Unlock the Power of Your Voice in Bitwig Studio

Tutorial | Apr 29, 2021

In this video, I showed how to use my voice as an instrument inside Bitvic Studio. I demonstrated how to create a vocal pad sound by using a Voice stack modulator and then showed how to use the Poly-Grid to control synths with my voice. I also showed how to use the Melda Auto Pitch Plug-in to create sounds on the fly and use a Zero Crossings module to get a clean pitch signal. Finally, I demonstrated how to create percussion sounds with my voice by using filters and transient shapers.

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 my own voice inside Bitvic Studio? #

You can use your own voice inside Bitvic Studio by recording it onto an audio track, then converting it into a sampler or using it with a plug-in such as Melda Auto Pitch. You can then add effects such as reverb, delay, and filters, and use it as a pad sound or to control an oscillator or synth.

How can I use the Poly-Grid to create beats with my voice? #

You can use the Poly-Grid to create beats with your voice by setting up an audio side chain, a zero crossings module, a pitch quantizer, and a Sine-Oscillator. You can then use the gate information from the follower to control the pitch and audio of the oscillator and create a beat.

What are some creative ways to use my voice in Bitvic Studio? #

There are many creative ways to use your voice in Bitvic Studio. You can use it to create pad sounds or lead sounds, or you can use auto pitch plug-ins to correct the pitch of your voice on the fly and then add VSTs to it. You can also use

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] Welcome back to another video. There's one instrument people always forget about and that's your own voice and the best feature of this
[00:08.000] Voice is that it's your voice. It's unique and it's a pretty versatile instrument and in this video
[00:14.640] I want to show you how we can utilize your voice inside Bitvic Studio, what you can do with it and how I use it most of the times
[00:21.960] I know I already showed this multiple times on stream, but I wanted to make a separate video on this and
[00:27.800] And yeah, let's start. Okay, so here we are in Bitvic Studio. We all know it. We all love it and
[00:35.480] At first I want to record maybe some kind of pad sound or some
[00:40.600] Note some pitch. I'm holding here. So select this audio track. I'm selecting here my microphone input. You can see we have already your level
[00:50.840] Just record something
[00:52.840] Ah
[00:57.320] So that's all I need and most people can hold one pitch pretty easily
[01:04.520] Maybe not a specific pitch, but some random pitch and it's all we need so I call this your vocal clip, maybe
[01:15.040] And I create just a sampler
[01:17.040] That's what I usually do and drag this into the sampler. Yeah, so we have this inside the sampler
[01:23.120] We can delete your our vocal track and yeah, just play this pretty fine on the keyboard
[01:36.400] Yeah, sounds super nice
[01:38.760] What we make this a bit interesting in a moment. So we start here
[01:43.720] Or we set this offset here. So we have initially
[01:50.040] Some audio material and maybe we go here to the sampler and add here voice stacking to five voices
[01:58.520] So we have now five different voices every time we play one key and we use a voice stack modulator and
[02:06.440] Switch this to minus one to plus one so we can modulate here the left and right pan
[02:11.960] So exactly the amount of one, which means we have now five voices
[02:17.760] Spend across the whole spectrum from left to right
[02:22.840] Just sounds a bit better and then we use maybe also this modulator for the pitch. So we just modulate here
[02:30.880] All voices just a tad and because we are using a voice stack modulator, we have now different pitches for each voice
[02:42.560] Now we have this phasing flange in effect because we're starting or we have different pitches for each sound
[02:48.480] So maybe we also should choose your different starting point on
[02:53.680] Play offset maybe user
[02:55.680] Different voice stack modulator because we now want to use here the mode 0-2 plus 1 and modulate here to offset a bit
[03:10.680] And maybe we also want to activate activate here the loop mode. So let's try this
[03:17.000] Maybe go into the meat here of the
[03:20.560] Audio track and also here use the
[03:23.600] The cross fade
[03:25.600] So maybe we can also use here the filter for this filter bit the frequencies out
[03:56.040] Can also use the voice stack maybe to change the filter a bit so every voice now gets a different filter setting
[04:11.400] Yeah, let's try this. Oh, we can use a voice stack and
[04:31.160] maybe
[04:32.440] Remove this modulation here on the filter and we use a manual mode here for the voice stack and we
[04:39.200] Change here the cutoff of the two plus six or maybe go all the way up and
[04:45.720] Then you can change now the first voice which should be the voice on the left side and maybe
[04:52.720] If it half open to present
[04:57.880] Maybe open up only the middle voice
[05:02.920] We close these two voices down
[05:04.920] Just to have some variety on the
[05:21.360] So this is something we can do we can also switch this here maybe to cycles mode
[05:25.400] And now we have control over the formats maybe switch to minus 12
[05:39.360] Oh, we use the Texas mode
[05:49.080] If we then maybe add some reverb here and delay it sounds like a super nice vocal pad
[06:19.320] So
[06:22.240] So this is something you can do and it's probably not in pitch because we just hold it one random pitch
[06:29.840] So we can right click on the audio waveform here and say the detect root key and
[06:36.720] You can see now it's detected a G3 and 70 cents
[06:41.240] So now if we use or put this here into
[06:48.200] Instruments selector and use maybe a pull isn't in parallel
[06:51.960] You can check if the pitch is actually correct. So we just hold one note
[07:20.240] So in the sampler with the pull isn't you get the much much which are sound and yeah
[07:26.360] It's just interesting to spice up your sounds with your own voice or with your own recordings
[07:31.880] Because like I said at the beginning it's unique so the second thing we can do is we can use the Poly-Grid
[07:40.480] And one audio track here which basically is our microphone maybe we
[07:46.280] Do here a gate on it and
[07:51.560] Then we use a tool device here pull the
[07:56.440] All the way down
[07:58.120] It records. We have a level here. We can see it's already working nice
[08:02.840] We call this maybe vocals and then we go into the Poly-Grid here on a different track and we use a side chain here
[08:10.720] And we get our yeah vocal track after the gate output here
[08:18.720] Maybe you can also use
[08:20.720] Here
[08:22.720] a peak limiter to yeah get rid of
[08:27.400] Get rid of all the stuff and maybe just amplify the signal a bit
[08:31.360] So we have a peak limiter maybe get here also the vocals after the peak limiter because it's much louder nice
[08:38.000] So and we can use to the zero crossings module
[08:43.760] Again, maybe only analyze the low end because we want to have the fundamental pictures of our voice
[08:50.640] Maybe hook this up maybe also use a filter
[08:58.440] Filter here just to get rid of all the high frequencies
[09:01.880] And yeah prepare the signal basically for the zero crossings to get a nice clean
[09:09.040] Pitch signal out of this after this we go into a Sine-Oscillator here of course
[09:15.040] But the pitch because we want to change the pitch of this one here and
[09:19.920] We need maybe an ADS R and
[09:24.320] We need an output
[09:26.320] So now hopefully maybe let's look into oscillator here oscilloscope
[09:35.080] Hopefully we get here some some pitch information as you can see as I speak we get pitch information here from the zero crossings module
[09:46.760] Yeah, it works pretty nice
[09:49.080] What we need now is maybe an average module here to average out the
[09:55.920] Signal so we have a more like you know get rid of all the small little
[10:00.720] Fast peaks here to get a nice clean smooth signal and then we also get into a quantizer a pitch quantize and
[10:12.560] We
[10:14.320] narrow this down here to yeah to D sharp minor and then we get into the pitch input of the Sine-Oscillator
[10:24.360] Okay, so now we have a pitch in here and all we need to do now as we need to analyze our vocal or our microphone input for
[10:34.800] Yeah, maybe the follower here
[10:39.520] Do to
[10:41.520] Get a gate signal and maybe
[10:48.600] This is enough here. Let's try this
[10:52.000] Yeah, yeah, kind of works
[11:22.920] So now we kind of can control the synth with our voice very
[11:31.920] Activate here the gate information and also change the pitch. So this is something
[11:38.160] You can easily build in the grid with audio side chain and zero crossings module. It's not that complicated
[11:45.400] What you can do then is of course you maybe get rid of
[11:49.600] all the audio
[11:52.480] Processing or audio generation and completely go for my grid node out
[12:00.040] Preset it's freely available here on my channel
[12:05.000] And maybe gave for gave a go for a modulator for the pitch here and also for the audio and then we can
[12:15.880] Or maybe get your
[12:17.880] Yeah, that's okay. Maybe go here for for gate
[12:21.400] As you can see it's pretty
[12:23.840] Working parking pretty nicely and also the pitch and
[12:28.000] Then we can use this here to control maybe a polisant
[12:34.160] It should be rock pretty nice
[12:36.440] Yeah, yeah, yeah, does it work so it kind of works it's maybe not
[13:06.440] Not flawless, but it works kind of you can also go in here to the vocal chain and maybe use some kind of melda
[13:17.720] Auto pitch
[13:19.720] Which is an audit tuned device with tunes basically our voice on the fly and then use this information to get into the Poly-Grid
[13:28.400] This plug in is free, but you don't need to use it actually can also
[13:32.360] Quantize the signal or the pitches here with the pitch quantize pretty easily
[13:38.240] So this is the second thing you can do inside
[13:41.760] Inside a bit of studio with all the native devices
[13:46.200] Because I already mentioned the melda auto pitch plug-in
[13:51.000] It's also a great device to use
[13:53.320] To create pad sounds like I did in the first example. So maybe go for M auto pitch here on
[14:03.200] An audio track maybe the lit here all the other examples
[14:08.160] Get our microphone input here and then we can narrow everything down here maybe just to one
[14:15.440] Yeah to one note basically and use this
[14:18.120] So this is how it sounds when I speak basically of all this device and
[14:27.720] Every everything I say is basically in C so we can design our sound on the fly maybe also with the
[14:35.480] Reverb already on it
[14:47.480] So
[15:01.400] So this is also possible that you basically use the melda auto pitch or some other auto pitch device
[15:08.640] or VST to correct basically your pitch on the fly and then you add some VSTs to it
[15:14.640] You can hear it instantly how it sounds and then you re-sample it put it into the sampler and use it as a new
[15:22.720] Yeah, instrument basically. So this is also what I do a lot and it's super fun to do
[15:28.320] Just use your voice and put on all that the effects and then maybe change your voice a bit and you can hear how everything changes
[15:37.640] It's pretty nice to do
[15:40.240] What you also can do is
[15:42.240] Like you saw here. I'm using just one note in this VST plug-in, right?
[15:48.480] So when I speak I get only just one
[15:53.360] Which is which is the note C and
[15:56.720] Maybe you can create a chord from this. So maybe I go here for the sharp in this one
[16:01.800] Then I select this device hit control and G and use multiple of these auto pitch devices
[16:08.880] And in the second one here. I'm using maybe a different different key. Maybe this one or maybe
[16:16.840] Maybe go. Yeah, it's okay. Just use this then maybe a third one here and use maybe your
[16:23.560] The this note and yeah, we should now have some kind of chord. So let's try this and
[16:53.560] So
[17:01.560] So just by using these devices you can create nice little sounds with your voice even though you can't hold the pitch
[17:08.120] But you can modulate your mouth right you can make different kind of noises and see what comes out of it
[17:13.800] It's super fun to do and you can create a lot of nice little pad sounds or lead sounds or I don't know
[17:22.000] With it
[17:24.600] Another thing is of course precautions you can do mouth or beatboxing even though you can't
[17:31.800] Use beatboxing
[17:33.800] You can kind of use them filters and so on on your voice to create something. So let's try this
[17:40.760] Yeah, I know it's not good, right, but we have some filters we can use
[17:56.680] So maybe use this here as a kick drum
[18:01.600] It's a boom kick drum
[18:03.600] So maybe you need to measure the metronome using a DSR maybe or maybe you used it the side chain because we have no notes
[18:17.840] Yeah, audio side chain
[18:19.840] Do you see the filter and maybe open up the filter? Yeah, maybe you can also use an EQ before
[18:39.800] Maybe pitch this down a bit
[18:46.800] You can make this a bit shorter here. Maybe you can also use a transient shaper
[19:06.920] Right, so we have maybe kick drum. I don't know it's maybe not the best one, but it works
[19:17.480] It can maybe use us to lay out with real drums on top
[19:24.120] So this is probably the snare I guess
[19:27.000] Maybe you see on fx3 use some transient shapers on different frequency bands
[19:38.720] Maybe it's more like this type of
[19:56.160] So we have maybe a kick in the snare
[19:58.400] Maybe you get some high heads out of this. Let's see
[20:12.560] Oh yeah, we have a nice little head there
[20:17.360] Let's try this maybe you make this a bit quieter the second one here
[20:21.280] Oh, it's not working because of IRC
[20:41.280] So we have a nice little bit
[20:43.280] Oh, this one is not aligned
[20:49.280] Maybe we need to add some limiters
[21:07.280] And if you don't want to construct a full beat with your voice, you can also utilize your voice to just create some percussion hits and use it in the trump sampler
[21:32.280] So for instance, maybe we go for
[21:43.280] So something like this sounds weird, but it works
[21:50.280] So yeah, we have to cut this up here
[21:53.280] Yeah, the second benefit you get when you use your vocals, it's always funny. I always have to laugh
[22:03.280] So cut this up here a bit
[22:13.280] If I like this
[22:17.280] Can we actually use the sample to slice the drum machine? Let's try this post-fader, bounce and slice, slice raw audio events
[22:33.280] Okay, let's try this
[22:35.280] So yeah, we have a drum machine now with all the samples in it
[22:39.280] And maybe we have to step in here and maybe change some of the starting points
[22:47.280] Oh, it's not a problem
[22:55.280] Maybe you start with the high-hat sounds in the material, I think that should sound better
[23:03.280] And yeah, maybe we can spice up some drum loop here with this
[23:13.280] So let's remove this and maybe go for a drum loop
[23:21.280] What do we have here?
[23:23.280] So let's go for this one here
[23:33.280] And maybe we add all our sounds here to this
[23:53.280] So maybe this pedal is maybe to repeat
[24:03.280] So these are the things I usually do when I need some organic material in my productions
[24:27.280] I think I could maybe synthesize stuff in there, it's all pretty much on the grid
[24:33.280] Maybe I need some kind of dirt, something unique or unique sound
[24:37.280] Then I usually also go for my voice
[24:39.280] It's easy to do, I have a microphone always ready
[24:43.280] It's funny and it's versatile
[24:47.280] Because it's your voice, you can regulate the dynamic pretty well, you can regulate the pitch
[24:53.280] It's why not use it, so my tip in this video is basically utilize your voice more
[24:59.280] It's the best oscillator or best synthesizer you have because it's unique
[25:05.280] So yeah, that's it for this video, if you liked the video then please leave a like
[25:09.280] Of course subscribe to the channel and thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one
[25:13.280] Bye