Filter+ - Modular Polyphonic Distortion & Filter Effect

[00:00:00] So the Filter+ device is probably my most used audio effect in Bitwig Studio just because
[00:00:05] it's so versatile, so effective, so small, and so modular.
[00:00:10] And it features here a distortion device on the left side and also a filter.
[00:00:15] So the audio routing goes basically into the device, into the distortion device and then
[00:00:20] it passes the audio to a filter here.
[00:00:22] So it's more like a subtractive effect where you can add harmonics here with the distortion
[00:00:27] device and then you can filter out certain overtones with the filter.
[00:00:32] So this is the idea and I want to show you how this looks like here in the chain.
[00:00:37] So all of this is modular, so we can exchange here the distortion device for something else.
[00:00:43] I usually just use here the transfer curve because I can dial in my own distortion curve,
[00:00:48] but you can also use something else like hard clipping or distortion device which looks
[00:00:55] like soft clipping, rectifier which brings up all the negative parts to the positive
[00:01:01] range, a normal saturator, the transfer curve push, it's also something like a soft clipper,
[00:01:09] a lot of stuff, also here quantizer which is more like a pit crusher.
[00:01:14] But like I said, I'm using most of the time to transfer curve because we can dial in here
[00:01:19] or paint in our own kind of transfer curves and mess around with this.
[00:01:26] So I really like to have it this way.
[00:01:29] Anyway, so we can also disable here this device.
[00:01:33] If you don't need to have distortion, you can just click this, just disable it or bypass
[00:01:40] it.
[00:01:41] You can also use your anti-alising toggle if you want to have a different sound or
[00:01:47] have a different colouring for this.
[00:01:50] There's also here this toggle so you can switch the, it's more like a transfer curve
[00:01:57] specific this knob because you don't have this in all the other devices or other distortion
[00:02:02] modules.
[00:02:03] So here you can switch this basically to a bipolar setting where you can change the
[00:02:09] negative part and the positive part differently and I like to have it here basically switched
[00:02:16] off so I can only shape the top part and the lower part is mirrored.
[00:02:21] So you only shape one part and the other part is basically reversed used in the negative
[00:02:28] part.
[00:02:29] Anyway, so this is the transfer curve here and it goes straight into a filter and we
[00:02:34] have then here an attenuator or a drive knob.
[00:02:37] That's how it's called.
[00:02:38] We can change the volume or the gain of the signal coming from the transfer curve into
[00:02:44] the filter.
[00:02:45] Maybe you add a lot of volume here by just distorting the crap out of the signal and
[00:02:52] then you want to tone down the volume you can do this here.
[00:02:55] Then we have here an attenuator for modulating the cutoff position here with an LFO.
[00:03:01] The LFO is down here where you can change the timing and so on.
[00:03:06] And then we have here a second attenuator which is audio rate which is this part here.
[00:03:10] So this uses basically the incoming audio as a modulation signal.
[00:03:16] So audio rate modulation or something like FM if you want to call it this way.
[00:03:21] No, it's actually not FM but yeah, you can use the audio signal.
[00:03:25] You can also pre-filter here the audio signal before you use it as a modulation signal.
[00:03:32] This is here a low pass filter so you can filter out all the overtones, all the fast
[00:03:36] moving frequencies out of the signal and you are left basically with the lower parts
[00:03:42] of the signal, the lower frequencies which modulate much more smoothly and lower and
[00:03:47] slower and then you can use then this to modulate here the frequency position.
[00:03:52] And this is kind of hard wired here from the get go so all you need to do is basically
[00:03:57] dial this in to make audio rate modulation and use this to use the LFO here to modulate
[00:04:04] the frequency knob.
[00:04:06] If you're not happy with this hard wiring because it's just wired to the frequency
[00:04:11] knob here and if you want to modulate something else you can use here these kind of modulator
[00:04:16] outputs, output modifiers or I don't know how to call it, modulator outputs this is
[00:04:22] how it's called in the grid.
[00:04:24] So you can click this and then it's kind of flashing and then you can modulate here for
[00:04:28] instance the resonance and see here it's moving or you can use the incoming audio to also
[00:04:35] modulate here the resonance and we need of course to have some audio input for that to
[00:04:39] happen.
[00:04:46] Yeah it produces some nice overtones sometimes.
[00:04:49] Anyway, so I don't know why they hard wired here the LFOs to the frequency knob I guess
[00:04:56] it's just you know to have something in place already when you open up the device.
[00:05:02] But we had something like this in Bitwig Studio already where we had native modulators attached
[00:05:09] to devices to audio effects and then in Bitwig Studio 2.0 they removed all of that and we
[00:05:16] had then here the modulator pane section where we can add our own LFOs and modulators and
[00:05:26] then we can add as many as we want and modulate as many parameters as we want.
[00:05:32] So I guess this is just here to add a bit of practical or maybe you know ease of use
[00:05:39] or whatever.
[00:05:40] But this is the first time I saw this here adding that they added basically native modulators
[00:05:45] to a device.
[00:05:47] Before that it was just all add your own modulators and have some fun, right?
[00:05:53] Okay, so we can of course exchange the filter for something else.
[00:05:59] The filter module itself also features different filter types with low pass, band pass, high
[00:06:04] pass, notch filter and then you can say oh I don't like this filter at all.
[00:06:08] I don't like how it sounds, how it behaves.
[00:06:11] Let's switch it here maybe for a low pass LD filter, a letter filter and you can also
[00:06:18] change the slope here with the button so it has also different modes.
[00:06:22] We can use maybe a cell key filter also features a lot of different filter types, HP8, very
[00:06:31] steep high pass filter, so a lot of things you can change here.
[00:06:37] Maybe also an XP filter or the FVR vowel filter.
[00:06:40] I don't want to go into these filter types too much because I have different or separate
[00:06:44] videos on these modules probably soon up but all I want to say you can modify this device.
[00:06:52] It's very semi-modular.
[00:06:55] If you're not happy with having this semi-modular then you can open up here this view where you
[00:07:02] can change some settings of some of these modules here inside of the grid more deeply
[00:07:09] if you want to do this.
[00:07:10] So for instance here the LFO itself you can see it has like this thick line and a very
[00:07:16] thin line which indicates that the left channel is slightly offset from the right channel
[00:07:22] and you can do this here only inside of this grid view where you can see here it's offset
[00:07:28] by 90 degrees so the left channel is slightly different in time than the right channel.
[00:07:36] So it gives you a nice stereo with effect on the sound of course but you can't change
[00:07:42] this here in the GUI.
[00:07:43] You have to open up this grid view to change this.
[00:07:47] Also some other things here that you can't change from GUI so make sure you open up here
[00:07:52] this view and look into this device and maybe you can find some neat parameters you can change.
[00:08:00] You can't add something to it here.
[00:08:02] You can see the background here is pretty locked.
[00:08:05] There's no grid in the back end so on the background you can't change or add devices.
[00:08:11] But what you can do is you can right click here on the device and say convert to FX grid.
[00:08:18] When you do this you can see you lose basically the front end here of the device inside of
[00:08:24] the chain but you gain access to the grid and you can remove devices or add devices
[00:08:32] here if you want to and modify this FX or filter plus device in all kinds of different
[00:08:38] directions.
[00:08:40] But the big downside is you lose basically here the GUI in the chain which is kind of
[00:08:46] a shame.
[00:08:47] I hope they add something like this in the future where we can create our own devices
[00:08:51] inside of the grid and then have a nice front end in the chain.
[00:08:57] Okay let's go back here.
[00:09:00] So yeah this is basically the device.
[00:09:02] We can also open up here the help menu.
[00:09:04] It shows you all of the informations you need.
[00:09:09] Also when you exchange here the filter types, for instance you go to the SVF, it also changes
[00:09:14] here the help menu for that.
[00:09:17] This is I think here a bug where it's moving this picture around.
[00:09:21] I don't know.
[00:09:23] So let's go back to SVF.
[00:09:25] Also because this is under the hood it's more or less just an FX grid in a different front
[00:09:34] end.
[00:09:35] But when you click the device itself here and you go to the inspector on the left side
[00:09:41] you can see it has some very interesting parameters.
[00:09:43] In fact it has the same parameters in the inspector like an FX grid device.
[00:09:50] So we have here Voices Mono.
[00:09:52] So it's a monophonic effect but we can dial in some polyphonic voices.
[00:09:57] We can make this polyphonic which is pretty interesting.
[00:10:00] I don't know if there's any VST plug-in on the market that works polyphonically.
[00:10:07] In Bitwig these FX+ devices or some other devices or the FX grid itself are polyphonic.
[00:10:15] Which means you can use just one device and multiply it in memory to different instances
[00:10:24] to have different effects on different voices.
[00:10:28] You can play it multiple times just with one device.
[00:10:32] That's the idea.
[00:10:33] Also voice tagging which kind of does the same thing.
[00:10:36] I show you some things you can do with this in a moment.
[00:10:40] And also your retrigger which is not really important because none of this is actually
[00:10:45] or none of this matters for this configuration here.
[00:10:49] But it's just an FX grid device, right?
[00:10:53] What else?
[00:10:56] We can also say here something like node through, control through.
[00:11:01] So when you do basically this or you disable this, every node that you create in front
[00:11:07] of the device is not passed through the device.
[00:11:10] So it's missing here.
[00:11:13] That's very important maybe for some of you.
[00:11:17] Also control signals which is basically CC modulation signals and so on.
[00:11:24] You can also change it to device phase which is maybe important for the LFO for the timing
[00:11:33] options here.
[00:11:34] I think if you do one bar here and this is one bar and you do two bars here, this one
[00:11:40] bar setting here is actually two bars now, which is a bit misleading.
[00:11:45] But by default, this is usually one bar and one bar is one bar and yeah, that's all you
[00:11:51] need to know.
[00:11:52] I don't want to go too deep into this because this is more like something you need to know
[00:11:56] for FX grids and pulley grids and so on and I have a course for this coming up on this
[00:12:03] channel.
[00:12:04] There's also a course on my website which is completely free where you can read all of
[00:12:09] this in text form.
[00:12:11] Anyway, so I talked about that this is more or less a polyphonic device and I'll show
[00:12:18] you this in a minute.
[00:12:19] I also want to give you just information and there's a pre FX box and a post FX box.
[00:12:25] As we can say before any sound goes into this device, maybe filtered with an EQ5.
[00:12:33] We can filter the sound before it goes into the distortion device and then it goes to
[00:12:37] the second filter here and then you can also use a post FX and only on the output of this
[00:12:44] you can maybe put a reverb or something like this.
[00:12:58] And when you pull down the mix knob, you mix the dry, the incoming signal unprocessed with
[00:13:04] the wet signal, with the processed signal.
[00:13:07] So you can do a lot of things to the sound here with the filter plus device and then
[00:13:11] pull it down and mix it or blend it with the dry signal coming in.
[00:13:16] It's sometimes interesting so you can do your maybe we have here, I don't know, a saw.
[00:13:21] It's maybe more like a bass.
[00:13:28] It brings a bit of overtones a little bit.
[00:13:46] Then you maybe bring down at the volume a bit and then you mix it with the dry signal.
[00:13:53] The dry signal is not going through the reverb, only the wet, the processed signal goes into
[00:14:00] the reverb.
[00:14:01] So this is maybe important to know.
[00:14:03] Anyway, so let's bring this back to normal.
[00:14:10] So yeah, this is the post and the pre-fx box here.
[00:14:12] You can do a lot of things with this and sometimes it's very important to just filter the sound
[00:14:16] before you send it into the distortion device here.
[00:14:20] Anyway, so let's go actually to the polyphonic stuff here.
[00:14:27] So voice stacking is easy to explain, I made a video on voice stacking already.
[00:14:32] It works like with every device that you have voice stacking enabled here.
[00:14:37] So you can say we have a filter and we don't have a signal going into the filter and maybe
[00:14:43] I have here a self resonance on, like this.
[00:14:49] So it creates now a sine partial at exactly 262 hertz.
[00:14:55] Maybe I bring up here a spectrum device, you can see it, right?
[00:15:02] So we have this frequency here or different frequency, doesn't matter.
[00:15:07] And you can say we want to multiply this device to let's say four instances.
[00:15:14] So now we play four instances at the same frequency, it's a bit louder.
[00:15:20] And then we can use here a stack, stack spread modulator.
[00:15:26] And with this modulating at the frequency, we have now four or five devices in memory
[00:15:33] playing a resonance that at different frequency.
[00:15:38] We get this.
[00:15:50] And if you don't use self resonance and we use an input signal, let's say a saw.
[00:15:57] Just a small click.
[00:16:00] And then we remove the modulation for that, you have a nice little percussion here, maybe
[00:16:19] at the step what you like to do this, why not something like this, hit play, maybe make
[00:16:25] it a bit faster.
[00:16:28] And what you like to do this.
[00:16:47] Maybe a different filter or maybe use here and selling key.
[00:16:56] So we can create a resonator with this just by using the voice stacking here by just multiplying
[00:17:11] in memory this device to multiple voices and then use a stack spread modulator to actually
[00:17:18] tell the device what to do on each of these voices with the frequency.
[00:17:23] And we just want to spread it out, right?
[00:17:25] We want to have a different frequency on each of these voices and then we create more or
[00:17:29] less a resonator when we use here a band pass.
[00:17:32] So that's just basically how a vocoder or how a resonator works, sometimes really interesting.
[00:17:39] If you want to keep it more like tuned to, let's say, notes, we can create a note clip
[00:17:50] and you can say we have here a note on a certain frequency, maybe use this.
[00:17:58] And we want to use here a key filter, a key track, a key track plus filter and you modulate
[00:18:04] here this frequency by just, I don't know, 60, 60 semitones, it's very important if you
[00:18:11] open up here the help for this, it shows you this here.
[00:18:18] Set the parameter to C3 and then set the modulation amount to plus 60 semitones to representing
[00:18:25] plus five, plus minus five octaves.
[00:18:28] So we do this here, we modulate this by exactly 60 semitones, you can also see this here on
[00:18:33] the left side on the modulation indexes.
[00:18:39] So now we can play this and the key track modulator takes the note here coming from
[00:18:46] the piano roll and then modulates here this slider to the right position, exactly on this
[00:18:54] note.
[00:18:55] It's very important that you double click here, this cutoff knob so it snaps back to
[00:19:00] the C3 position which is 260, 262 Hertz, so just double click it and then you're on the
[00:19:08] right place, modulate this by 60 semitones in your setup.
[00:19:12] So now we can play here some random note, maybe this one and then use here this and then
[00:19:22] we play maybe a different note or let's, alright something like this, okay.
[00:19:34] So very easy to create actually a synthesizer with an audio effect, you can also remove
[00:19:40] here the test tone, we don't need it, we just use self resonance.
[00:19:45] So now the problem is we need to bring here the resonance down to actually mute the sound
[00:19:51] but we can use another modulator, we can use the ADSR modulator that looks like this.
[00:19:57] So it gives you a signal every time we play a note, right.
[00:20:01] We can say let's modulate here actually the resonance with this, and when we hit stop then
[00:20:15] it fades out.
[00:20:20] So now comes the interesting part, this is just monophonic, when we play multiple notes
[00:20:24] here, maybe I play here some kind of chord, it just plays one note and most of the times
[00:20:34] it's the first note arriving at the device, it's probably the lowest note.
[00:20:39] So we can use your voices now and can say we want to have at least 12 voices to our
[00:20:47] same disposal and now we can play it polyphonically.
[00:21:00] So you can create a synthesizer just with this.
[00:21:05] So yeah this is the voices option here and also voice stacking, you can do this only
[00:21:10] on filter plus and I think you can also do this on sweep.
[00:21:15] On most of these devices that use the FX grid as a foundation, I do hear a video on sweep
[00:21:25] also but it's more or less the same device as the filter plus device but here you have
[00:21:30] a filter in front of the distortion device and then you go back to another filter and
[00:21:35] then you can change it to configuration but most of the times it's just the same device.
[00:21:40] So I want to put most of the information here in this video for the filter plus device because
[00:21:44] I use it all the time, it's pretty great, I can do so many different tricks just with
[00:21:50] this one here, like I showed you, you can filter audio, you can distort audio, you can
[00:21:55] make a resonator, you can make a synthesizer out of this for some reason.
[00:22:00] So very interesting, very cool.
[00:22:05] Probably forgot something but I want to give you some examples if you need more of these
[00:22:10] weird ideas you probably have to look on my main channel for different videos where I
[00:22:16] just use this device but I think for a global just giving you an idea what this device is
[00:22:23] and how it works kind of way I think that's enough.
[00:22:30] So this is the filter plus device, let me know what you think in the comments down below
[00:22:34] and see you in the next video.