Getting Started with BitwigGrid: Modulation, Audio Effects and Sequencing Techniques

Tutorial | Dec 01, 2020

In this video, I showed how to make a patch that I created in the last video more fancy. I demonstrated how to use modulators, audio effects, and sequencing techniques in Bitwig Grid. I discussed how to use the DC offset device in the NoteFX channel and how to create a reverb and phaser inside the grid. Lastly, I showed how to use an LFO to create sequences that go beyond the 32 bar limit.

You can watch the Video on Youtube - support me on Patreon

Questions & Answers #

Maybe you dont watch the video, here are some important takeaways:

How can I use modulators inside a Bitwig Grid patch? #

To use modulators inside a Bitwig Grid patch, you can use modulators from the device device itself or you can also use ADS. You can trigger the ADS one after the other by disabling the pre-cuts and using a comparator. You can also use a clock quantize to synchronize the ADS to a grid.

How can I integrate external audio effects into a Bitwig Grid patch? #

To integrate external audio effects into a Bitwig Grid patch, you can use the NoteFX channel with the DC offset device. You can also use a stereo split, modulator out, and a mixer to route the audio signal out, through the external effect, and back into the grid.

How can I create a reverb effect inside Bitwig Grid? #

To create a reverb effect inside Bitwig Grid, you can use a stereo splitter, a merger, a mod delay, and a mixer. Set the mod delay to a short delay time and then increase the feedback. You can then modulate the pitch of the multi-lays to simulate a reverb.

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.

[00:00.000] So welcome to part three of the series of beginner course for BitwigGrid and in
[00:08.440] this video I want to show you how we can make this patch we just made in part
[00:14.720] two a bit more fancy bring in some modulations bring in some audio effects and
[00:21.200] also apply some kind of small sequencing techniques inside the grid so stay
[00:27.200] tuned and let's have some fun so this is our patch from the last video and
[00:38.320] it's still running from from back then it's still running and yeah what I
[00:49.120] usually do to modulate certain parameters inside this patch here is for one
[00:54.480] you can use modulators from the device device itself or you can also use ADs
[01:03.640] like this one here and I use multiple of these and I just yeah use them in a
[01:11.200] chain so I trigger them one after the other and it's possible by just
[01:17.640] disabling these pre-cuts here because we have no input from a keyboard or from
[01:22.120] piano roll or anything like that we just trigger the first one here with the
[01:26.840] same chord we use to trigger this main AD which basically shapes our
[01:32.760] amplitude from the sign here so we trigger this first AD and then we want when
[01:39.200] this first ID is finished as you can see here the point is or the dot is
[01:44.200] following this graph and then it falls back here to zero so every time this hits
[01:50.400] the value of zero we basically want to trigger the next one the next AD and
[01:55.560] when this AD is back to zero we want to trigger this one so how we can we do
[02:00.000] this it's pretty simple actually or the simplest patch for this is to use a
[02:05.160] comparator or let's go to logic here and use use this one here so we go into
[02:17.280] this and we let the second input check here free which means the input is
[02:24.160] zero so every time this one output zero which is the same value as this one the
[02:32.720] second check then we get the trigger signal as you can see it's already
[02:36.960] signaling that we get a gate signal so we use this for the second one and now
[02:43.760] you can see when this one finishes its its trajectory and expect to zero we
[02:51.320] trigger the second AD sometimes it doesn't work and the reason for that is
[03:03.320] that this AD gets re-triggered before it completely settles to zero okay so you
[03:13.360] can see it works most of the times and that's for me it's enough for now so
[03:18.080] I copying this here over to these to these spaces here and we do the same
[03:24.800] thing with these two and just connect these two and now we can see when this
[03:33.920] one goes back to zero this one gets triggered this goes back to zero this
[03:38.480] one gets triggered this goes back to zero and this one gets back to zero and the
[03:46.280] benefit of this is that we have now some kind of a multi-stage analog
[03:52.080] generator it's not a real one but it's kind of and this also leads to all
[03:58.080] kinds of paper because this is not synchronized here these ADs so when you see
[04:03.680] you have your decay times by milliseconds so you don't know exactly in the
[04:10.520] beat grid when this AD is finishing or goes back to zero and triggers this one
[04:15.160] so it's completely off the grid and when you change here the timings you get a
[04:20.120] lot of different results for all kinds of stuff so for instance I use the
[04:27.040] second AD here which has a modulator handle already integrated which is
[04:30.920] pretty nice and we can choose here to yeah modulate some stuff inside inside
[04:38.800] our patch right so we can use the first one for the fault here maybe or we
[04:45.840] can use this one for the skew and maybe the last one here for shaping the
[04:53.040] melody line but sometimes you exactly want to have the
[05:19.920] synchronized to some kind of grid okay and you can do that all you have to do
[05:24.840] is basically use a clock quantize here and a clock quantize takes two
[05:29.440] inputs at first it takes our signal and this signal gets delayed until something
[05:35.880] happens on the gates or bolts or quantize signal or the clock signal so we
[05:43.200] get out of this here into the second AD and we have to deliver one clock
[05:49.080] signal and for the clock signal we just use one simple gates module here just
[05:56.680] activate all bars and go into here okay now we can see what's happening when
[06:03.400] we just click on this clock quantize here we see when our AD first AD goes back
[06:10.280] to zero it triggers and then the clock in here and then we have the output
[06:14.840] you can see the output is delayed until one of these yeah quantize signals
[06:21.640] happening okay so this is basically off the grid then we have our grid here our
[06:28.280] grid signal or our beat synchronization signal and this one gets delayed
[06:35.080] until yeah or is synchronized to this signal so we can increase the signal
[06:41.000] your bar to go to 16 maybe so we have basically divided our bar into 16
[06:47.000] triggers I'm gonna click on this again you can see we have more possibilities
[06:51.640] now where this signal can be triggered within our grid so and when we just go
[07:00.520] back here to four maybe you can see the gaps here are much farther apart and you
[07:10.920] can see the signal you get delayed this one gets delayed a bit this one is delayed
[07:16.520] so with this basically with this small set up here of this clock quantize
[07:21.960] module you can delay certain signals until we have a clock signal happening
[07:31.560] so and we have to do this here of course for all the rest of the ADs too
[07:38.200] put this in here bam bam bam bam and we need of course also a synchronization
[07:46.040] signal here on these two and now we have a synchronized
[07:50.760] multi-stage envelope generator in the grid and you not only can use this
[07:57.960] inside of ambient patches you can also use this of course for midrange
[08:01.480] bases which is pretty nice and I also did a lot of presets for bitwig
[08:06.280] with this kind of setup already and it's fun to use it's fun to do and it's
[08:12.440] easy to do it's not that complicated right you can also change here the
[08:17.480] synchronization pools or the clock signal pretty easily you can also go up to
[08:23.640] 16 year and also if you want to bring in swing you can do this by using a
[08:29.080] face-in and maybe use one of the new pinch one of this new this new
[08:36.280] module pinch here recently added in 3.3 and just
[08:43.000] yeah you can see the signal is it's more movie now
[08:51.080] to say it that way okay so this is also possible
[08:55.480] but for now that's it basically so you can use this here um this one gets
[09:00.520] triggered then it gets triggered uh when this is at zero this could trigger
[09:04.680] when this is at zero and this one gets we trigger when this one is at zero
[09:08.200] and everything is synchronized to this uh gates module so pretty easy setup
[09:14.360] um and fun to use so now that we have these modulations in place
[09:19.720] we probably want to include some kind of audio effects in our patch
[09:25.560] and we have already some audio effects here on the global fx channel with the
[09:30.120] reverb and the delay but sometimes you want to have
[09:33.400] just audio effects or different audio effects on different paths
[09:38.920] inside your patch and that's not really possible there's no yeah output or um
[09:45.640] yeah for path and input uh audio input and output for the
[09:51.480] for the patch itself it's only a global output and a global input
[09:55.960] there's this trick that you can yeah go out with the DC offset device
[10:01.720] inside the note fx channel here i want to show you this real quick
[10:05.720] i created also a preset for that which is called audio grid out
[10:11.320] and all we have to do now as we can use for instance um let's use this audio
[10:17.320] output here and we need a stereo stereo split
[10:23.960] and the stereo split gives us the signal from the left and the right channel
[10:27.400] if we have a stereo signal and then we need a modulator out here
[10:33.080] for the left channel and we need a modulator out for the right channel
[10:37.320] and now we modulate here the left and we modulate the right
[10:44.600] okay and this gives us basically an audio signal here and fx channel you can see
[10:49.080] you already um the metering happening or
[10:52.920] giving us some signals and when we exchange this you can see there's a
[10:58.120] audio fx layer we have a left channel and right channel
[11:01.320] and we have in there just a DC offset and receiving the
[11:06.520] yet signals from within the grid right and now we can apply here to the left
[11:11.800] and the right channel for instance some kind of reward
[11:17.640] okay and then we can go here with the audio chain
[11:24.040] input we can't just use the output of this reverb
[11:29.640] and bring it back in basically so now we need a mixer
[11:35.800] and the mixer gives us the output here or the tri-signal
[11:40.680] and we have the wet signal from our reverb here
[11:51.480] maybe delete here and reverb on the global signal
[11:55.560] so we basically have just your tri-signal then we use this tri-signal
[12:00.120] go into the stereo splitter into these modulators
[12:05.880] um output how it's called um modulator out and these modulating
[12:12.280] basically our grid audio out left and right channel
[12:16.200] and generating our audio signal go into the reverb here
[12:20.440] and then the reverb goes back into here via the audio side chain into the
[12:24.520] second channel and then back out to our global output
[12:27.960] so a lot of routing just for a reverb or maybe
[12:31.400] sometimes you want to have exactly that because you have some kind of
[12:36.600] yeah special VST you want to use inside the grid so you can use this
[12:43.160] you don't need to have your left and right channel separately but DC offset
[12:47.800] device you can just use an DC offset and just modulate this
[12:51.240] if you have a mono signal so this is just a setup here i made for myself when
[12:55.960] i want to use this kind of workflow and it's also for free available in my
[13:01.000] github account which is linked below in the description of course
[13:05.960] and yeah that's one way of integrating some kind of external effects
[13:11.640] effects and we also can use effects inside the grid by
[13:17.080] creating audio effects and for instance here i want to show you how you can
[13:22.520] create a reverb which is also pretty easy so we need also a stereo
[13:27.000] spitter because i like to do it this way and also a merger here which brings
[13:31.800] these signals back together and then i'm using maybe delay
[13:40.440] maybe go with this one here and switch it to
[13:45.640] two milliseconds go into the left
[13:52.840] this is the second one going to the right use maybe different timings
[13:57.480] and then we can amplify here the feedback
[14:02.840] which gives us some kind of feedback of course then we go here into this
[14:06.680] the third channel and we need of course a tricycno
[14:30.920] it sounds more like in delay because it isn't delay but we can use multiple
[14:38.200] of these delays here make the signal more dense or diffuse the signal
[14:56.200] maybe use even more
[15:13.160] you can hear it starts to sound more like a reverb right
[15:16.760] all you have to do now is probably to modulate the pitch of these
[15:23.320] multi-lays
[15:29.800] because now they sound a bit too metallic
[15:50.440] so this way you can simulate some kind of reverb what's also possible is to use
[15:55.160] just all past devices
[15:59.880] it's two kind of the same thing maybe use multiple here with all past devices
[16:09.240] just connect these together
[16:26.680] which also sounds like a reverb
[16:32.360] so now we have an external reverb
[16:41.160] integrated here with the grid audio out in the NoteFX channel
[16:46.440] and we have a global reverb at delay
[16:53.000] and we created a small simple reverb here just with all past devices
[16:58.680] which is also possible
[17:09.960] what we also can create is some kind of phasing effect
[17:14.040] and it's also easy to do in the grid all we need to do is
[17:18.280] yeah split one audio path into two paths
[17:23.640] and we use a mod delay here go into the mod delay and then we have to mix these
[17:29.880] signals together maybe we can use your mix mixer again
[17:37.480] and go in here so now we have to try signal and the mod delay signal
[17:45.000] and then we go back to this knob here
[17:49.720] choose a pretty short delay time and then we increase your the feedback
[18:07.880] and you can modulate just this knob here if you want to have some kind of
[18:11.640] phasing effect or you use the input here for the mod delay
[18:16.360] and the delay modulation amount is basically this knob
[18:20.840] so we can modulate this knob we are some kind of signal
[18:24.600] and we can probably use to develop all for instance
[18:30.600] and it's probably too slow
[18:40.600] let's use the second one here just to show you how it sounds
[19:11.240] so this can also bring in a lot of interesting
[19:22.040] variety to the sound just using the mod delay as a phaser
[19:27.240] and you don't need to modulate you can also just use your
[19:32.120] this in this setup and maybe if you just find a sweet spot
[20:01.080] or maybe use more more of these mod delays
[20:19.960] okay so this is basically a small simple phaser setup in the grid
[20:24.840] you don't need external effects for this and i just wanted to show you this so you
[20:31.320] don't need to actually use here a grid audio out just use a phaser or
[20:36.600] and reverb you can just build this for yourself inside the grid
[20:40.280] you also don't need to use pretty complex patches or
[20:46.440] make this as big as possible sometimes simple effects are just enough and when
[20:53.960] you add a lot of different effects inside the grid and
[20:57.080] modulations the sound will still sound fine and it's
[21:03.880] it's enough in most cases okay
[21:08.680] okay so now we have solutions for modulations in the grid
[21:13.080] pretty unique solution with the ADs or the chaining of these ADs
[21:17.960] and i showed you how you can implement certain audio FX from the outside
[21:23.720] and how you can create reverb and phaser inside the grid pretty easily
[21:29.400] and i wanted to also show you how you can sequence stuff in the grid or how
[21:33.400] i do it so my easy setup setup for this is to use an LFO
[21:39.400] so for instance we have this sound you're running and it's playing all the
[21:43.320] time at the same volume so what i do usually is to take the LFO
[21:49.000] go to bar and then we go up to 32 bars so this is basically a slow ramp
[21:56.760] as you can see on the signal out a slow ramp slowly going down and slowly
[22:01.400] going up and i use this to um yeah sequence stuff
[22:05.720] so for instance we can bring here the volume of all these
[22:10.200] lines down and say just we want to have a 32 bar iteration
[22:16.440] of the tri-signal okay so we bring in the tri-signal here in
[22:20.680] maybe go to 75 okay so now you can basically watch the signal here on the
[22:28.120] yeah on this on this inspector for the LFO
[22:31.080] you can see it brings slowly in our tri-melody line
[22:38.520] and we can use this also here for for the reverb maybe 75 but choose a
[22:46.920] different timing so it's it's a poly meter right i learned it's not
[22:52.520] poly rhythms it's a poly meter so we have basically the same
[22:57.640] beat but you have different timings
[23:08.600] and sometimes when you have a different melody or i use this when i use
[23:13.480] basically um when i combine multiple patches so i have one patch running
[23:19.720] blended in and then the other patch is basically quiet
[23:23.560] and then the other one is blended in and the other one goes quiet okay
[23:28.120] so you can do this by basically changing here the phase
[23:33.080] just turning this 180 degrees so it's basically completely opposite
[23:39.160] so you can um maybe fade this in or go to zero
[23:46.200] and then fade this out go back to minus one okay
[23:53.160] so now when this one is blended in this one is quiet
[23:56.920] and vice versa so this is also something i use a lot when i have
[24:02.440] like i said multiple patches playing i want to just always have just one
[24:06.760] patch playing and the other one is quiet and then just exchange it
[24:10.520] slowly over time and because it's a sign uh sign shape here uh we have a
[24:17.480] slowly transitioning between these two states so this is something i use a
[24:23.800] lot um the LFOs sadly go only up to uh 32 bars
[24:30.360] but when you want to make these sequences a bit longer then there's also a trick
[24:34.600] for that of course there's always a trick for all
[24:38.280] problems inside the grid so maybe we take here an oscilloscope to show
[24:43.960] what's going on and uh go to fast or maybe slow
[24:50.360] and you can see you're slowly rising right and then maybe turn this down
[24:54.360] maybe to just one bar or two bars
[24:59.400] okay and then we can use the scalar
[25:03.160] connect this here to the phase input and maybe it does all the way up
[25:07.800] and we need the phase input here which is our phase signal from the
[25:13.000] transport and you can see now we can change a bit here the speed of the LFO
[25:19.560] even though it's still at two bars right
[25:23.160] and uh i think this is the default
[25:27.160] no i don't feel like this should be the default
[25:34.280] yeah that's the default and when you go up here to maybe
[25:40.440] 32 bars and then you go also all the way up to 32 bars
[25:47.400] it should be something like 64 bars i think
[25:51.960] i guess so with this trick you can make these uh 32 bars even longer if you
[25:57.880] want you can also go all the way up to maybe 60 or something like this
[26:03.400] or 99 so you can you can make this pretty long if you want just by um
[26:09.720] phase modulating here the LFO with the scalar and the phase input
[26:14.600] or even just generate your own your own phase signals also possible
[26:19.160] so with these things you can make also um yeah pretty long evolving pads or
[26:26.040] sounds happening if you are not
[26:31.560] yeah if you're not happy with the 32 bar limits here basically basically
[26:36.040] okay so this is one uh one solution for that
[26:40.120] there's also um maybe if you want to sequence stuff
[26:45.240] more directly you can of course use the merge module
[26:52.840] so you can bring in your multiple LFOs maybe and then
[26:57.400] just switch between these two um this is also something you can use
[27:03.400] but i mean there are infinite solutions to everything i mean
[27:09.080] it's yeah it's impossible to list them all but this is what i use most of
[27:14.120] the times to sequence stuff i use the merge module to switch between
[27:17.720] inputs or use LFOs to fade in or in and out um
[27:23.000] sounds with a mixer or with a volume knob
[27:28.440] so i think that's enough for just one video
[27:31.400] so there will be maybe a fourth video in the series where i
[27:35.320] create a patch from scratch and talk over it talk what i
[27:41.240] just did or what i want to do and to basically yeah reiterate or
[27:47.800] resume everything together in one video
[27:51.880] and to make the knowledge persistent if this if this makes sense
[27:58.760] okay so yeah i want to close down this video i hope you'll learn something
[28:03.560] in today's video there will be a lot of more videos like this
[28:07.240] and i also plan to do more normal uh bitwigs stuff um
[28:13.000] bringing in more knowledge and more ideas to the people
[28:16.600] and yeah that's basically it so thanks for watching if you have some
[28:20.600] questions then please ask it in the comments
[28:23.480] subscribe to the channel if you haven't so um also
[28:28.040] please subscribe to patreon or become a member here on youtube it pretty much
[28:32.680] helps a lot uh because that's that's what i do all day for a living
[28:37.720] basically doing tutorials making sounds and so on so it helps a lot
[28:42.280] keeping me alive um also like the video if you liked it
[28:47.640] and if you don't like then leave it is like of course um
[28:51.640] yeah thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next video
[28:55.160] bye