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Bitwig Curves Modulator - Draw Custom Modulation Shapes

Bitwig Guide | Apr 12, 2023

The Curves LFO is a customizable LFO that allows you to draw your own modulation shapes, synchronize them to tempo, and fine-tune settings like smoothing, retriggering, and polarity for precise control. You can edit the shape grid, snap points to rhythm divisions, save and recall curves, and apply modulation to synth parameters such as filter cutoff, supporting both monophonic and polyphonic modes. Its versatility enables you to create dynamic, rhythmically synchronized modulations and unique sound design movements, all fully integrated with your project’s groove and timing.

You can watch the Video on Youtube

Short Overview

With the Curves LFO, I can freely draw my own modulation shapes, giving me complete control over the movement and rhythm of my sound. I can easily adjust speed, sync it to my project’s tempo, smooth out sharp transitions, and even set it to bipolar or polyphonic modes for more complex results. Its grid snapping makes it precise and musical, and I can save, recall, and customize shapes as needed. Whether I want subtle modulation or intricate rhythmic effects, this LFO fits perfectly into my workflow.

Introduction to the Curves LFO

In this video, I explored the Curves LFO, a highly flexible modulation tool that lets you draw your own shapes and use them to modulate parameters in creative ways. Unlike traditional LFOs that use predefined waveforms or wave tables, the Curves LFO gives me an editor where I can sketch out any modulation path I want. In every other aspect, it functions like a regular LFO with all the expected controls for speed, sync, retriggering, and more.

Speed and Synchronization Options

I started by examining the speed controls at the top of the interface. The LFO's speed can be set in various units, including Hertz, kilohertz, and as fast as 50 kHz for ultra-rapid modulation. More importantly, there's a "bar" mode, which synchronizes the LFO to the DAW's transport, making it easy to time the modulation cycles to musical bars. For example, choosing "three bars" means that my drawn LFO shape will complete once every three bars of the timeline, making it musically locked to my arrangement.

Shape Editing and Smoothing

The main feature of Curves LFO is the editor, where I can draw modulation shapes. This is flexible, I can create sharp, sudden transitions, or with the built-in smoothing option, I can round out harsh edges to avoid audio pops or clicks. The editor has a grid system, which is especially useful. By adjusting the grid (for example, to 16 segments), I can ensure perfect sync with the beat, like dividing a one-bar cycle into 16 steps.

Smoothing: This feature rounds out sharp changes in the curve, preventing artifacts like crackling, especially important in digital environments where sudden jumps can cause unwanted audio issues.

Modulation Modes: Bipolar, Retrigger, and Polyphonic

I can set the output of the LFO to bipolar mode, which means it will generate both positive and negative values, useful for modulating parameters that can move in both directions.

Retriggering modes are available:

Polyphonic mode allows each MIDI note to have its own independent LFO instance. This means holding multiple keys lets each one modulate independently, which opens up interesting polyphonic movement in the sound.

Phase and External Modulation

The phase offset control lets me shift the starting point of the LFO shape. By setting the mode to "hold," I can manually or externally modulate the phase position, using another LFO or even a random modulator for evolving, complex effects.

Drawing and Saving Custom Shapes

When using the editor, I can choose from different drawing tools, draw by point, by freehand, or with the pencil for rapid sketching. I can also move points precisely, with the option to snap to the grid for perfect timing alignment. Changing the vertical resolution gives me fine control over the number of modulation steps. Once satisfied, I can save my custom shapes to a library for reuse, or right-click to copy, paste, reset, or load other shapes.

Modulation in Practice

To demonstrate, I connected the custom LFO output to modulate a synthesizer's filter cutoff. With a hand-drawn, rhythmic curve and synchronization to the song tempo, the modulation aligns perfectly with the grid, ensuring musical timing. When using note retrigger mode, every note press restarts the shape at the right moment, making the effect musical and consistent. Synchronized mode ensures strict timing, regardless of when notes are played.

Polyphonic and Advanced Uses

I also showed how polyphonic mode works, letting each new note press use its own LFO phase and shape. This creates intricate, layered modulation patterns, especially when pressing several notes with slightly offset beginnings. Adding a delay effect further enhances the complexity. The LFO can even be set so its frequency tracks the pitch of the MIDI note, making the LFO speed faster or slower depending on which key I play.

Sound Design Versatility

The Curves LFO is highly versatile for sound design, allowing for everything from subtle movement to wild, unpredictable modulations. Whether I need tempo-synced modulation, per-note modulation, or even randomized or phase-shifted shapes, this tool adapts to just about any scenario I can imagine. Drawing in shapes by hand means the only real limit is my imagination.

Conclusion

The Curves LFO is a powerful, creative modulation tool that far surpasses conventional LFOs by offering a hands-on approach for crafting custom modulation shapes. With all the expected LFO functionality and deep integration into DAW timing and MIDI input, it is a standout feature for musicians and sound designers who want total control and endless possibilities for creative movement in their sounds.

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] The Curves LFO is just a regular LFO with all its settings, but here instead of relying on
[00:00:08] predefined shapes or exchanging the shape with a wave table, you can draw in your own shapes
[00:00:15] with an editor. Besides that, it's just a regular LFO. You have your speed setting up here.
[00:00:22] You can switch this to different units, hertz, kilohertz, 50 kilohertz now. So it's all your rate,
[00:00:31] then you switch this here to bar, which is a synchronized mode. It's synchronized to your
[00:00:37] transport and you can dial in here maybe three bars. So it takes now three bars to
[00:00:43] repeat this cycle here one time. This is how you can see it. We have also
[00:00:52] smoothing here option, which you can disable or enable, which means when you have inside here
[00:00:57] some pretty drastic changes, you can create certainly some pops and crackles here and there.
[00:01:05] So you can use the smoothing here to make these edges a bit rounder. You can switch to a bipolar
[00:01:12] mode so you can have here now negative and positive values for the LFO output. And we have also your
[00:01:21] retriggering modes free. So it just repeats whenever on different note resets. So when you
[00:01:28] press a note or a note is incoming from the piano roll, it resets the phase and starts from the
[00:01:33] beginning again or synchronized. So it's synchronized to the transport phase signal. So a specific
[00:01:41] point in this shape is always at a specific point in your arrangement. Then you have groove setting
[00:01:50] here. So it's also applying the groove shuffle, the global shuffle and randomized. So every time
[00:01:59] a note is incoming, it starts at a different point in this shape.
[00:02:05] Okay, then we have a polyphonic mode. So you can use multiple keys at the same time and each key
[00:02:13] becomes its own or gets its own LFO. And we have your phase thing where we can offset basically
[00:02:24] where we start in the phase. And also if you switch this here to hold, you can use the phase
[00:02:32] input here to change the position in the cycle. So you can do this manually or you use an LFO,
[00:02:40] a different LFO and then modulate this here to change the position of the cycle. You can also
[00:02:47] use a random modulator, of course, to make this randomly. This is also possible. So these are the
[00:02:53] options we have with this here. So let's switch this here to bar and go back out of this. And we
[00:03:00] have this here implemented on a poly synth. Right. And we can just take the output of this modulator
[00:03:08] and modulate here to cut off. And then we can open up the editor of this LFO here by just clicking
[00:03:24] on this space. We get now here this editor. We can also move this around, change the sizing,
[00:03:32] if it's too small. And then we have here some kind of grid in there. You can see some lines.
[00:03:38] And you can say we want to change this grid because the grid is pretty helpful, actually.
[00:03:43] Let's say we have 16 segments here. And we want to play back this here in the time frame of one bar.
[00:03:52] So the whole cycle plays back in one bar, right? And we divide this by 16, which are 16 nodes,
[00:04:00] 16 nodes. So each column here is a 16 nodes, 16 nodes. We can now here change this to different
[00:04:11] shapes. Let's take your square thing. And then we can just draw different things here in there,
[00:04:20] or we can just click and drag. That's also possible, right? Or we can use this pencil and draw freely.
[00:04:29] Or be pretty precise here to get more points, or just draw quickly and we get less points.
[00:04:37] It's not that precise anymore, but you get the idea done. You can also switch back to the arrow,
[00:04:44] where we can move each of these points around. You can see it snaps here to the grid, which is
[00:04:50] pretty helpful because with these 16 segments here, we stay pretty much in sync with the
[00:04:59] BPM. So let's do this here, draw in some weird shapes, something like this, or maybe over two
[00:05:06] columns, then nothing, then bring in something here, something like this, or maybe even increase
[00:05:16] the vertical sensitivity to 16 or 12, something like this. So we have more steps we can choose from.
[00:05:28] Yeah, something like this, or use here even different shapes.
[00:05:32] And then if you're done, you can save this here in the top left corner to your library,
[00:05:39] if you want to recall that. Or you can right click here on the space and load a different curve
[00:05:47] from the library. Also save it, copy the curve or paste the curve or just do a reset. So delete
[00:05:55] everything. But that's not what we want today. So now we modulate this here, we draw in a
[00:06:03] custom curve, maybe start like this. Let's see how it sounds.
[00:06:21] You can see it's pretty rhythmically, and it's also correct, or it sounds like correct.
[00:06:26] It's pretty much on the grid.
[00:06:32] And because it's free here, it's probably not synchronized, so we
[00:06:45] use your note. So every time you press a note or key is incoming here, we start at the beginning.
[00:06:51] So when we start with the hit or with the key press on the grid,
[00:06:55] the rest of the cycle of this shape is perfectly in sync.
[00:07:04] Or we switch this here to synchronized mode.
[00:07:15] And the LFO doesn't care when we hit the key, it's always synchronized.
[00:07:21] And the shape even doesn't retrigger, it just plays. You can change the notes here,
[00:07:29] press different notes and it's always synchronized.
[00:07:45] Okay, so we can switch this here also to polyphonic mode, so we can now
[00:07:57] use multiple keys.
[00:07:58] Right, I'm pressing here four keys at the same time.
[00:08:10] Maybe use your note setting, so every time I press a key.
[00:08:19] And because I'm pressing these keys one after the other,
[00:08:26] they start in a different time frame,
[00:08:28] which makes it more interesting. Maybe add a delay here.
[00:08:46] Go to eight.
[00:08:53] And as you can see, you can create a lot of interesting movements just with this oscillator
[00:09:13] by drawing in some custom shapes. And if you use here these synchronized modes,
[00:09:20] yeah, you can do no wrong basically. Another interesting thing is that you can switch this
[00:09:27] here also to pitch of current note. So the frequency of the LFO plays back at the frequency
[00:09:34] of your key that you are pressing. So when you press C3, it plays in the frequency of C3.
[00:09:41] So let's use that. So right, it's pretty fast.
[00:09:56] Okay, maybe modulate this.
[00:10:10] As you can see, you can create a lot of nice movement with this LFO. You can also use it
[00:10:15] for sound design purposes. So it's pretty versatile, pretty interesting, and you can draw in any shape you want.