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Bitwig LFO Modulator - Sequential and Periodic Modulation

Bitwig Guide | Jun 24, 2022

The LFO in Bitwig Studio offers unique features, including audio-rate modulation and pitch-following based on MIDI input, making it versatile for both sound design and sequencing. It provides flexible synchronization options, customizable wave shapes, delay and fade-in functions, as well as polarity, phase, and polyphony controls for deep creative modulation. With these powerful tools, users can shape sounds, create evolving sequences, and even build entire synthesizers using the LFO module.

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Short Overview

In Bitwig Studio, I use the advanced LFO modulator for much more than simple modulation. Its ability to reach audio rates lets me create unique sounds and textures, and the pitch option means I can sync the modulation to musical notes, turning it into a powerful sound design tool. With flexible sync modes, wave shapes, and polyphony, I can go from detailed rhythmic effects to evolving sequences and even apply independent modulations to every note in a chord. It's a flexible, creative tool that helps me both shape sounds and animate my arrangements.

Introduction to the LFO Modulator in Bitwig Studio

In this overview, I focus on the LFO (Low-Frequency Oscillator) modulator within Bitwig Studio’s modulation system. Bitwig Studio provides three types of LFOs: the standard LFO, the classic LFO, and the beat LFO. Here, I will explain the features and workflow of the standard LFO, which stands out with unique capabilities not found in the other two.

Key Features of the Bitwig Studio LFO

Audio-Rate Modulation

One of the most powerful features of this LFO is its ability to operate at kilohertz rates, crossing into the audible frequency range. This enables modulation at audio rates, which can be used to create new sounds and textures, going beyond typical slow modulation for vibrato or tremolo, and instead producing timbral changes akin to frequency modulation synthesis.

Pitch Synchronization

The second unique feature is the pitch option. When linked to a note input, such as a MIDI clip or connected keyboard, the LFO’s frequency matches the played note’s frequency. For instance, pressing C3 synchronizes the LFO to 262 Hz, the standard pitch for C3. You can quickly switch modulation rates by playing different notes, letting you create sound or modulation systems that are tightly integrated with your melodies or harmonies.

Modulation Rate and Synchronization Modes

Frequency and Time-Based Modulation

You can specify the modulation rate in hertz, kilohertz (audio range), or align it to musical time: for example, one modulation cycle every six bars. Using bar-based modulation is especially useful for creating sequences or evolving structures that unfold slowly over your track.

Synchronization with Song Tempo

The LFO provides several synchronization options. You can lock the LFO to the song tempo using subdivisions such as eighth notes, which supports rhythmic or tempo-synced modulations. This capability is great for rhythmic or pattern-based effects.

Wave Shapes and Morphing

Flexible Waveform Design

The LFO comes with a suite of unmovable wave shapes, including sawtooth, reversed sawtooth, sine, rounded triangle, and classic triangle by default. Using the tilt control, you can morph smoothly between these shapes, providing versatile modulation curves for different creative needs.

Modulation Controls

Delay and Fade In

Delay shifts the onset of modulation after a note is triggered. This is particularly useful in note-retriggered mode, causing the LFO to apply modulation only after a set time. Fade-In gently increases the modulation depth after triggering, allowing for gradual, organic modulation entrances.

Modulation Amount

The overall modulation depth is controlled directly, either via the amount knob or by click-dragging the modulator handle. This handle also allows easy automation or further modulation using Bitwig’s modulation system.

Bipolar and Unipolar Modes

Choosing between bipolar (modulation swings both above and below the parameter’s base value) and unipolar (only above) modes lets you tailor responses, essential for tasks like filter modulation, where you may want only upward motion.

Modulation Triggering and Behavior

Freerunning LFO

In “Free” mode, the LFO runs continuously, independent of note or synchronization events.

Note-Triggered LFO

Switching to “Note” mode, the LFO resets its phase every time a new note is played, ensuring repeatable modulation envelopes aligned with MIDI events.

Sync to Arrangement

With the “Sync” mode, the LFO phase locks to Bitwig’s arrangement timeline, ensuring consistency and predictability. This means that playback from the same arrangement position always produces the same LFO phase and thus the same modulation, useful for arrangement-based sound design and automation.

Randomized Phase

The “Random” option randomly resets the LFO’s phase at each new note, adding variation for more lively, unpredictable effects.

Phase Offset

You can set an initial phase offset for the LFO, changing where in its cycle it starts after being triggered or locked to arrangement sync. This acts as an “offset” for the modulation value and supports creative shifting of modulation timing.

Polyphony and Voice Independence

Enabling polyphony allows the LFO to behave independently for each voice when playing chords or overlapping notes. By combining polyphony with the random modulator, you can generate distinct modulations for each note, ideal for evolving chord sounds or complex textures.

Practical Applications and Creative Potential

This LFO is extremely versatile. You can:

Conclusion

Bitwig Studio’s LFO modulator stands out for its audio-rate capability, pitch-tracking, waveform morphing, advanced synchronization, and polyphonic operation. It’s a creative powerhouse for anyone interested in sound design, modulation sequencing, or innovative synthesis. Whether you want subtle musical movement or radical audio transformation, this LFO is a flexible and indispensable tool.

Full Video Transcription

This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by Whisper, so it might not be perfect. If you find any mistakes, please let me know.
You can also click on the timestamps to jump to the right part of the video, which should be helpful.

Click to expand Transcription

[00:00:00] So this is the LFO modulator of Bitvec Studio and we have three iterations of the LFO.
[00:00:05] We have this one here, which I want to explain in this video.
[00:00:09] And then we have here the classic LFO and we have the beat LFO and today it's only about
[00:00:15] the LFO itself.
[00:00:18] And this iteration or this version of the LFO in Bitvec Studio has two distinct features
[00:00:24] that none of the other two has.
[00:00:28] And this is, you can go up to kilohertz, which is the audible range.
[00:00:32] So you can use the LFO to modulate something at audio rate to create maybe sounds or textures.
[00:00:41] And we have here the pitch option, which means when you have a note input or if a note clip
[00:00:47] or a MIDI keyboard are connected and you press a note, maybe C3, then this modulator modulates
[00:00:55] exactly at the speed of 262 Hertz, which is the frequency of the note C3.
[00:01:02] We can change the modulation speed by typing in keys or notes and change to the frequency
[00:01:08] of that key.
[00:01:10] So to make maybe synthesizers out of the modulation system in Bitvec Studio.
[00:01:15] And we have, of course, here a lot of different other options, but these are kind of self-explanatory.
[00:01:21] We have here Hertz, we can dial in maybe one Hertz of modulation, kilohertz, then we have
[00:01:29] bar here.
[00:01:30] I used this maybe to modulate or to use the modulation as kind of a sequencing tool.
[00:01:36] Because bar is pretty slow, and I can dial in here maybe a modulation going on over the
[00:01:42] course of six bars.
[00:01:44] And it's pretty nice to actually use this to sequence musical stuff.
[00:01:50] And in or blend out some kind of bad hats or sequences or whatever.
[00:01:56] So it's nice to creating sounds, it's nice to freely modulate your returns, it's nice
[00:02:01] to use this to sequence stuff.
[00:02:04] You have, of course, all these synchronized options to synchronize the LFO speed to the
[00:02:10] tempo of your song.
[00:02:12] Eight notes here, eight notes on eight notes of 110 BPM here, you can use this to make
[00:02:21] nice rhythmic content.
[00:02:25] Then we have here the tilt, we can change the wave shape, which says here on the top
[00:02:31] unmovable wave shapes plus delay and fade in.
[00:02:33] We have here unmovable wave shapes, so we can change this from a sawtooth to a reversed
[00:02:39] sawtooth and blend this over to a sign and to a rounded triangle if you want to.
[00:02:45] And we have a triangle of course in the default setting.
[00:02:49] Then we have here, let's switch this back to, we have here a delay, so you can delay
[00:02:58] when you apply the LFO by a certain amount of time.
[00:03:02] And this is probably only useful when you have to switch the note option here, so every
[00:03:05] time I press a key on the keyboard, you can see nothing happens, and then it takes one
[00:03:11] second until it applies the modulation.
[00:03:14] So hit the key one second, then it applies, right?
[00:03:19] Then we have here the fade in, which means when I press the key on my keyboard and reset
[00:03:26] the phase, this slowly fades in over the course of one second and applies slowly the modulation
[00:03:33] amount.
[00:03:34] You can see it slowly comes in, right?
[00:03:37] So maybe you make this longer seconds, nothing and then slowly, slowly fades in.
[00:03:45] So this is something where you can fade in the amount of the modulation.
[00:03:52] Then we have here the amount itself, so you don't need to modulate this.
[00:03:55] You can use here the fade in, like I showed you.
[00:03:59] So this is the amount.
[00:04:00] So when we use this LFO here, modulate something like the cutoff.
[00:04:06] You can see nothing happens here, because the amount is at zero.
[00:04:09] We can increase here the amount.
[00:04:11] You can see modulation is applied, we have 100% applied to cutoff knob.
[00:04:18] You can also change the amount by using the modulator handle.
[00:04:22] So you click the handle, everything becomes slightly bluish, then you can click and drag
[00:04:30] and you can change the amount.
[00:04:31] So we have here maybe 40 steps and then you can use the amount to dial in your 50% of
[00:04:40] the steps we dialed in here.
[00:04:42] So we can change the amount here and of course with the modulator handle itself.
[00:04:48] But this is maybe more practical when you want to modulate this with a different modulator.
[00:04:54] Okay, then we have here the bipolar option, which means just, yeah, you can see here we
[00:05:02] modulated the knob, the negative range and the positive range.
[00:05:07] If you don't want to do that, you only want to have it modulate in the positive range,
[00:05:11] then you just disable this and you can see now it goes here from the original knob position
[00:05:17] up to the modulation amount we dialed in.
[00:05:21] Just back here to bipolar, you can see it goes in the negative range to the same amount.
[00:05:28] Then we have here this note drop down.
[00:05:31] Looks like this.
[00:05:32] We have three notes, sync and rent.
[00:05:33] Three is basically that the modulator doesn't care for anything.
[00:05:37] It just modulates freely every time and you can't stop the LFO from doing so.
[00:05:43] It's just really modulating and oscillating away.
[00:05:49] And the other option here is note.
[00:05:52] So every time you press a key on the keyboard or have a note on your note clip, you can
[00:05:57] retrigger the face of the LFO and you can see when I press here, it's on my keyboard.
[00:06:03] You can see it switches always back every time I trigger, which is back to the start
[00:06:08] of the face of this LFO shape.
[00:06:11] So it's a basic retriggering with notes.
[00:06:14] It also says here resets to base on new notes.
[00:06:19] Then we have the sync option.
[00:06:20] This is a bit harder to explain, but maybe not too much.
[00:06:26] So this synchronizes basically the LFO to your arranger.
[00:06:30] Inside of the arranger, we have a face signal running throughout the whole track, the whole
[00:06:39] arranger timeline.
[00:06:40] So you can synchronize the LFO to that.
[00:06:44] Can imagine you have on each track or on the timeline here itself, you have kind of a
[00:06:50] ramp signal starting at zero, going up to one, going back to zero, going up to one, going
[00:06:56] back to zero, and so on.
[00:06:58] This goes throughout the whole arranger track here and you can synchronize the LFO to that.
[00:07:04] So this means in practical terms that when you hit play here, the LFO is synchronized
[00:07:14] on the sync option.
[00:07:15] You can see here we are, when we cross here the three mark, we have the modulation amount
[00:07:21] exactly at the tipping point here of this triangle.
[00:07:25] Every time you cross this point, and even loop this here, that the modulation amount is exactly
[00:07:35] the same for the same position in your arrangement, so you can kind of make sure that every time
[00:07:42] you cross or every time you go into some position in your arrangement, you get the same sound,
[00:07:49] the same modulation out of your modulator.
[00:07:52] You can use this to bring in some predictable results.
[00:07:59] Then we have here the randomized option, which means every time you press the key or you
[00:08:06] have a note input, the LFO resets or do a different point in the phase.
[00:08:11] So you can see I'm pressing your notes, transport is it stopped, and I'm just pressing notes
[00:08:19] in the keyboard to reset the LFO, but you reset it to a different point in your phase.
[00:08:27] Then we have here the phase itself, so you can change where the LFO starts.
[00:08:34] It's also not hard to explain really, so when we switch this here to sync and you know we
[00:08:39] are, go here to the three marker of our arrangement, and we hit every time the same position here.
[00:08:50] You can use the phase signal and offset this, for instance you can say, I want at this position
[00:08:56] I want exactly this LFO value instead of this one, you can offset basically the phase of
[00:09:03] LFO shape.
[00:09:05] Also when you set this to retrigger, set this to note, every time I press a key, it resets
[00:09:14] to the phase of zero, the zero position or to zero degrees, you can offset this here
[00:09:19] maybe to 100 degrees, and then you restart basically at this position instead of this
[00:09:25] one.
[00:09:26] So it's more or less like an offset for the position of the playback.
[00:09:32] Okay, so then we have here the polyphonic button, which basically just means that you
[00:09:40] make this LFO polyphonic, and when you play a chord or you press multiple notes on your
[00:09:45] keyboard, or you paint a note clip for instance, you have multiple notes, you play all these
[00:09:53] notes at the same time, you need the polyphonic LFO when you want to apply this LFO to each
[00:10:00] voice individually.
[00:10:03] And to make it different on each voice, you have to probably use a randomized modulator
[00:10:09] here, also polyphonic, and then you modulate with this randomized modulator, maybe the
[00:10:16] LFO speed, and then you get a different speed for each voice, and each LFO then applies
[00:10:21] a different modulation amount to each note differently.
[00:10:25] You can create a lot of nice movement in your chord progressions this way.
[00:10:30] So I think that's enough about the LFO, I try to cover everything here as much as possible,
[00:10:37] give some examples, and yeah, it's a very versatile thing, as I said, you can use it
[00:10:46] to create sounds, you can use it to create sequences with the bar option here I use this
[00:10:52] all the time, and also create synthesizers with it, so very nice.
[00:10:57] [BLANK_AUDIO]