Bitwig Note-Counter Modulator - Count Notes for Modulation
Bitwig Guide | Jul 14, 2022
The note counter modulator generates modulation signals by counting played notes, with customizable step amounts and increments, allowing for unique and asynchronous modulation cycles. Users can fine-tune the modulation's resolution, scaling (bipolar or unipolar), and per-voice behavior, resulting in a variety of complex poly-rhythmic and overlapping sequences. The output scaling also includes an absolute value mode, converting modulation steps directly into percentage values for precise control.
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Short Overview #
When I use the note counter modulator, I can control how each note played translates into a modulation signal. By adjusting parameters like step size and increment, I can create unique, sometimes polyrhythmic modulation cycles that add expressive movement to my sounds. The scaling options let me choose between unipolar and bipolar outputs, giving even more flexibility in shaping modulation. This tool lets me quickly experiment with overlapping or asynchronous patterns that make sound design more interesting.
- The Note Counter Modulator tracks each note played and converts the note count into a modulation signal.
- You can set the maximum number of steps, which determines the modulation resolution (zero is counted as the first step).
- The modulator cycles through steps and returns to zero after reaching the maximum, creating repeating modulation cycles.
- The increment value controls how many steps increase per note; increments larger than one or not matching the number of steps result in more complex, asynchronous modulation patterns.
- Using mismatched increment and step settings creates polyrhythmic or polyphonic modulation cycles.
- The modulation signal can be set to unipolar (zero to one) or bipolar (minus one to one) output scaling.
- The modulator can be used per voice, allowing each played note (voice) to be modulated independently for more complex results.
- The value output mode converts the modulation output to a percentage value (e.g., three steps becomes three hundred percent).
- The modulator is useful for creating non-repeating, evolving, or polyrhythmic modulation patterns, especially when combining multiple modulators with different settings.
- There is a reset function to return the modulator to the initial state.
Introduction to the Note Counter Modulator #
In this video, I explore the Note Counter Modulator, which at first may seem complex but is essentially a straightforward modulation utility. The purpose of this module is to count each note played and translate this count into a modulation signal, which can then be used creatively in various sound design scenarios.
Understanding Parameters: Steps and Increments #
The primary adjustable parameters here are the number of steps and the increment value. When setting the number of steps, it's essential to understand that counting starts at zero. For instance, if I dial in five steps, the counter runs from 0 to 4, with zero counting as the first step. This way, the fifth step corresponds to the value 4.
By adjusting the maximum number of steps, I can define the resolution of the modulation signal. Each time I play a note, the modulator counts up. When the count reaches the maximum, it wraps around to zero, creating a cyclical or looping effect.
The increment parameter allows me to change how much the counter increases with each note. If set to two, playing a note moves the counter up by two steps instead of one. This can result in skipping certain values, and more complex behavior emerges, especially with odd increments or step counts.
Asynchronous and Polyphonic Modulation Patterns #
The real creative power of the Note Counter Modulator comes to light when using odd relationships between steps and increments. For instance, with five steps but counting up by two each time, the resulting modulation pattern only repeats every few cycles, creating asynchronous or polyrhythmic modulation sequences. If I increase the steps to a much higher value, like 20, and still use an odd increment such as three, the cycle becomes even more complex. Each repeat through the cycle produces different values before looping, resulting in distinct and overlapping modulation signals that rarely synchronize.
Output Scaling: Unipolar and Bipolar Modes #
Another crucial aspect is output scaling. The modulator can operate in unipolar or bipolar modes:
- Unipolar mode ranges from 0 to 1. In this mode, the lowest value is zero, and the highest is one.
- Bipolar mode ranges from -1 to 1, giving both positive and negative values.
The choice between these modes affects how the modulation is applied to other parameters, such as a filter cutoff. In unipolar mode, modulation only adds to the base value, while in bipolar, it can add or subtract, allowing for more expressive and dynamic modulation.
Visual feedback is present, showing modulation ranges as a white stroke for maximum amounts, and it could be visually improved to indicate the extreme negative value in bipolar mode for further clarity.
Creative Applications and Experiments #
By varying the steps and increment parameters, and combining several Note Counter Modulators with different settings, I can achieve intricate, polyrhythmic, or evolving modulation sequences throughout a patch. These can create highly organic movement and variation, even creating some overlap or complete sync at specific points, similar to the interplay of different rhythm cycles in music.
Additionally, there's a "per voice" option in the inspector, allowing me to apply the modulation separately to each polyphonic voice, further expanding the creative possibilities.
Reset and Value Scaling Options #
The modulator also offers a reset function, instantly returning the counter to zero when engaged. Additionally, a "Value" scaling option is available, where the output is translated into percentages – for example, three steps result in 300%, four in 400%, and so forth. This mode expresses the position of the counter as a straight percentage, which can be easier to use in some modulation scenarios.
Concepts Explained: Modulation, Polyrhythm, and Output Scaling #
- Modulation in synthesis is the real-time control of a parameter by another signal. Here, the signal is generated by counting notes.
- Polyrhythm occurs when two or more rhythms (cycles) run simultaneously but with different lengths or subdivisions, leading to complex interwoven patterns. In modulation, using step counts and increments that do not share a common divisor creates this kind of effect.
- Output scaling (unipolar/bipolar) refers to how the modulation values range, affecting whether parameter movement is one-directional or bi-directional.
Conclusion #
Overall, the Note Counter Modulator is a powerful and creative modulation tool once its counter-based logic is understood. By combining step count, increment, scaling, and even per-voice operation, I can develop unexpectedly intricate modulations for sound design. The module’s utility lies in its ability to generate non-repeating, evolving patterns that can be synchronized across multiple destinations or voices for unique sonic results.
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 node counter modulator and this one is a bit hard to explain even though
[00:00:06] it's a simple modulator and it takes in nodes.
[00:00:12] Every time you play a node, this one counts this node and tries to convert it into a modulation
[00:00:19] signal and you can tweak how this behaves by different parameters in here.
[00:00:26] So let's say we dial in here, we have a maximum of five steps and you can see we dialed in
[00:00:30] your five steps but here we have four.
[00:00:33] Why is that?
[00:00:34] The thing is, the zero counts as one step.
[00:00:39] So we have zero, one, two, three, four and this is basically the fifth step, right?
[00:00:46] So zero is one and four is five.
[00:00:50] Yeah, it's that simple.
[00:00:54] So you can dial in here the maximum number of steps so you can kind of create a resolution
[00:01:02] for the modulation signal and every time you play a note, this one goes up.
[00:01:17] And then we end up on zero again because we reached the maximum number of steps, which
[00:01:22] is here three, and we end up on zero again, which is the first step.
[00:01:30] So you can also increase the increment number by two for instance.
[00:01:36] So instead of every time you play a note, it goes up one step, you know, go up two steps.
[00:01:42] Next one is two and zero.
[00:01:47] So the next one would be four, but we have only three here, the next step is then zero.
[00:01:57] So the interesting part comes in when you have some odd numbers.
[00:02:02] So for instance, you count two up, but you have five steps.
[00:02:08] So this is interesting, we reset this here to zero or to, yeah, it's basically zero.
[00:02:15] And when we count now the notes, let's see how this behaves.
[00:02:19] So the first step, now we increase this by two, which is two.
[00:02:27] Next one should be four, right?
[00:02:30] So we don't end up on zero as we did before.
[00:02:34] Now we go two up, which is one this time, it's not two like the last time.
[00:02:41] Now we end up on three and now two is over, basically exceeds four, right?
[00:02:47] So we end up on one, I think, on zero.
[00:02:52] And then we have some kind of asynchronous, arithmic kind of polyphonic modulation so
[00:03:00] that only repeats on two iterations.
[00:03:03] So the first iteration is different than the second iteration and the third iteration
[00:03:06] is exactly the same iteration as the first one.
[00:03:10] So we have some overlapping or alternating cycles of modulation signals, right?
[00:03:19] So keep this in mind.
[00:03:20] You can do this here much more fine grained if you go up with the steps.
[00:03:25] So let's say 20 and we go to three here, let's see how this looks like.
[00:03:36] And now three is over 19, right?
[00:03:40] We end up on one this time.
[00:03:45] Now next is two.
[00:03:48] So we have now three iterations that are completely different.
[00:03:51] So the first one ends up on different values than the second one.
[00:03:55] And the third one is also ending up on different numbers here than the first and the second
[00:04:02] one.
[00:04:03] So three different from each other modulation signals on every cycle.
[00:04:14] Now we end up on the rock end.
[00:04:18] So yeah, that's basically the generic explanation for this.
[00:04:22] So you can use this modulator to create some kind of different cycles of modulations and
[00:04:26] interesting, yeah, interesting modulation sequences.
[00:04:33] Then we have here down below, we have the output scaling.
[00:04:37] And this is maybe easier to explain when I show you actually the, the modulation signal,
[00:04:42] how it behaves.
[00:04:44] So we take here this modulator handle and modulate something.
[00:04:48] For instance, here this cutoff and you can see we can dial in how much we want to add
[00:04:54] modulation to this.
[00:04:55] So this is the modulation amount.
[00:04:58] And in the case of the note counter or with every modulator, we have a scaling always
[00:05:05] from minus one to zero to one.
[00:05:09] So it's a bipolar signal, which goes in both directions, positive and negative.
[00:05:13] So zero minus one and plus one.
[00:05:16] Or we have a unipolar signal, which goes only in the positive range from zero to one.
[00:05:22] And zero would be this position here, which is our knob currently in this, the current
[00:05:27] state of the knob.
[00:05:29] So this is zero and plus one is the maximum modulation amount, which is this white stroke
[00:05:36] here.
[00:05:38] And if you switch this to bipolar like this one, it also goes in the negative range, which
[00:05:44] is the opposite direction of this white area.
[00:05:47] Maybe it should be nice to see this also here in the interface, how this would look like.
[00:05:53] Maybe this would be a nice feature request actually to show this in the interface where
[00:05:59] the negative maximum value is, which would be here, right?
[00:06:06] So we can switch this from unipolar to bipolar and how this behaves is we have now 20 steps
[00:06:13] from zero to one in here.
[00:06:16] In this range, we have 20 steps because this is the resolution as I explained it.
[00:06:21] And every time we play a note, we go three steps up in this 20 quantized resolution thing.
[00:06:30] So every time I play a note, this modulation goes up here until we end up on the maximum
[00:06:35] value or we step over it.
[00:06:36] So we end up here on the first minimum value.
[00:06:40] So let's see how this looks like.
[00:06:55] And you can see on each iteration, like I told you before, we end up on different positions
[00:07:01] in this range or in this modulation range here.
[00:07:06] And depending on what you dialed in for increment and steps here, we end up on different positions
[00:07:13] which can lead to interesting modulation signals.
[00:07:16] So outputs we use here the bipolar thing, which works exactly like the first one, but
[00:07:23] now we go also here on the negative range.
[00:07:40] Okay, so pretty interesting.
[00:07:42] What you also can do is you can instead of going up increment steps of three, maybe we
[00:07:50] dialed down the resolution here to four, which is much, much smaller than 20, but we go up
[00:08:01] maybe five.
[00:08:04] So let's see how this looks like or maybe three.
[00:08:19] And also in this way, you end up on different positions here every time you iterate through
[00:08:25] the cycle because three barely fits into four steps, right?
[00:08:31] So this would be six and six is not, doesn't fit into fours.
[00:08:35] We have two left over on the rest, two basically.
[00:08:40] So it's a math operation, but you don't need to do that.
[00:08:44] You can just dial in your whatever and see what it comes out of it.
[00:08:48] But you can create interesting things with this.
[00:08:52] Even though you or if you use multiple of these with different, you know, increment and
[00:08:58] step sizes here and modulate different things.
[00:09:01] So this can lead to very interesting modulations.
[00:09:07] As you can see, every time I play a note, each of these modulations end up on different
[00:09:12] positions every time, but sometimes they overlap, sometimes they completely are in sync.
[00:09:18] And sometimes they, so it's like poly rhythmical, right?
[00:09:23] It's, you can create interesting overlapping sequences.
[00:09:27] Um, okay.
[00:09:29] Enough of that.
[00:09:30] Um, you can also, of course, here have a per voice option in the inspector for this.
[00:09:35] So you can apply this to multiple voices, um, individually, which can also be interesting.
[00:09:42] And I think we have also covered everything.
[00:09:47] So this is also the reset knob.
[00:09:48] So you can switch this to zero.
[00:09:50] Oh yeah.
[00:09:51] We have here this value thing.
[00:09:53] Um, so this is basically, um, yeah, let's look how this, how this looks like here.
[00:10:02] Um, switch to this one, scaling is value.
[00:10:06] And then we play some notes.
[00:10:22] I think this is a bit harder to explain here.
[00:10:25] Um, so value is zero, one hundred, two hundred or, uh, yeah.
[00:10:31] It's basically, um, when you have three, you have probably three hundred per cent.
[00:10:36] And if you have four, you have four hundred percent and so on.
[00:10:38] So it's a absolute conversion of these numbers to percentage.
[00:10:43] I think that's the, that's the best explanation for that.
[00:10:47] (upbeat music)