Organ - Simple Additive Synthesizer

[00:00:00] So the organ device is around since Bitwig Studio 1.0 and it's a very simple device, easy
[00:00:06] to use and it doesn't aim to be a realistic organ emulator or simulator or anything like
[00:00:11] this.
[00:00:12] It's just a basic signed stacked additive synthesizers.
[00:00:16] We have here a lot of little sliders where we can change the gain of each of these signed
[00:00:22] partials.
[00:00:24] It's a very simple layout.
[00:00:25] Like I said here we have a pitch knob to dial in some kind of pitch offset to the current
[00:00:30] note.
[00:00:31] When we play D#3 we can push this up to 36 semitones higher so it goes up to 3 octaves
[00:00:38] higher or maybe lower.
[00:00:40] There's a glide knob so when we play multiple notes or different notes one after the other
[00:00:44] we can glide from one note to the other note.
[00:00:47] We have attack and release here for the amplitude envelope.
[00:00:50] There's no sustain.
[00:00:51] There's always sustain.
[00:00:52] When you hold the note it stays right so there's no sustain part here of the envelope.
[00:00:59] But we have attack and release.
[00:01:00] We have also a gain knob for each voice because it's a polyphonic device.
[00:01:04] We can play multiple notes at the same time and then we can tweak the loudness of each
[00:01:11] voice here with the snob.
[00:01:12] We have a panning knob left, right pretty simple.
[00:01:16] We have a note FX box, we can tweak the notes coming in from the piano roll and the keyboard
[00:01:23] in real time of course and we have an out FX box so we can add some audio effects after
[00:01:30] generating sounds inside of the organ device.
[00:01:33] So the most complicated thing about this device is probably here the slider section to get
[00:01:38] your head around this.
[00:01:41] We also have at the top here some kind of drop down where we can change the model.
[00:01:47] It's called model but it's more or less like an oscillator selector.
[00:01:51] So pure is basically just a sine oscillator, rich is a triangle oscillator and then we
[00:01:56] have full which is a rectified sine which means they just take all the negative parts
[00:02:05] of the sine partial and turn it into the positive range.
[00:02:09] It gives you some kind of saw feel.
[00:02:14] This is full.
[00:02:17] So slightly different overtones.
[00:02:24] So it's an oscillator wave shape selector.
[00:02:26] Then we have a retrigger here so we can retrigger the face of the oscillator if you want to
[00:02:31] do this.
[00:02:32] Maybe you want to create some organ bass sounds with this, right some typical house basses
[00:02:37] and you want to retrigger the oscillator every time you play a bass to keep it consistent.
[00:02:43] You can do this here with the retrigger knob and then we have these sliders here.
[00:02:48] We can dial in multiple of these to give you a sense of what it does.
[00:03:06] And I don't know why they haven't made just some kind of labels to each of the sliders
[00:03:10] so we get a sense of what it is.
[00:03:13] You actually have to open up here.
[00:03:15] If you click on the organ device on the left side there it says show help or you use F1
[00:03:20] on the keyboard and you can open up here the help menu.
[00:03:23] And on the left side here you can see what each of the slider does here we have.
[00:03:28] The first one is actually down an octave from the current notes when we play C3, right this
[00:03:34] is down an octave so it's C2.
[00:03:37] The fundamental root note that you actually play for instance if I play here C3 it's this
[00:03:43] one.
[00:03:44] So this is the fundamental, this is exactly the frequency of the note you are currently
[00:03:50] playing C3 this is down an octave so it's basically a bass note or a sub and then in
[00:03:58] between we have here the fifth right so it's basically seven semitones higher yeah it's
[00:04:08] a fifth it's a dominant of the fundamental.
[00:04:11] I don't know why they put this here below the fundamental because it's actually frequency
[00:04:17] wise it's on top of this I can show you this here the frequency right this is the fundamental
[00:04:23] and then we dial in here the fifth this is G3 this is C3 that's what we play and then
[00:04:32] we have here the sub which is C2 right so one octave lower then a fifth higher and the
[00:04:40] fundamental and then all the other sliders are kind of the same thing just in different
[00:04:46] octaves so when we open this up here again so we have after the after the fundamental
[00:04:52] we have then here an octave higher then we have here an octave and a fifth so basically
[00:04:57] the same thing as this just one octave higher then we have two octaves two octaves and a
[00:05:04] major third that's also interesting so if you want to play a major chord you have here
[00:05:09] also major third in there again two octaves and a fifth higher and three octaves higher
[00:05:16] so only roots and fifth and a major third is in there if you never actually touch this
[00:05:24] here there's never a major third in there so yeah that's basically it so you just stack
[00:05:29] sine partials if this is your own pure you just stack sine partials basically the synthesizer
[00:05:35] I showed you in my last video on the main channel where I just stack sine partials to
[00:05:41] create pad sounds here you can do it just for free if you are happy with just having
[00:05:47] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 sliders or sine partials 9 sine partials yeah then you're fine with
[00:05:57] this I personally never use this for any organ sounds ever I only use it for pad sounds and
[00:06:05] I made here some presets a few years ago for instance here sublime that's one of the official
[00:06:13] packs I guess and I'm only using here some modulators to actually modulate as you can
[00:06:21] see here modulate some of the volume sliders go in and out this is how it sounds and just
[00:06:29] holding down one note nothing more or maybe this preset here sine offsets same concept
[00:06:50] just a lot of reverb here on the audio FX part and then you play some notes and a lot
[00:07:05] of modulations just modulate here the volume sliders of the organ device that's how I use
[00:07:11] it okay let's go back here to the organ device also interesting here if you click on the
[00:07:19] organ device on the left side we have voices we can say oh this is a polyphonic device
[00:07:24] we want to play multiple notes at the same time all we dial this down to mono monophonic
[00:07:29] so we can only play one note at a time so when you play one note then you play another
[00:07:34] note the first note is more or less choked or disabled or however you want to call it
[00:07:40] so you can only play one note at a time very helpful when you play bass sounds or when
[00:07:46] you play bass lines right and you play multiple notes so you can hold one note the bass note
[00:07:55] and then you hold it down and then you play on top some melodies with the octave higher
[00:08:00] right and then you have the super funky bass lines sometimes if you can play it of course
[00:08:07] so yeah you can use this here as a monophonic device or polyphonic device if you want to
[00:08:11] play some chords you can do this super nice for pad sounds we can also use just the fundamental
[00:08:28] and on the left side you can see your voice stacking is also possible with this device
[00:08:32] we can say we want to have four voice stacks and they maybe should play something different
[00:08:37] so we can say yeah stack spread modulator then you can just offset on each voice stack
[00:08:48] the pitch slightly right maybe use more this one here maybe want to restart here yeah it's
[00:09:12] almost like and maybe we want to dial down here the upper notes right it's too loud here
[00:09:20] so we do this so the higher we go in the voice deck the lower we bring down here the voice
[00:09:29] volume maximum is of course here are 36 semitones so this is some kind of limitation we can also
[00:09:45] say the higher we go in the voice deck the shorter the release time is or the attack
[00:10:01] time interesting yeah you can make some interesting sounds with this probably this sounds nice
[00:10:12] each of these oscillators you are fighting and put the reverb on that let me see
[00:10:30] so yeah like I said it's perfect for pad sounds and some sound experimentations but I personally
[00:10:56] just see this here as a additive or simple additive synthesizer instead of an organ device
[00:11:02] but you can also make of course organ sounds with it but it doesn't aim to be a realistic
[00:11:07] simulator like I said in the beginning anyway I think that's it for the organ device there
[00:11:13] is not much here to do except attaching a lot of modulators and using voice stacking and
[00:11:21] as experiment with all the other devices you have at your disposal in Bitwig studio just
[00:11:29] combine everything so like I said it's a very old device but you can combine it and then
[00:11:35] you get something more out of it that's it thanks for watching
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