AD Envelope - Signal Generator

[00:00:00] Today it's about the AD envelope module in Bitwig Studio in the grid of Bitwig Studio.
[00:00:07] You can see there's a lot of information already on the help menu, a lot of things to talk about
[00:00:12] and also later on I want to show you how I use the AD envelope and yeah it's sometimes
[00:00:19] even better than just using here the segments module.
[00:00:23] You can see here in the category of envelope we have a lot of different modules ADSR, AD
[00:00:28] that's what we talk about today, AR, plug segments and then the other envelope followers.
[00:00:34] So I take just this envelope generator or module first because it's very easy to get
[00:00:42] maybe there is no sustain phase it's just AD which means attack and decay and you can
[00:00:50] feed audio in here and you get audio out and this audio is then shaped by this curve in
[00:00:56] terms of volume right so you can maybe use I don't know a sine oscillator here that produces
[00:01:03] a continuous signal as you can see here goes into an AD and then we have here an oscilloscope
[00:01:12] and nothing comes out of it and because we have here a pre chord we can enable so when
[00:01:17] it's yellow then this means we can send in a MIDI signal from the MIDI keyboard here
[00:01:23] this track is armed into the grid and then just trigger this envelope.
[00:01:32] You can see here then it lets this sine wave pass through the envelope so it's a kind of
[00:01:40] an amplifier combined with an envelope not just one module so it's an amplitude combined
[00:01:49] with an envelope but we also get out here the shape of the envelope itself it's called
[00:01:57] I think signal output envelope out envelope signal and then this is here the input signal
[00:02:05] with the envelope applied.
[00:02:08] So there's an audio output here and there's kind of a signal output and it gives you the
[00:02:12] shape of this envelope itself as a signal so when we hit here key again you can see
[00:02:21] the blue line gives you exactly the volume shape maybe we switch this here to slow right
[00:02:29] you can see in blue the signal and you can see in green the audio signal that's actually
[00:02:36] shaped by this envelope itself ok there are also two buttons here attack and decay and
[00:02:46] it's measured here in milliseconds and then at some point it becomes seconds also here
[00:02:51] milliseconds and seconds and you can define of course how fast it reaches here the highest
[00:02:57] point and how fast it goes back down to the lowest point.
[00:03:02] So making this here a bit slower takes a bit of time until it reaches the top and then
[00:03:09] it takes exactly two seconds until it reaches here back to zero again ok that's easy to
[00:03:16] get I guess but there are also some different options here you can select here with drop
[00:03:22] down and you can select between analog relative and digital and each of these modes you have
[00:03:28] different features and different timing so it's a little bit different here and there
[00:03:34] maybe with this disconnected sign and we leave everything as it is maybe make this a bit
[00:03:41] longer here and just duplicate this here three times something like this and here we say
[00:03:48] we want to have analog here we have relative and here we have digital you can already see
[00:03:54] the analog version here with with an A there's no option here to actually bend or twist or
[00:04:02] change the curve here itself it's just fixed it's a kind of I guess an analog curve that's
[00:04:08] how these envelope generators work in the analog world I have no idea probably relative
[00:04:15] here with the rates differential curves which means you can twist and turn or bend each
[00:04:22] of these curves I leave it as it is for now also here with digital it's the same thing
[00:04:27] so let's trigger actually three of these envelopes here with the same timing so it's the same
[00:04:33] attack time everywhere also the same decay times everywhere and so let's trigger this
[00:04:40] you can see they look and behave completely different right this one is a bit longer this
[00:04:46] one is shorter and this one has a very distinct curve here I guess that's the analog shape
[00:04:51] yeah and then here with the relative one you can actually shape it you can bend it to your
[00:05:02] needs you need to have a fast you know fast descent here to the highest point and then
[00:05:08] stay there a bit longer and or make it maybe like this also possible
[00:05:13] so yeah so you can stay true to the analog original sound or you can make it here more
[00:05:24] digital and then you can change here the curve settings also here with the with the digital one
[00:05:32] yeah so this is here with exact timing I don't know what this means probably that the timing of
[00:05:38] the attack and decay phase is you know specifically timed I can't measure it here on the oscilloscope
[00:05:49] but you can see here this looks this looks much different than this one so it's actually at the
[00:05:57] same time three six five three six five yeah it's basically the same thing you can see it's much longer
[00:06:04] it looks completely different so the question is now what is better there is no better or worse
[00:06:13] in audio you just apply what sounds good to you right that's how I proceeded through all my years
[00:06:21] I just put on my audio what I think sounds great I switch through the modes here when I for instance
[00:06:27] create snare sounds kick drum sounds or whatever I do with these envelopes and I switch through
[00:06:33] the modes and then I see oh this sounds much better on a snare attack or the sounds worse
[00:06:37] and I just you know stay or leave what I think sounds good so this is how you use that I would say
[00:06:44] so don't ask yourself what's better what's worse what not to use just do what I want to do and then
[00:06:53] leave what sounds good to you okay these are the modes let's delete this here for a moment
[00:06:59] there are there's also some more to it right so we have here also this pre chord I
[00:07:06] barely explained it but it's just you know taking in the signal from outside of the grid when we
[00:07:14] actually pressing your note and the keyboard or we play a note in the piano roll but you can also
[00:07:20] disable this and just reach here for maybe a gate signal which is basically the same thing because
[00:07:27] the gate module takes the note input from outside of the grid and just puts it into the signal and
[00:07:35] here you can hook up something in between and make some changes to it but you can also use
[00:07:40] something like a trigger module here and say please trigger this envelope four times each bar
[00:07:49] and you get a periodic signal here and then you can shape the audio so yeah you cannot
[00:07:57] only trigger this here with a keyboard when you want to create a synthesizer you can also do this
[00:08:02] here in a more generative way and influence how this envelope is triggered so easy possible
[00:08:09] then we have here this kind of knob it's called I think loop is it called loop
[00:08:16] we have to highlight this it's called loop yeah restarts the envelope whenever the trigger input
[00:08:22] remains high which means we can switch this on and if you have for instance a button here
[00:08:30] and this stays on it just loops over and over and it starts again when it reaches here at the end
[00:08:38] and it becomes slower of course when the decay time is longer and then when it reaches here zero
[00:08:45] then it goes back to the beginning so it's more like an LFO behavior so you can loop the envelope
[00:08:52] I guess most people already know how this works so yeah this also works here of course with the
[00:08:58] pre chord so when you hold down the key on the keyboard it exactly works the same
[00:09:02] nice so the last thing we have here is this modulator output and you can find this
[00:09:14] on some modules inside of the grid and you probably already know how this works
[00:09:18] you can get this signal here as a modulator so you can say maybe you have a volume knob
[00:09:26] at some point in your patch or outside of the grid here inside of the fx box you can also do this
[00:09:32] there you can just hit this right go into the modulation mode and then modulate maybe here again
[00:09:39] to duck something or maybe to shape the volume or shape frequencies or whatever so it's just
[00:09:45] another output here for the signal but instead of having here a cable that you can hook up you can
[00:09:51] just use a modulator output and sometimes I use this here on the fx box so we have a tool device
[00:09:56] or maybe a reverb you can connect this here and then you can connect the grid with the outside
[00:10:05] world with the post fx world or whatever you want to call it so maybe you have a reverb right and
[00:10:11] then you produce a snare sound and you want to duck the wet signal from the reverb away when the
[00:10:18] snare sound here plays the initial transient and you can do this here and do this all the time
[00:10:24] let's be honest okay so this is the modulator out it works perfectly fine what else there's not much
[00:10:33] to it you can also find you in the inspector on the left side again the attack the decay when there's
[00:10:42] a different mode here relative this is the same thing as here then you can of course shape here
[00:10:48] to curve if you want to and then we have something here like effect voice lifetime on the left side
[00:10:54] I'm not sure if I explained this already but when you have the grid if you click on the grid here
[00:10:59] and it's not in monophonic mode so monophonic means there's only just one voice active all the
[00:11:04] time but when you switch this here to polyphonic mode we have five voices available no voice is
[00:11:13] active you have to press a key or create a new voice to actually make the grid become alive right so
[00:11:20] here now you can see this is now not grayed out anymore effect voice lifetime which means
[00:11:28] the voice stays alive as long as the signal is true okay so maybe we can do here something like
[00:11:37] a sine wave and maybe I do an audio out here and make this a bit quieter connect this
[00:11:47] so we should have here no audio output right you can see here there's nothing you can hear
[00:11:55] nothing audible because there's no voice active because we have this here in polyphonic mode right
[00:12:00] five voices no voices active so what we have to do is we we have to make this voice become alive
[00:12:08] so we press a note on the keyboard right it's a very short sound but I still hold down the key here
[00:12:19] but it only gives me just a very short amount of sound and when we add now an ad here
[00:12:26] and say effect voice lifetime right and you make the decay time very long and then we play this again
[00:12:47] at some point it just stops so this envelope now affects the voice lifetime that's currently running
[00:12:56] yeah just by the how long the decay here is or you can define I think no you can define the
[00:13:03] decay time here and then it affects the voice lifetime yeah
[00:13:11] right and if I just remove this it doesn't work anymore so you have certain devices
[00:13:17] or modules inside of the grid that affects the voice lifetime when in polyphonic mode
[00:13:22] you can see it's not even hooked up to anything right you don't need to do this it's not affecting
[00:13:29] here the volume of the sine but it affects how long actually the voice is active but we can also of
[00:13:35] course here connect these two and also shape here the volume which is much better right
[00:13:43] yeah that's very important to know but when you switch here the grid back to monophonic mode
[00:13:50] this is grayed out because there's only or always one voice active all the time and we
[00:13:57] can also here just delete this and you can hear the sine wave playing all the time nothing stops
[00:14:05] it and this is why we need here to use the monophonic mode for these kind of generative grid
[00:14:12] patches I do all the time because there's a one voice always active and you can do whatever you want
[00:14:18] inside of the grid and it's still you know plays and keeps one voice alive all the time
[00:14:25] okay let's go back to AD here so I want to show you also something here which is something I showed
[00:14:34] someone on discord because he asked me about kick drums right when you want to make kick drums
[00:14:41] so let's say you want to make a kick drum and we started by using a sine and you probably want to
[00:14:47] have an amplitude envelope something like this and we need a bit of volume and maybe we use here
[00:14:54] peak limiter okay so we have this and we can play of course different notes which is not what you
[00:15:04] want you want to have a static pitch so we use here a pitch module something like this we hook
[00:15:12] this up so pitch goes into the sine oscillator full applied so everything that gets in here is
[00:15:19] applied and then we disable the pre chord because we don't want to change the pitch with the keyboard
[00:15:25] coming from the outside you only want to change the pitch here with the module so we go down to
[00:15:30] maybe g0 that's my magic magic note for kick drums you get something like this
[00:15:38] you can hear there are some some differences when you play that's because the sine partial
[00:15:47] or the sine oscillator is not re-triggering every time from the same place in the face
[00:15:54] that's much better and then we can define a pitch drop and you can do this multiple ways
[00:16:00] some people just modulate here the pitch offset
[00:16:03] something like this I do sometimes just duplicate here another one
[00:16:12] let's disable this and then we hook this up here to the pitch okay so we have the pitch incoming
[00:16:21] and then we just add this envelope to this pitch okay we make this a bit shorter so we have something
[00:16:31] like this so now the problem is we end up on g0 when the envelope is done when we are back down here
[00:16:42] right but it goes too much up here in frequency so we can add here another what's the name
[00:16:52] attenuator and we do something like this
[00:16:58] so we can change how strong or how much how far up we want to go with the pitch drop here
[00:17:07] I hope this is kind of clear you can also go to relative motors we can define the bend sounds
[00:17:22] a bit different okay then we bring in an oscilloscope here so we can track what's actually going on
[00:17:34] and we switch this to fast or maybe slow we see here our envelopes and then we also want to
[00:17:42] trigger the oscilloscope here with this so we have this envelope always here in the beginning
[00:17:52] maybe go too fast and that's much better so we can go up here in frequency right
[00:17:59] make this a bit shorter
[00:18:04] we get the perfect perfect click in the beginning but it's not perfect for the body so the body
[00:18:15] sounds a bit different so we want to have this and this combined so what I do sometimes is I
[00:18:27] leave this here for the click and then I do another one something like this for the body
[00:18:37] and then I add here another add module to this and then we do something like this and here we do
[00:18:46] a bit slower and we go down right so now we have here the body and here we have the click
[00:19:06] yeah and then we can just check here how it looks like combined let's use this and this
[00:19:15] it's hard to see because it's very fast but you can see we combine basically here two envelopes
[00:19:26] to one envelope this very short one here gives you the click and then this one gives you the body
[00:19:33] but still we have here in the beginning some information here right so this information
[00:19:39] in the beginning adds up with this envelope so we can combine different envelopes and can create
[00:19:45] a different curves from that and like I said at the beginning you can use the segments here
[00:19:53] and I see this all the time people using your segments and then I go this and you know reset the
[00:19:59] curve maybe do this and then they you know fiddle around here with very steep very precise positions
[00:20:07] here to get this kind of clicky feel and then a nice body and it's very fiddly and you can do this
[00:20:15] of course and you can do this multiple ways you can also say maybe I do like this and then I use
[00:20:23] a bend here right and then make this steeper maybe I show you this in a minute but I like
[00:20:32] to use the actually multiple envelopes like an ad combine them together just add them together
[00:20:39] and then you get much more control because you have these decay settings here you can define the body
[00:20:48] the click again define how how much you want to fall down here with the click
[00:20:55] yeah and sometimes you can combine even three if you want to right so it's not limited to two
[00:21:08] but I find most of the time this is much better to create sometimes kick drums instead of using
[00:21:15] the segments and fiddle around with the segments okay um at the end I show you basically this here
[00:21:25] with the the segments what I talked about but maybe this is something for the segments video here
[00:21:32] but anyway I show it most people probably don't watch till the end anyway um we have an oscilloscope
[00:21:40] here we have also a signal out take a gate to combine here this we switch to slow let's see
[00:21:49] how this looks like or maybe 16 note we get this maybe make it a bit longer eight note
[00:21:58] right so you have this kind of curved behavior here
[00:22:08] and instead of making it very fiddly and you go here into the corner you just you know leave it at that
[00:22:16] and then you take here a band like this you can something like that it's a bit steeper use the
[00:22:29] second one it's very steep now but now you don't need to you scale basically the curve a bit better
[00:22:37] outside of um this editor here so you don't need to be that precise here in the corner
[00:22:44] yeah you can make it steeper just by adding bands to the output
[00:22:50] that's what I do sometimes you don't need to do this but you can do it
[00:23:01] anyway this is for the segments video so this was the ad there's not much different to all the other
[00:23:10] envelopes here there's an adsr there's basically an added sustain phase here there's no looping
[00:23:18] and there's here a bias out but I explain this in the adsr video anyway but yeah all you have to
[00:23:27] all you need to know is basically the difference between decay and release because with the plug
[00:23:32] here there's also release and decay which basically means decay is when you hit the
[00:23:38] key on the keyboard and you stay on the key you use the decay but when you release the key
[00:23:47] so you press and release then you go into the second path here which is the release
[00:23:54] right as soon as you release the key you go to the second path which is the release so release
[00:24:01] is when you release the key and decay is when you still hold down the key on the keyboard and then
[00:24:07] it plays basically here then the decay phase also here with the adsr same thing you press and hold
[00:24:13] then it goes to the decay while you're holding and then it stays here then until you release and it
[00:24:19] goes to the release phase so the adsr is basically the most complete envelope ad is what I use most
[00:24:27] of the time because I don't need anything more yeah that's the ad for you great device great module
[00:24:37] I use it all the time thanks for watching leave a like see you next time