Bitwig Parsec-8 Modulator - Per Step Modulation Step Modulator

[00:00:00] Parsec-8 modulator in Bittic Studio is actually 8 step sequencer or modulator.
[00:00:07] And we have also a step modulator, which is a bit different or works a bit differently.
[00:00:13] But this video is about this one here, the Parsec-8.
[00:00:16] So we are limited to 8 steps.
[00:00:17] We can disable each of these steps.
[00:00:20] And this is not a skip.
[00:00:21] As you can see here, it still plays the steps, but it just actually ignores the values.
[00:00:27] So it's not a skip.
[00:00:30] Then we have a hold value here.
[00:00:33] This basically sustains the previous value of the steps.
[00:00:37] So when we dial in here, hold for this one, and we have your value of one, actually have
[00:00:42] also value of one on this step here, because we want to preserve the previous value of
[00:00:48] this step.
[00:00:49] Right.
[00:00:50] So you can just hold the current value.
[00:00:54] Then we can dial in your values for each step differently, positive and negative.
[00:00:59] So it's a bipolar modulator.
[00:01:01] And we have also modulator handle out for each step, which is the big difference to
[00:01:08] the steps modulator, where we have just one modulator out for all steps.
[00:01:15] Then we have here also an indicator where we are in the sequence.
[00:01:19] So you can see what step it's currently playing.
[00:01:22] And then we have here down there, we have also some playback options.
[00:01:26] We can limit here the steps to maybe two steps.
[00:01:29] You can see also it shortens basically the playback range here, so it doesn't play all
[00:01:35] the other steps.
[00:01:36] It's only iterating over these first three steps here.
[00:01:41] So you can limit the steps and we have also maximum step size of eight.
[00:01:45] Steps mod has, for instance, a step max limit of 64, I'm not wrong.
[00:01:54] Then we have here the phase modulation, which is basically kind of a playback offset.
[00:01:59] So when we hit stop here on the transport, you can see we stop here at six.
[00:02:05] And when you dial in your phase modulation, you can see it's moving to the right.
[00:02:10] So we can offset the current playback position with this.
[00:02:15] It's called phase modulation because it's using a phase signal coming from the transport.
[00:02:20] Transport is sending out the phase signal, which kind of looks like a ramp signal going
[00:02:24] from zero to plus one.
[00:02:27] And this is used in Bitwig, of course, to position things.
[00:02:31] So with this phase modulation, you can offset the phase value and offset the playback to
[00:02:38] current playback position.
[00:02:41] If you switch this here to hold, for instance, you go back to the first step and then the
[00:02:47] phase modulation decides where you are in the playback.
[00:02:51] So you can modulate this here with a different modulator and change the playback speed or
[00:02:56] direction at any point in any kind of direction or way you could imagine.
[00:03:03] So back to bar here, maybe, or maybe eight notes.
[00:03:09] So yeah, we have here a limit.
[00:03:10] We have the phase modulation, we have the smoothing option here.
[00:03:15] So this is where you can interpolate between values.
[00:03:19] So we have maybe here a value of one and here we have a value of minus one.
[00:03:23] And this changes pretty drastic, right?
[00:03:25] It changes from plus one to minus one instantaneously.
[00:03:29] But when you modulate something, maybe a loudness or a gain knob or something like this, it produces
[00:03:34] clicks because you change the modulation so drastically.
[00:03:39] So you can dial in here smoothing and Bitwig tries to interpolate between these values
[00:03:45] and make the transition kind of smoother.
[00:03:48] I can show you this in a minute how it looks like in Bitwig here.
[00:03:51] So when we have maybe, let's say we modulate or we use two steps here and we modulate here
[00:04:00] this one.
[00:04:04] This one.
[00:04:05] You can see it switches between these two pretty drastically, right?
[00:04:11] When I dial in here smoothing, you can see it becomes kind of a nice modulation.
[00:04:18] If you do it too much, it doesn't actually move at all.
[00:04:28] So it's a smoothing option.
[00:04:34] Then back to this menu here.
[00:04:38] Then we have the playback speed so we can change here in which direction we want to actually
[00:04:41] play the sequencer.
[00:04:42] So you can see now it's in forward mode, now reversed and then we have also ping-pong here
[00:04:49] which alternates between forward and backwards or reverse, goes back and forth, right?
[00:04:55] So we have this.
[00:04:56] We have a looping function so it stops when we don't disable this.
[00:05:00] It actually stops after one iteration.
[00:05:04] Then we have transport here and these are some playback options.
[00:05:08] For instance transport basically synchronizes the playback of this Palsik A2 to transport.
[00:05:14] So when we hit stop here, it actually stops to play back.
[00:05:18] If we hit start, then it plays back from the start.
[00:05:22] It's also synchronizing to the position of where you are in your transport here.
[00:05:31] I think you can see every time I start from this position, it starts actually in the middle.
[00:05:40] So it not only synchronizes its starting point, it's also synchronizing when it starts to
[00:05:46] the transport.
[00:05:47] So this is why it calls the option of course transport.
[00:05:51] Then we have with groove which is the same as before as transport.
[00:05:55] But now it actually uses also the global groove option.
[00:06:01] So when you dial in some shuffle for all your beats and stuff like this, the modulation
[00:06:06] also uses that to bring in some swing into the playback here of the Palsik A2.
[00:06:14] Then we have free running.
[00:06:15] So the playback doesn't care for anything.
[00:06:18] It just plays back the sequence here over and over again without caring for anything.
[00:06:25] So it's just free running.
[00:06:27] Of course you can use the speed knob on the speed divisions or units and dial in a different
[00:06:33] speed for the playback start and where it started doesn't care at all.
[00:06:39] Then we have note restart.
[00:06:41] So you can see it just plays back here the sequence, but every time I press a key on
[00:06:46] my keyboard or input the note with the note clip here, it restarts and goes back to the
[00:06:53] first bar or to the first step.
[00:06:57] So you can restart with the note input to the first step.
[00:07:02] And then we have note random which does basically the same, but this time every time you press
[00:07:06] a key, it should restart at a different point.
[00:07:14] It's not really random, but every time you press a key it restarts and brings the playback
[00:07:22] indicator to a random point in the sequence.
[00:07:25] Then we have note advance which completely brings this sequencer to hold.
[00:07:30] And every time you press a key, you advance to the next step.
[00:07:36] You can also see here the playback speed is completely disabled, you can't use it.
[00:07:42] Then we have here the speed settings and we have here a dial so we can just dial in any
[00:07:50] setting in between synchronized steps.
[00:07:53] We can also use your hertz, we have playback speed here of one hertz.
[00:07:59] If you dial this down, then it slows down.
[00:08:02] If you speed this up, then playback speed is higher.
[00:08:06] And also kilohertz here, which is audio rate, so you can use this to create some sounds.
[00:08:11] So for instance, let's use here only two steps and we modulate here maybe this.
[00:08:19] And also this, and then we go to minus one, so this should be some kind of square wave.
[00:08:27] We can change here the, we can make music or sounds with this.
[00:08:40] And again, as before, we can use it as smoothing to make it this kind of an, let's use an oscilloscope
[00:08:46] here.
[00:08:50] So you can see we have your square wave, you bring in the smoothing, or this one here.
[00:09:08] We can make this kind of rounded, or we actually can use your three steps maybe like this.
[00:09:23] Let's see how this looks like.
[00:09:35] So you can go to audio range with this here.
[00:09:37] Then we have bar, which is super slow.
[00:09:39] It's actually one, you iterate through one of these eight bars here, you have exactly
[00:09:44] past one bar in your sequence or in your arranger when you dialed in one.
[00:09:50] And yeah, as I said, you can divide this here.
[00:09:53] So let's say you have eight notes here, right?
[00:09:58] And you hit play.
[00:09:59] So each step is basically eight notes.
[00:10:04] And if you dial in here 0.5, it's actually twice as fast.
[00:10:08] So it's 16th notes, even though you are selected to eight notes.
[00:10:13] So it's probably faster to leave this at one and then switch it to 16th notes, which has
[00:10:19] the same effect basically, but you can dial in here some values in between.
[00:10:25] If you want to have some, some speed setting between eight notes and 16th notes, and you
[00:10:30] can divide this here with the snob, right?
[00:10:32] So you can also go to my 2.0.25, for instance, something like this, right?
[00:10:40] So you can also dial in some dotted things, but you probably want to use here these different
[00:10:46] units for dotted 16th notes, 32nd notes, and so on, triplets also.
[00:10:51] So you can dial this in here, and then you use the speed knob to divide it even further
[00:10:56] if you want to.
[00:10:57] Then we have down here below everything we have pitched to off-current note.
[00:11:05] So this is interesting.
[00:11:06] It's kind of using kilohertz that goes into audible ranges, but here you actually can
[00:11:13] use the MIDI input or the note input of your MIDI keyboard or your note clip to change the
[00:11:19] playback speed.
[00:11:21] So if we put this here to pitch, I can play on my keyboard, on my MIDI keyboard and can
[00:11:27] change the playback rate here.
[00:11:40] So you can do kind of a synthesizer with a DC offset device, which is more or less there
[00:11:47] to remove DC offset.
[00:11:50] But you can also use to make it like an instrument, right?
[00:11:54] So all we need to do now to actually make this a synthesizer, a monophonic synthesizer,
[00:11:58] is using here an envelope, ADSR.
[00:12:01] You can also describe that thing in some video before.
[00:12:06] And every time we press a key on the keyboard here, we can see we have here the ADSR reacting
[00:12:11] to it.
[00:12:12] We use this to change actually the volume or the amount knob here of the Palsik 8.
[00:12:20] So every time we press a key, we dial in or we bring in the amount, and we also change
[00:12:27] the pitch to the current key of the MIDI keyboard.
[00:12:34] It's a perfectly nice, small, little, monophonic synthesizer you can do with the Palsik 8 here.
[00:12:41] And also the oscillator itself, it's a drawable oscillator if you want to.
[00:12:48] Okay, so I described you all these knobs here, how this works, what it does, and you find
[00:12:55] more tips and tricks on some practical examples on my main channel where it's all about making
[00:13:01] music instead of describing what the manual says.
[00:13:06] So this is only to describe basically what each knob does and how you kind of use all
[00:13:13] these settings here.
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