Bitwig Random-LFO Modulator - Random Modulation Signals

[00:00:00] So this is the random LFO of Bitwig Studio
[00:00:03] and it's my absolute favorite modulator inside Bitwig Studio
[00:00:06] because you can do so much with it.
[00:00:08] It's, yeah, it's crazy.
[00:00:12] So we can switch this here to polyphonic mode
[00:00:15] or to monophonic mode,
[00:00:17] which means you can utilize this
[00:00:19] to create multiple different modulations for each voice.
[00:00:24] So you press a chord and each of these notes
[00:00:26] of this chord gets a different random value
[00:00:30] which you can use to modulate something.
[00:00:31] So maybe open up a cutoff or something like this
[00:00:35] or change the panning for each voice differently.
[00:00:38] So this is very handy to do with the random mod.
[00:00:40] In monophonic mode, you can see we have this line here.
[00:00:45] In polyphonic mode, you have to press multiple keys here
[00:00:48] to see these dots here moving.
[00:00:51] But in monophonic mode, you have this line here.
[00:00:53] You can explain it a bit better.
[00:00:55] So at the top, we have here the speed setting
[00:00:58] or the rate setting.
[00:00:59] So when you turn this all the way to the right,
[00:01:01] you can see we're updating faster.
[00:01:03] All the way to the left, we're updating slower.
[00:01:05] And you can go down all the way to 0.02 hertz,
[00:01:10] which is pretty slow.
[00:01:12] Then we have here the usual division settings hertz,
[00:01:16] kilohertz, you can go up to audio rate.
[00:01:18] So you can more audio rate modulate something like cutoff
[00:01:22] or audio rate modulate DC offset
[00:01:24] or create a monophonic synth if you want to.
[00:01:26] You can also use the bus setting here,
[00:01:28] which is nice to sequence stuff.
[00:01:31] So bringing out music over time
[00:01:34] over maybe 16 bars or 32 bars,
[00:01:37] fading in music slowly and fading it out slowly again,
[00:01:41] randomized and also maybe fading in,
[00:01:46] fading out FX settings, for instance.
[00:01:50] So this is nice to sequence stuff over time
[00:01:54] in a randomized way.
[00:01:56] And then we have the usual bar division settings here,
[00:01:59] half note, quarter note, eight note and so on dotted.
[00:02:02] We have also triplets and we have hold rate of zero.
[00:02:06] And when you use this, the speed knob becomes disabled
[00:02:10] and you have to re-trigger the modulator
[00:02:13] to get a new value.
[00:02:14] And you can do this multiple ways to trigger here down below
[00:02:18] as in pull down, you can choose for instance note.
[00:02:22] So you get a new value only when you put in a note
[00:02:26] from a note clip or the MIDI keyboard.
[00:02:28] So you can update this here and you get a new note
[00:02:34] and it will be held or you can hold this value
[00:02:38] until you press a new note.
[00:02:41] So this is perfectly nice for pads, for instance.
[00:02:46] So you put this in the polyphonic mode,
[00:02:48] you switch this to hold, you set the trigger to note
[00:02:52] and then you press a chord.
[00:02:53] You have multiple notes of course in this chord
[00:02:56] and each of these notes in this chord gets a different value
[00:03:00] and you can modify for instance to cut off or the panning.
[00:03:03] So each of these notes in this chord
[00:03:06] gets a different synthesizer sound, for instance.
[00:03:08] So it's very easy to do with this random mod here
[00:03:12] and with the hold setting.
[00:03:13] And of course you hold this modulation with this value
[00:03:17] until you press a new key.
[00:03:19] So this is pretty interesting.
[00:03:21] But I maybe explain this later in a small example.
[00:03:24] Back to hearts here, then we have the smoothing option here
[00:03:28] which means we have kind of, on the left side here,
[00:03:33] we have a stepped output quantized signal.
[00:03:37] You can see it's pretty drastic changes.
[00:03:40] If you pull this to the right, slowly to the right,
[00:03:42] we have still a stepped signal,
[00:03:44] but we have rounded edges and all the way to the right,
[00:03:46] it's almost like an sine rounded smooth signal.
[00:03:51] And it's pretty handy if you want to change
[00:03:55] between stepped signal and a smooth signal
[00:03:58] to modulate something slowly or abruptly kind of.
[00:04:02] So I go back here to the middle setting.
[00:04:04] Then we have the feedback here
[00:04:06] which means if you have this all the way to the right,
[00:04:08] nothing really changes in terms of values here.
[00:04:13] You can see it's almost flat out, always the same value.
[00:04:17] If you pull this slowly to the left here,
[00:04:19] get small parameter changes over time.
[00:04:22] So it basically gives you the same value as before
[00:04:29] but slightly different, right?
[00:04:30] So it's not changing that much over time.
[00:04:33] If you pull this all the way to the left here
[00:04:36] and maybe go to stepped,
[00:04:39] we have almost like always the same signal.
[00:04:42] You can see it switches between one and zero here,
[00:04:45] something like this or zero.2 and zero.
[00:04:48] And if he makes it a bit faster here,
[00:04:51] you can see it just behaves like an LFO
[00:04:54] where you'll switch between two different values
[00:04:57] and that's it.
[00:04:59] And if you pull the smoothing up here,
[00:05:01] it's almost like a normal sine LFO.
[00:05:04] And yeah, if you change it here slightly to the right,
[00:05:09] you can see we get now different small little changes there
[00:05:14] but it's kind of still repeating.
[00:05:16] The description says correlation of successive output values
[00:05:19] where positive settings trend towards small changes
[00:05:22] which is the right setting here.
[00:05:25] Over time and negative settings can lead
[00:05:28] to repeating patterns.
[00:05:30] So if you want to use maybe this for melody generator,
[00:05:34] then you probably want to experiment here
[00:05:36] with the left slide more
[00:05:39] or maybe also with the right side, extreme right side.
[00:05:41] So where you have small little changes.
[00:05:45] So it's up to you.
[00:05:47] So with the feedback setting,
[00:05:48] you can influence basically how the random
[00:05:50] myzing algorithm behaves.
[00:05:53] Then we have the amount
[00:05:54] where you can change of course the modulation amount.
[00:05:56] So we use here the modulator handle modulate something
[00:05:59] where you can also change the modulation amount.
[00:06:02] But then when you set the modulation,
[00:06:03] you can use this amount knob here to dial it down
[00:06:06] from 0% to 100% of course.
[00:06:09] Then with the bipolar and unipolar setting
[00:06:12] where you can modulate in the positive range
[00:06:14] or in the negative range or just only the positive range.
[00:06:17] So this table here would be only modulating
[00:06:20] in the positive range.
[00:06:21] As you can see here, we modulate just from this modulation
[00:06:27] start here up until the maximum modulation amount.
[00:06:33] And when you activate here, the bipolar setting
[00:06:36] can see we go also into the negative range.
[00:06:39] So we have bipolar setting, right?
[00:06:40] Negative, positive, okay.
[00:06:42] The next setting is here the trigger one.
[00:06:48] So three doesn't synchronize the triggering at all.
[00:06:51] It's just running freely.
[00:06:53] Note only updates or retriggers when you put in a note,
[00:06:58] a note coming in from a note clip
[00:07:01] or from a MIDI keyboard and synchronized
[00:07:03] is basically using the phase signal from the transport.
[00:07:07] So you have to press play on your project.
[00:07:10] And then every time you switch to zero,
[00:07:12] basically you start with the phase at zero
[00:07:14] and then you move on.
[00:07:16] It's not really interesting to have this here
[00:07:18] with the randomizer because everything is still random,
[00:07:23] kind of, but in certain contexts, it makes sense,
[00:07:27] I would guess.
[00:07:30] Okay, I think that's it for this modulator.
[00:07:33] Maybe I give some examples here to show you how it works.
[00:07:37] So we have here an LFO that just outputs
[00:07:40] one 16 notes modulation.
[00:07:44] And I use this here to change the volume of the patch, right?
[00:07:47] So when I play music or when I play a key on the keyboard,
[00:07:54] I have some...
[00:07:58] (mouse clicking)
[00:08:00] Some 16 notes playing.
[00:08:02] And then I use here the random mod
[00:08:04] to change basically the octave of this oscillator.
[00:08:07] So this is just one note and I modulate here
[00:08:12] the octave.
[00:08:15] And I also switch this here now to 16 notes.
[00:08:18] So every time I fade in here the loudness of the patch,
[00:08:23] I also change the note in the same rate.
[00:08:26] (mouse clicking)
[00:08:27] It almost becomes like an arpeggiator
[00:08:30] that only modifies the notes in octaves.
[00:08:34] (mouse clicking)
[00:08:36] And now we can play around here with the smoothing setting
[00:08:42] or with the feedback setting here.
[00:08:44] So we pull this all the way to the left.
[00:08:47] You can see we have this LFO shape here again.
[00:08:49] (mouse clicking)
[00:08:52] (mouse clicking)
[00:08:55] Maybe we put the delay here on there.
[00:09:03] (mouse clicking)
[00:09:09] Or maybe slow this down into fourth quarter notes.
[00:09:21] (mouse clicking)
[00:09:24] So you can play around with this
[00:09:34] and just modify here the oscillator in octave steps.
[00:09:38] So maybe we remove this here.
[00:09:39] And let's show you this example
[00:09:45] I explained before with the hold.
[00:09:47] So you put this to hold, you put this to note
[00:09:51] and then you maybe modulate here,
[00:09:56] what can we modulate that makes sense?
[00:09:58] Maybe the panning, right?
[00:09:59] So you modulate to the right here, 100%.
[00:10:03] And then it switches the bipolar
[00:10:05] because we want to also modulate to the left side,
[00:10:08] not only to the right side.
[00:10:10] So we put this here in the bipolar mode
[00:10:14] and now we can trigger this here with the note.
[00:10:18] (mouse clicking)
[00:10:21] You can see this note gets a panning to the left here
[00:10:24] because this is still a monophonic mode.
[00:10:27] Maybe that is on, which is the polyphonic mode.
[00:10:31] So now each note, so I press multiple keys.
[00:10:34] (gentle music)
[00:10:39] So I press three notes
[00:10:45] and each of these notes is penned differently
[00:10:48] because we have this random modulator on the panning here.
[00:10:51] And every time you press three keys,
[00:10:54] this random mod here puts out three different random values
[00:11:00] which modulates this panning here.
[00:11:03] So each voice gets a different panning.
[00:11:05] So this is very nice to do.
[00:11:07] (gentle music)
[00:11:13] And you can also change here, of course, the cutoff,
[00:11:16] for instance, so each voice in the chord
[00:11:18] becomes a different or gets a different cutoff setting.
[00:11:22] (gentle music)
[00:11:26] And because we have the modulation also on the panning here,
[00:11:34] you don't know what's really happening.
[00:11:35] So sometimes you have three voices on the left side,
[00:11:40] which all happens to have cutoff down
[00:11:43] or closed and two voices on the right side
[00:11:46] with the cutoff all the way open.
[00:11:48] So everything is possible, right?
[00:11:50] So you have to make sure
[00:11:51] that you don't modulate that much.
[00:11:54] So sometimes I just dial in here,
[00:11:56] just a small amount of randomization
[00:12:00] and to bring sounds out more or better.
[00:12:04] That's maybe two.
[00:12:07] (gentle music)
[00:12:12] (gentle music)
[00:12:15] You can also use this to detune
[00:12:23] yet oscillators for each voice differently
[00:12:25] just by a small amount here.
[00:12:27] Or maybe use the global pitch.
[00:12:40] So each of my keys now gets a different cutoff setting,
[00:12:44] different panning setting, different pitch setting.
[00:12:47] And you can see that it's very powerful actually
[00:12:51] to use a randomizer here on instruments or FX
[00:12:55] because yeah, you can tweak the sound so drastically
[00:13:00] just by adding a small amount of modulation on this.
[00:13:04] (gentle music)
[00:13:09] (gentle music)
[00:13:11] Sometimes you want to switch to the monophonic mode,
[00:13:19] smoothing all the way up, maybe 16 notes modulation.
[00:13:22] And then you modulate your pitch slightly
[00:13:25] to get this, you know, this analog feel
[00:13:28] or synthesizers where the pitch is not really correct
[00:13:31] or holds that correct all the time.
[00:13:34] (gentle music)
[00:13:37] (gentle music)
[00:13:39] (gentle music)
[00:13:42] (gentle music)
[00:13:45] (gentle music)
[00:13:48] (gentle music)
[00:13:50] You can hear this is pretty static, right?
[00:13:52] And then dial in the modulation of the pitch here
[00:13:55] for each no voice.
[00:13:57] (gentle music)
[00:13:59] (gentle music)
[00:14:02] (gentle music)
[00:14:04] (gentle music)
[00:14:07] (gentle music)
[00:14:09] (gentle music)
[00:14:12] (gentle music)
[00:14:15] (gentle music)
[00:14:17] (gentle music)
[00:14:20] (gentle music)
[00:14:22] (gentle music)
[00:14:25] (gentle music)
[00:14:27] (gentle music)
[00:14:30] So instead of this,
[00:14:31] (gentle music)
[00:14:34] this original sound pretty static,
[00:14:36] nothing happens at all.
[00:14:37] (gentle music)
[00:14:40] (gentle music)
[00:14:43] (gentle music)
[00:14:44] To this.
[00:14:46] So it's pretty powerful to use this random mode
[00:14:48] on all kinds of presets or patches.
[00:14:51] And yeah, that's the random mode for you.
[00:14:54] [BLANK_AUDIO]