Exploring the Musical Possibilities of Bitwig Studio's Resonator
Tutorial | Jul 10, 2019
In this video, I talk about the resonator device in Bitwig Studio, which is like an EQ but can do a lot more. Someone asked about creating an 808 kick drum, and I show how to do it using the resonator. I explain the synthesis method for an 808 kick drum and demonstrate how to create a sine wave burst, use an ADSR envelope, and mix it with the resonator output to achieve the desired sound. I also show another use case for the resonator, which is using it to create melodies or chords from a drum loop. By setting different octaves of the resonator bank to different notes, you can create unique melodies. Lastly, I show how to use the resonator to add tonality to vocals and create pads. Overall, the resonator is a versatile device that has a lot of potential for creative sound design.
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Questions & Answers #
Maybe you dont watch the video, here are some important takeaways:
Questions: #
1. How can the resonator in Bitwig Studio be used to create an 808 kick drum? #
To create an 808 kick drum using the resonator in Bitwig Studio, you need to set up a resonator bank with just one band activated. Set the band to C3 and turn on the key follow/key track. This will ensure that the filter changes to the correct notes as you input MIDI notes. Use a sine wave burst as the input into the resonator and adjust the mix knob to control the attack of the kick drum. Add an ADSR envelope to modulate the amount of the LFO, creating the desired sound.
2. How can the resonator be used to create melodies from drum loops? #
To create melodies from drum loops using the resonator, set up a resonator bank with C3, C4, C5, C6, C7, and C8 as the band values. Adjust the resonance to achieve the desired sound. Use a chain device to route the audio from the drum loop to the resonator input. Then, set up an instrument track with the resonator bank as the note receiver and use MIDI notes to change the pitch of the resonator bank. This will allow you to create melodies or chords based on the drum loop.
3. Can the resonator in Bitwig Studio handle polyphonic notes? #
No, the resonator in Bitwig Studio is currently monophonic. It can only handle one note at a time. This means that chords cannot be played directly using the resonator's key track. However, you can manually modulate the frequencies of the resonator bank to create chords, but it can be more complex to achieve the desired result. Hopefully, in the future, Bitwig may release a polyphonic resonator for more versatile use.
4. How can the resonator be used to create pads from vocal recordings? #
To create pads from vocal recordings using the resonator, start by recording your vocals or any other source of sound into an audio track. Set up a resonator bank with a single band, such as C3. Activate the key track and adjust the resonance frequency and mix knob to achieve the desired sound. Use the resonator bank to add tonality to the vocals. Then, bounce down the vocal track into a sampler. In the sampler, set the root note to C3 and activate the key track. Apply additional effects such as reverb, delay, or voice stacking to create a rich and atmospheric pad sound.
Transcription #
This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by AI, 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.
[00:00:00] Hey, welcome back in this video. I want to talk about the resonator of Bitwig studio and it's pretty simple device
[00:00:07] it's actually like an EQ but you can do a lot of stuff with it and I want to show you some of the
[00:00:13] things you can do with it and
[00:00:16] Yesterday I
[00:00:20] Someone asked in a bitwig chat about how you can create an 808
[00:00:26] kick drum and you can use the resonator to create a
[00:00:31] kick drum and
[00:00:33] What we need is a resonator bank here and we only need just one
[00:00:39] One band so I take the first one here and I go to
[00:00:45] C
[00:00:47] 3 and I turn on the
[00:00:51] Key follow or key track. So when we input some MIDI notes, the filter is changing to the right notes
[00:00:59] But you have to set it to C3 at an initial
[00:01:03] initial value to have the correct notes when you switch the keys and
[00:01:08] For an 808 sound I think the synthesis
[00:01:14] Method for an 808 is pretty simple. You have an in sign sine wave burst
[00:01:20] and the sine wave burst is going into a resonator or an
[00:01:26] filter and look out filter with a high resonance and this gives this special or
[00:01:32] Characteristic sound of an 808 kick and you can do that just with a sine wave
[00:01:40] I think it sounds similar similar, but it's not the same sound and
[00:01:44] What we do now is we create a sine wave and I use usually for that and DC offset device and
[00:01:52] then LFO and I choose the
[00:01:55] Default LFO because you can change it to pitch so every time we or I need an instrument track here
[00:02:05] Let's convert it to
[00:02:07] Instrument tracks. So I have a MIDI input and when I use my MIDI input device now
[00:02:13] we basically change the LFO speed to
[00:02:17] the key we are using okay, and
[00:02:22] Of course, I can use the modulator here to
[00:02:25] modulate the DC offset device
[00:02:29] But that's too loud and too
[00:02:32] Just dial it back a bit
[00:02:42] So basically this is the sine wave you are generating at the moment and what we need now is an
[00:02:48] ADSR
[00:02:51] So we have an envelope and with this envelope
[00:02:55] We are changing the
[00:02:57] amount of the LFO
[00:03:01] Okay
[00:03:06] So now every time we press a key on the keyboard we have a sound
[00:03:11] And this short sine wave burst
[00:03:25] This
[00:03:29] We are using the sine wave burst to go into this resonator bank with just one band activated and
[00:03:35] It's completely at
[00:03:38] Set to C3
[00:03:41] But with the key track on it changes the value of the band
[00:03:47] accordingly to the
[00:03:50] to the key we are pressing
[00:03:52] And with the mix knob here you can basically mix
[00:04:05] between the sine burst and
[00:04:08] the resonator output
[00:04:10] So you can change the attack of the kick drum
[00:04:13] If you have mix at zero you have basically just the attack
[00:04:18] So to make this a bit more accessible we use a chain device put in the
[00:04:29] DC offset device in the resonator bank and we now can drag this here. I
[00:04:38] Think this should be no, it's not wired up and
[00:04:42] We use another ADSR
[00:04:45] for the sine bank here
[00:04:47] For the resonator bank and just use this and
[00:04:54] Yeah, go maybe here in the resin resonance frequency
[00:04:59] So we have more control over the tail of the sound
[00:05:23] And we can use a macro to control the mix of the resonator bank
[00:05:29] And we can change the sine burst
[00:05:40] And maybe let's let's add at the end one amp device so we have some kind of
[00:05:51] Soft clip at the end
[00:05:55] And maybe find some sweet spots for the values
[00:06:08] So pretty simple setup we create the sign burst
[00:06:38] We have a resonator bank for the tail and we have at the end a soft clip with the amp device to just
[00:06:44] Yeah, shorten shorten the amplitude
[00:06:47] So we don't clip the
[00:06:50] the the fader
[00:06:53] So this is one use case for the for the resonator bank
[00:07:07] another one is if you
[00:07:09] Have a drum loop like this one here
[00:07:14] You can use it to make sounds let's create the resonator bank and
[00:07:30] We set everything to
[00:07:36] Let's start at C3
[00:07:38] C4
[00:07:41] C5
[00:07:45] C6
[00:07:47] C7 and C8
[00:07:52] Let's dial the resonance a bit back here
[00:08:05] So we have basically just the note C in different octaves so
[00:08:10] This can be used to create some kind of
[00:08:16] Melody steps or chords just from the drums
[00:08:22] Music
[00:08:52] So now we can use the key track again
[00:08:56] Which does basically nothing besides pitching everything down to C0
[00:09:05] But we can use a chain device here
[00:09:09] Because the problem is we have now an audio track here, right? So we have no MIDI input and the key track is not working
[00:09:18] Rightly, so I'm using an additional instrument track here
[00:09:23] and
[00:09:25] We use this as an input for the
[00:09:27] resonator bank
[00:09:30] Note receiver and we use our new instrument track and
[00:09:37] now we can paint notes on this track here and
[00:09:42] Change the pitch of the resonator bank in the first track. Okay?
[00:09:46] So let's go with an A minor
[00:09:49] Music
[00:10:18] And now we can use some kind of reverb of course and a bit of delay at the end
[00:10:24] And you can use the mix knob to just mix between the dry signal
[00:10:34] Music
[00:10:36] So the ski track here is monophonic so you can only
[00:10:51] use it for
[00:10:54] Monophonic notes, so you can't lay down chords here. But what you can do is you can
[00:11:00] change some of the
[00:11:03] C octaves here to
[00:11:05] Yeah, chords major chords or minor chords, but you have to modulate of course the frequencies here
[00:11:12] so it's not so easy to do and
[00:11:14] Maybe we get
[00:11:17] Polyphonic resonator in the future would be nice so we can basically click at this one and change here some voices
[00:11:24] But for now, it's only monophonic, but it's a nice trick to create some melodies from drums
[00:11:31] Music
[00:11:33] Music
[00:11:35] Music
[00:11:37] Music
[00:11:39] Music
[00:12:09] Yeah, this is also a trick with the resonator bank and of course just delete that and maybe
[00:12:17] Record some some vocals we can use for
[00:12:23] Creating some pads. So I have now my voice here and just put the same
[00:12:29] vocals we can use
[00:12:32] so
[00:12:34] pretty nice
[00:12:37] and use the resonator bank and
[00:12:40] We have no tonality in this because it's just me speaking, right?
[00:12:46] So we can use the resonator bank again
[00:12:49] to
[00:12:52] Create
[00:12:55] Tonality
[00:12:58] No, just just use one band again
[00:13:05] C3
[00:13:13] Walk it we can
[00:13:18] And walk it we can use for
[00:13:23] creating some pads walk it we can use for
[00:13:26] creating some
[00:13:28] maybe use also
[00:13:30] C4
[00:13:32] Walk it we can
[00:13:34] Walk it we can use for
[00:13:37] creating some pads walk it we can use for
[00:13:41] creating some pads walk it we can use for
[00:13:45] creating some pads walk it we can use for
[00:13:48] creating some pads walk it we can use for
[00:13:52] creating some pads walk it we can use a bit of free drop again
[00:13:57] And now we can use this to
[00:14:00] Bounce down everything
[00:14:24] And we know this is C3
[00:14:34] Walk it and yeah, let's create a sampler
[00:14:44] But
[00:14:47] But this into the sampler and we know of C3 and key track is activated
[00:14:52] And maybe use textures mode here go down with speed
[00:15:13] Can use some regal up
[00:15:42] And delay
[00:15:44] And the voice voice stack is also
[00:15:54] Pretty nice to create multiple voices
[00:15:58] So voice one is
[00:16:01] Zero pitch voice two
[00:16:07] Exactly one octave above and stack three is
[00:16:18] slightly left
[00:16:21] Stack four is right and we change some of the
[00:16:26] offsets for the playhead
[00:16:29] Maybe go with this a bit
[00:16:32] And this a bit more
[00:16:35] So we have different starting points for each voice
[00:16:37] (
[00:17:07] After activate of course voice stacking)
[00:17:09] Yeah
[00:17:11] (
[00:17:13] After activate of voice stacking)
[00:17:15] (
[00:17:18] After activate of voice stacking)
[00:17:21] (
[00:17:25] After activate of voice stacking)
[00:17:28] (
[00:17:31] After activate of voice stacking)
[00:17:34] (
[00:17:38] (
[00:17:40] After activate of voice stacking)
[00:17:42] (
[00:17:46] After activate of voice stacking)
[00:17:49] (
[00:17:52] (
[00:17:55] After activate of voice stacking)
[00:17:58] As you can see just with the random input of my voice speaking and a bit of resonator bank
[00:18:06] I can apply to bring in some
[00:18:08] fundamentals or harmonies and a bit of freebob and then bounce down into the sampler you can create pads and
[00:18:18] There are so much possibilities
[00:18:21] Just what you're talking and how you talk it or if you sing into the microphone of or if you just use some noise or
[00:18:28] Some
[00:18:31] Yeah crackles or something like that you can produce a lot of in
[00:18:36] Interesting sounds with the sampler and the resonator
[00:18:39] So these are three tips for the resonator you can build a kick drum 8 or 8 kick drum you can
[00:18:48] Basically create sounds or melodies from from the drums and you can create pads with some random noises and
[00:18:58] Yeah, pretty nice device and try it out for yourself, and I'll see you in the next video. Thanks for watching and bye
[00:19:05] (
[00:19:07] You