed setting
[00:23:54] I can't I was the overlay you can't move the overlay. Okay, I see
[00:24:15] Pretty fun, but also very expensive, but I think it's a it's a good idea to maybe do this
[00:24:27] So nice little eerie sound patch, maybe I try and put this here into the sampler does this work
[00:24:37] Yeah, nice
[00:24:42] So now we have this here in the bitwig sampler can detect root key if there's actually a root key and then you can play it on the keyboard
[00:24:50] Yeah, kind of works
[00:24:57] There's probably more stuff in here. I haven't showed you yet
[00:25:01] I just want to give try to give you a rough overview to see what to expect and what not to expect and
[00:25:09] Where it's actually positioned in the market. Well, there's also an organize button here and
[00:25:15] Reorganizes all my
[00:25:18] Nice, okay, I don't know why it puts the LFO up there, but I guess that's okay
[00:25:26] So, yeah focus on VST plug-ins and the focus on sharing and downloading patches and focus on
[00:25:34] creating feedback loops, so
[00:25:38] That's mesh for you. Okay, and so the link is in the description below if you want to try it out for yourself
[00:25:43] I don't know if there's actually a
[00:25:45] trial version
[00:25:47] I'm not sure probably not
[00:25:50] Maybe that is I don't know there's also discord and
[00:25:56] All the other informations, okay, I'm sure I'm pretty sure there are a lot of videos coming out
[00:26:02] From other creators trying this out and giving you ideas what to do with that, but I want to give you more or less
[00:26:10] just a raw
[00:26:12] Raw overview. Anyway, thanks for watching. See you next video and let me know what you think. See ya

Polarity-RES Video Review: Free Resonator Plugin (VST3, CLAP, AU) for Mac, Windows & Linux

polarity — Wed, 13 May 2026 02:00:00 GMT

Tutorial | Mai 13, 2026

Download Polarity-RES, a free resonator plugin for Mac, Windows, and Linux, to build bandpass filters, learn harmonics, and create drones.

You can watch the Video on Youtube
Download / Webpage of the Polarity-RES Plugin
Support me on Patreon if you like what you hear.
Download Presets, Tools and Projects on my Dispenser

Quick Answer

Polarity-RES is a free cross-platform resonator audio effect plugin for Windows, macOS, and Linux, available in VST3, CLAP, and AU formats; it creates up to 32 band-pass resonator bands from audio or noise.
The main use is turning any input into a resonant filter bank: click on the graph to add band-pass filters, right-click to remove them, and blend dry/wet to use it as anything from a subtle tone shaper to a strong resonator.
A standout feature is Learn/Hold analysis: freeze the input spectrum, detect prominent peaks, and auto-build resonator bands from them to copy harmonic content from drums, percussion, or tonal sounds.
It includes frequency offset, spread, stereo detune, steepness, resonance, noise input, output gain, and gain matching, so it can act as a drone/pad generator, dense room-style effect, reverb-like texture tool, or harmonic sound designer.
Two overlays make tuning easier: note/scale overlay snaps bands to notes in a chosen key, while harmonics overlay snaps to the overtone series from a fundamental; with MIDI pitch tracking, the whole resonator can be transposed like a monophonic synth-style effect.

Short Overview

Polarity-RES is a free resonator plug-in for Windows, macOS, and Linux that turns incoming audio or internal noise into a bank of up to 32 tunable band-pass filters. It matters in practice because it can quickly generate resonant textures, drone pads, spectral filtering, and dense room-like ambience without relying on a conventional reverb.

The plug-in also includes spectrum learning, harmonic snapping, note-scale overlays, stereo detuning, and MIDI-based transposition, making it useful for both sound design and mix processing. Whether used to extract prominent frequencies from percussion, build harmonic resonators from noise, or shape monophonic synth-like tones, Minus Res offers a flexible technical workflow in a lightweight free tool.

Key Takeaways

Create up to 32 resonant band-pass filters manually by left-clicking in the graph to add bands and right-clicking to remove them; with no bands present, the plug-in passes the dry input unchanged.
Use the Hold + Learn workflow to analyze an input sound and automatically place band-pass filters on prominent spectral peaks, making it easy to transfer the harmonic profile of one sound onto another signal.
Generate sound without external input using the Noise control, which feeds white noise into the resonator so it can produce drones, pads, and reverb-like textures on its own.
Shape the resonator with global controls: Offset shifts all filter frequencies, Spread increases spacing of upper partials relative to the fundamental, Stereo detunes left and right channels differently, Steepness stacks band-pass filters for sharper slopes, and Resonance adjusts filter Q.
Use Match together with the dry/wet mix to automatically level-match output to input, which helps blend resonated and dry signals at settings like 50% mix without perceived loudness bias.
Snap filter placement to musical structures with overlays: the note overlay can show full scale notes, roots only, or root/fifth guides, while the harmonics overlay shows multiples of a selected fundamental and lets new bands snap to that overtone series.
Edit filter nodes more precisely with modifier keys: holding Shift locks frequency so only level changes, while Alt locks level so only frequency changes.
MIDI can transpose the resonator, but it is not polyphonic: enabling MIDI input allows pitch-shifting the whole filter structure, and Center maps the current fundamental to a target note like C3/C4; however, the plug-in currently behaves as a monophonic audio effect rather than a full additive synth with per-note envelopes.

Polarity-RES: A Free Resonator Plug-in for Sound Design and Spectral Filtering

Polarity-RES is a free cross-platform plug-in designed as a resonator built from multiple band-pass filters. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux and is available in VST3, CLAP, and AU formats. Installation is straightforward: download the binary and place it in the appropriate plug-in folder for the target format.

At its core, the plug-in lets incoming audio excite a bank of resonant filters, making it possible to reshape loops, extract tonal content, generate drones, or build resonant textures from noise alone.

What It Does

Minus Res is an audio effect that creates up to 32 band-pass filters. A band-pass filter isolates a narrow frequency range, emphasizing that area while attenuating frequencies above and below it. By combining multiple bands, the plug-in can behave like:

a resonator
a spectral filter bank
a pseudo-additive sound design tool
a dense room or reverb-like texture generator
a drone and pad generator when driven by noise

Filters are added directly on the graphical display with a left click and removed with a right click. With no bands present, only the dry input signal is heard.

How It Works

The plug-in can be used manually or by analyzing an input signal.

Manual filter creation

Band-pass nodes are placed on the graph to define:

frequency: where the band is centered
level: how strongly that band contributes

This makes it easy to sketch custom resonant shapes by ear.

Spectrum learning

A key feature is the ability to analyze an incoming signal and automatically place filters at its prominent frequencies. Using the Hold function freezes the visible spectrum, and Learn detects strong spectral peaks and converts them into band-pass filters.

This allows one sound to imprint its harmonic structure onto another. For example:

analyze a percussion hit and apply its spectral peaks to a drum loop
analyze a tonal sample and use its resonances as a filter template
derive resonant structures from found audio for hybrid textures

Main Controls

The right-side controls adjust the overall behavior of the filter bank.

Frequency

Offsets all filter frequencies together. This effectively shifts the resonant structure up or down.

Spread

Spread changes the spacing of upper harmonics relative to the lowest or root frequency. Rather than applying a simple global pitch offset, it increases the distance between higher resonances, which can push the sound toward more stretched or inharmonic territory.

Stereo

Stereo slightly offsets left and right channel frequencies differently. This detuning creates width and movement across the stereo field.

Steepness

Steepness stacks multiple band-pass filters at the same locations to make the filtering sharper. This increases selectivity and can make resonances more pronounced.

Resonance

Adjusts how strongly each band resonates. Higher values emphasize the filter character more aggressively.

Noise

Injects white noise into the plug-in. This is useful when there is no audio input, allowing the resonator itself to generate sound. With a suitable filter layout, this can produce:

drones
pads
resonant textures
synthetic room-like noise tails

Dry/Wet and Output Gain

The plug-in provides a mix control for blending dry and processed signal, plus an output gain stage.

Match

The Match button matches output gain to input gain. This is particularly useful when blending dry and wet signals, since equal perceived loudness makes the comparison more meaningful.

Workflow

Building resonators from source material

A practical workflow is:

Feed audio into the plug-in.
Use Hold to freeze the spectrum.
Press Learn to detect spectral peaks.
Use the resulting band-pass layout as a resonator.
Adjust Frequency, Spread, Stereo, Steepness, and Resonance to refine the result.

This process works well for transferring the spectral identity of one sound to another.

Using note overlays

The plug-in includes a note overlay that displays note positions on the graph. It can show:

the full scale
root notes only
root and fifths

This helps keep manually placed resonances aligned to a musical scale. In the example shown, a scale such as D-sharp minor can be displayed so filters snap to musically relevant positions. Green lines indicate root notes.

This mode is useful for building tonal drones and pads that remain harmonically consistent.

Using harmonic overlays

There is also a harmonics overlay, which behaves differently from the note overlay. It requires at least one existing band-pass filter. Once enabled, it shows integer multiples of that fundamental frequency, the harmonic series.

In this mode:

new bands snap to overtones
moving the fundamental shifts the overtone series with it

This makes the plug-in behave somewhat like an additive synthesis interface, where a sound is constructed from harmonics at different amplitudes.

Editing tips

Two modifier-key shortcuts make precise editing easier:

Shift: adjust level while keeping frequency fixed
Alt: adjust frequency while keeping level fixed

These shortcuts are useful because freehand editing can otherwise change both parameters at once.

MIDI Tracking and Pitch Transposition

Although Minus Res is an audio effect rather than a full synthesizer, it can accept MIDI input to transpose its filter structure. After enabling MIDI input, the resonant layout can be shifted from a selected center note.

If the manually placed filters are not aligned to a meaningful pitch center, the Center function can reposition them around a chosen note such as C3 or C4, making MIDI transposition more predictable.

This does not make the plug-in fully polyphonic. In its current form, it behaves more like a monophonic resonant processor whose spectral shape can be moved with MIDI.

Practical Uses

Spectral imprinting

One of the most interesting uses is copying the spectral peaks of one sound onto another. This can create unusual hybrids and resonant colorations without traditional convolution or vocoding.

Drum room and dense ambience

With subtle settings, slight stereo detuning, and moderate resonance, Minus Res can act like a very dense room generator on drums. Instead of using a conventional reverb, a lightly tuned resonator can add space and width.

Drone and pad creation

By feeding in white noise and placing resonant bands according to notes or harmonics, the plug-in can generate drones and ambient pads. Adding reverb afterward can turn these into rich background textures.

Inharmonic and microtonal sound design

When the note grid is not used, filter placement becomes free-form. Combined with Spread and Stereo, this opens the door to inharmonic and microtonal structures.

Resonant synthesis with noise input

A particularly useful setup is to drive the plug-in with a noise source from a modular environment such as Bitwig Grid, shape that noise with an envelope, and let Minus Res impose pitched resonances on it. This approximates a simple synth-like behavior even though the plug-in itself is still an effect.

Limits

Minus Res is currently an audio effect, not a full instrument. Important constraints include:

it is not polyphonic
MIDI is used for transposition rather than true note-per-voice synthesis
there is no built-in amplitude envelope per note
it depends on external audio or its internal noise source to generate sound

A future addition such as an amplitude envelope could push it closer to a true additive synthesizer.

Summary

Polarity-RES is a flexible free resonator that combines manual filter drawing, spectral peak learning, harmonic snapping, note overlays, stereo detuning, and internal noise excitation. It can function as a resonator, creative filter bank, tonal drone generator, or a reverb-like texturing tool. Its learning and overlay features make it especially useful for spectral experimentation and harmonic sound design.

Transcript

This is the transcript of the video. The text was generated automatically and may contain small mistakes. The timestamps jump to the matching part of the video.

Click to expand transcript

[00:00:00] So there's a new plug-in in town or a new free plug-in called Polarity-RES and it's as the name says it
[00:00:07] It's a resonator so you can create bandpass filters in various ways and I show you this in a minute
[00:00:13] So this plug-in is completely free to use and it works on all platforms
[00:00:18] So, um, yeah, you just head over to this website download the binary put it in your VST three folder your clap folder
[00:00:25] Or your AU folder on Mac linux or windows and you have some fun
[00:00:32] That's it does here a small little description also on the website
[00:00:35] The link is in the description below polarity dot productions slash Polarity-RES
[00:00:40] so in bitwig it looks like this and
[00:00:43] It's an audio effect actually so you can send audio into this plug-in, right?
[00:00:50] And it works like this you have to see on this audio track and I have a drum loop here
[00:00:55] Sounds like this
[00:00:57] And then you can create bandpass filters just by
[00:01:02] Left-clicking on this graph or maybe make this a bit bigger. Yeah
[00:01:06] So this is a filter
[00:01:09] This is a filter
[00:01:12] Maybe you make this a bit louder
[00:01:20] So very basic actually with the right click you can remove the these bandpass filters
[00:01:26] And when you remove everything you just hear the dry signal right so this this is the idea
[00:01:36] So you can create here bandpass filters up to
[00:01:39] 32 bands if you want to
[00:01:42] What we also can do is we can analyze the input signal
[00:01:48] So let's say we have here a percussion sound that this one here make this a bit longer
[00:01:52] This this kind of sound so we can use here the hold button
[00:02:00] with this
[00:02:02] We just hold the frequency spectrum here or the individual frequencies and we can just hit learn and then we analyze here the
[00:02:10] peaking frequencies and just create
[00:02:14] These bandpass filters here on these important points, right? So with this
[00:02:18] We created just a resonator
[00:02:21] And we can filter this here
[00:02:23] With the drum loop right or we can say
[00:02:28] We want to use this sound here
[00:02:31] Okay, so we do this hold button here
[00:02:35] Analyze it
[00:02:38] Nice, okay
[00:02:44] On the right side we have different controls we have here the frequencies we can offset the frequencies of course, so it sounds like this
[00:02:54] And we have also spread spread is a bit different so it's it it moves the
[00:03:04] Upper harmonics here further apart so the closer you get with the note to this root or this fundamental note here
[00:03:14] the more you
[00:03:16] Yeah, scale the frequency number up. So this idea
[00:03:20] So then we have here stereo
[00:03:32] This one just detunes
[00:03:36] Slightly the left and the right channel differently
[00:03:40] So it offsets the frequency on the left channel then on the right channel, which gives you kind of a stereo feel
[00:03:46] Then we have here steepness this just stacks multiple bandpass filters on top of each other to make it makes
[00:04:00] Make it a bit steeper, right? So this idea
[00:04:10] And
[00:04:12] Then we have resonance
[00:04:23] Which is just the resonance of the filter so it is itself explanatory
[00:04:29] Then we have here this noise knob this one just feeds in
[00:04:37] White noise to this plug-in. So if you have no audio input
[00:04:41] You can just still get some sound out of it
[00:04:45] Sounds like this
[00:04:48] And you can create maybe pad sounds or drone sounds with that if you want that
[00:04:59] then we have here
[00:05:01] Kind of a mix knobs you can blend in the dry signal to the wet signal and we have an output game
[00:05:07] And the match button so if you have for instance here an audio input, let's clear this here
[00:05:13] Learn the frequencies of this drum loop so you have a
[00:05:22] Right and you want to match this you just hit the match button and it matches the input signal the output gain to the input gain
[00:05:32] Then you can put this on 50% and you know dry signals exactly as loud as the wet signal
[00:05:38] nice
[00:05:42] So sometimes sometimes I use this like an
[00:05:58] Yeah, a very dense room. So if you have drums and you want to put a reverb on that instead of just using a reverb
[00:06:04] You can just use a resonator or very
[00:06:06] Slight resonator and then you detune this and then it sounds a bit stereo
[00:06:10] So you can you know use this also for drums as a room creator kind of
[00:06:16] So this idea you can use here the learn button
[00:06:19] I really love this stuff because I always want to copy, you know certain harmonics from one sound to the other
[00:06:26] It's always interesting
[00:06:28] Okay, so let's clear this here again. So again as I said here we have
[00:06:34] multiple bandpass and we can use here the noise to create kind of
[00:06:39] These
[00:06:43] drone sounds
[00:06:45] We can also overlay here on this graph
[00:06:48] Let's say we want to use D sharp minor we can use here the note overlay
[00:06:56] This is button down below and this is full scale. So you can see all the notes here of
[00:07:01] Yeah, the scale and the green lines are basically the root notes. So this is this D sharp here
[00:07:08] I don't know which octave
[00:07:10] D sharp 3 it says down here
[00:07:12] This is the sharp 2
[00:07:15] So with this you can stay perfectly in one scale and create nice little
[00:07:27] It snaps actually to the to the lines
[00:07:29] Or maybe you want only to have the roots so you can only see D sharp here every octave or root and fifths
[00:07:55] Something like that
[00:07:57] So yeah, you can use this to create I don't know
[00:08:05] pad sounds or drone sounds for the background and again, you can use your stereo offset. Oh, it's actually dialed in already
[00:08:26] Make some microtonal tonal music
[00:08:28] If you don't use here this this grid by the way and you create here multiple
[00:08:45] bandpass filters and usually when you try to change only here the volume
[00:08:52] You slightly also change the frequency so you can hold down the shift key
[00:08:56] With that, it's just locked to the loudness
[00:08:59] So you keep the frequency in place or static
[00:09:03] Also, you can hold down alt key and it's your opposite way. You you know, you don't change the volume
[00:09:10] You only change the frequency
[00:09:20] All it needs is maybe a reverb, huh?
[00:09:22] You better have this on
[00:09:46] Okay, so this is the note overlay and sometimes I already use this for ambient songs, right?
[00:09:52] You just create a drone sound for the background with as many harmonics you want
[00:09:57] maybe also here
[00:10:00] If you like this, it's really fun to play around with this in my opinion
[00:10:14] Okay, so this is the note overlay then there's also here an harmonics overlay and it works a bit differently
[00:10:20] You have to place at least one
[00:10:22] One bandpass filter and then you click this and you can see all the
[00:10:27] Mutables of this frequency right so the harmonic series here and it also snaps then here
[00:10:35] so if you use
[00:10:37] But this overlay it snaps to these overtones
[00:10:45] And you can create sounds with that also in this mode when you change the fundamental it changes all the overtones with it
[00:10:53] So you can experiment
[00:11:01] It's almost like an additive synthesizer where you can define the overtones and can play around with that
[00:11:10] And sometimes you find maybe a sound that you like
[00:11:15] And then you can say and this is here actually on an audio track
[00:11:20] So I have to switch this to let's say a hybrid track and I can use your MIDI input
[00:11:26] all in
[00:11:29] Yeah, it's media input you can switch on here this media button and then you can
[00:11:34] transpose it around with the media keyboard
[00:11:41] And of course because you'd kind of
[00:11:45] The just put this here in some places some random places. It's not gonna translate to the key
[00:11:52] So when you press C3 on the keyboard, it's not playing C3 here
[00:11:57] You have to center it so we can choose here
[00:11:59] Maybe C3 or C4 and just send out this in place, right? So when it's almost here just hit center and then it's here placed on
[00:12:09] C4 and then you can play C4 on the keyboard and it's actually C4
[00:12:14] Put this on C3
[00:12:34] Hope this makes sense here, so I thought about maybe
[00:12:40] All it needs is maybe an amplitude envelope in this plug-in
[00:12:44] Maybe for each of these notes and then it's an additive synthesizer actually, right?
[00:12:49] So you can play it like a normal synthesizer
[00:12:51] But for now it's an audio effect
[00:12:54] But you can send me into it to transpose everything around and the harmonic overlays actually
[00:13:00] Pretty interesting if you move here the lowest it switches to the next which is also kind of cool
[00:13:06] so it's yeah, it's it's fun to play around with this and
[00:13:10] Create sounds or maybe also resonators when you
[00:13:15] just you know
[00:13:17] Want to use as a want to use it as a resonator for bass sounds or for drum sounds or whatever
[00:13:22] Let's see all the sounds here
[00:13:31] I need to
[00:14:01] If you bring noise and it's almost like a reverb
[00:14:03] Right because of the noise
[00:14:31] I need to reset this here
[00:14:33] It's also like an EQ a bit
[00:14:44] Anyway, so yeah, this is an this is my new plug-in called polarity resonator
[00:14:50] It's especially made for me or how I want to
[00:14:56] to use a resonator and it has some features here with the learning which I really like and the
[00:15:02] Harmonics overlay and also here the notes overlay which I really like a noise generator in there
[00:15:08] So you can use it for drone sounds and maybe in the next updates. I bring in here an
[00:15:12] amplitude envelope so you can
[00:15:15] change how the
[00:15:17] noise is
[00:15:20] Yeah shaped over time with amplitudes, right?
[00:15:23] You can also use this here for instance instead of using this on an audio track you can
[00:15:29] Use it here in the grid or not in the grid or you can use it with the grid
[00:15:33] Let's say you have here
[00:15:37] Instead of a sine oscillator you use a noise oscillator
[00:15:42] And let's use an ad so you can hear shape basically the noise the loudness of
[00:15:50] the noise and then you put this
[00:15:53] Put this here after the fully grid
[00:15:58] And then you can use MIDI here center it and I have to arm this
[00:16:06] So you cannot already use like use it like a synthesizer because it's just you know shifting the frequencies around
[00:16:18] Making it a bit steeper here
[00:16:20] Or maybe we clear this use harmonics
[00:16:29] Yeah, it's not polyphonic it's basically a monophonic audio effect at the moment
[00:16:48] at least
[00:16:50] So this reverb
[00:16:52] So yeah, if you just send in here some noise with the with the grid
[00:17:12] and you use pitch tracking
[00:17:16] Or midi tracking here, then you can use it like a synth already if you want to anyway, that's it
[00:17:22] Thanks for watching. Have some fun and of course report some bugs
[00:17:26] Let me know how it works or feature requests anything. Just let me know in the comments down below. Okay
[00:17:32] Thanks for watching and bye

Polarity - Music Producer & Teacher

Synplant 2 Phenotype Review: AI Text-to-Patch Synth

Quick Answer #

Short Overview #

Key Takeaways #

Sonic Charge’s Phenotype for Synplant 2: Text-to-Patch, Not Text-to-Audio #

What It Does #

How It Works #

Why This Is Different #

Workflow #

Relationship to Geno Patch #

Practical Uses #

Why Synplant 2 Is a Good Fit #

Limits #

The synth engine is still the boundary #

Complex prompts do not seem to help #

Some categories are approximate #

Parameter behavior may be inconsistent #

Broader Significance #

Final Assessment #

Transcript #

Interstellar Journey: Soundscape for Sleeping on a Long Voyage

Signal Drift #

Bitwig Grid Ambient Patching with Dorian Chord Drones

Quick Answer #

Build Overview #

Patch Decisions #

Interesting Moments #

What This Build Is Useful For #

Transcript #

My Soundscape for Sleeping Between Galaxies

Signal Drift #

Bitwig Grid Ambient Patching and Generative Workflow

Quick Answer #

Build Overview #

Patch Decisions #

Interesting Moments #

What This Build Is Useful For #

Transcript #

Bitwig Grid: Recreate Serum Hyper and Dimension

Quick Answer #

Short Overview #

Key Takeaways #

Recreating Serum’s Hyper and Dimension Effects with Simple Modules in Bitwig Studio or VCV Rack #

What Hyper Does #

Main Hyper controls #

How to Approximate Hyper #

Basic signal path #

Why delay-time modulation creates chorus #

Workflow for a Hyper-Style Patch in Bitwig Grid #

1. Create a short modulated delay #

2. Stack the patch into multiple voices #

3. Apply per-voice modulation offsets #

4. Pan each voice differently #

5. Consider random modulation instead of a regular LFO #

Optional Refinements for Hyper #

Keep low frequencies out of the chorus #

Control gain build-up #

Increase voice count beyond Serum #

How Close Is It to Serum? #

What Dimension Does #

How to Approximate Dimension #

Core idea #

Workflow for a Dimension-Style Patch #

1. Use four voices #

2. Give each voice a slightly different delay time #

3. Modulate gain slowly #

4. Apply gentle panning #

5. Compensate output level #

Practical Uses #

Limits #

Bottom Line #

Transcript #

Polarity SC Update: Curve Matching and Threshold Presets

Quick Answer #

Short Overview #

Key Takeaways #

Polarity SC update: presets, curve matching, and improved analyzer behavior #

What it does #

New features #

Quick Answer

Short Overview

Key Takeaways

Sonic Charge’s Phenotype for Synplant 2: Text-to-Patch, Not Text-to-Audio

What It Does

How It Works

Why This Is Different

Workflow

Relationship to Geno Patch

Practical Uses

Why Synplant 2 Is a Good Fit

Limits

The synth engine is still the boundary

Complex prompts do not seem to help

Some categories are approximate

Parameter behavior may be inconsistent

Broader Significance

Final Assessment

Transcript

Signal Drift

Quick Answer

Build Overview

Patch Decisions

Interesting Moments

What This Build Is Useful For

Transcript

Signal Drift

Quick Answer

Build Overview

Patch Decisions

Interesting Moments

What This Build Is Useful For

Transcript

Quick Answer

Short Overview

Key Takeaways

Recreating Serum’s Hyper and Dimension Effects with Simple Modules in Bitwig Studio or VCV Rack

What Hyper Does

Main Hyper controls

How to Approximate Hyper

Basic signal path

Why delay-time modulation creates chorus

Workflow for a Hyper-Style Patch in Bitwig Grid

1. Create a short modulated delay

2. Stack the patch into multiple voices

3. Apply per-voice modulation offsets

4. Pan each voice differently

5. Consider random modulation instead of a regular LFO

Optional Refinements for Hyper

Keep low frequencies out of the chorus

Control gain build-up

Increase voice count beyond Serum

How Close Is It to Serum?

What Dimension Does

How to Approximate Dimension

Core idea

Workflow for a Dimension-Style Patch

1. Use four voices

2. Give each voice a slightly different delay time

3. Modulate gain slowly

4. Apply gentle panning

5. Compensate output level

Practical Uses

Limits

Bottom Line

Transcript

Quick Answer

Short Overview

Key Takeaways

Polarity SC update: presets, curve matching, and improved analyzer behavior

What it does

New features

Threshold curve presets

Custom curve presets

Curve matching

How it works

Matching the source spectrum

Threshold center and slope

Improved analyzer behavior

Pink noise and white noise behavior