Sending Signals Across Channels: How to Create Global Modulations in Bitwig Studio

Tutorial | Mon Aug 02 2021 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

In this video, I show how to send signals from one channel to another to change parameters or modulations. I demonstrate this with a bit Rig tutorial, showing how to use a DC offset device to send signals from one channel to another. I also explain how to use a MIDI CC device and Note Receiver to send signals to multiple sub channels. I then demonstrate how to mix audio and MIDI information on the same channel, and how to generate notes on an audio channel with a Replacer. Lastly, I demonstrate how to use a Poly-Grid to send MIDI CC signals to another track.

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 send a global modulation signal from one channel to another? #

You can send a global modulation signal from one channel to another in a few different ways. One way is to use a DC Offset device to create an audio waveform and use an Audio Rate device with a side chain input to grab the signal from the DC Offset channel. Another way is to use a MIDI CC device and a Note Receiver device to grab the signal from the MIDI CC channel. You can also use the Note Receiver device to mix audio and MIDI at the same time, and use the Replacer device to generate notes from an audio channel.

What is a multi-stage envelope generator? #

A multi-stage envelope generator is a device that allows you to create a sequence of different modulations over time. You can use the Automation Editor panel to create the modulation pattern and set the length of the sequence. You can also re-trigger the sequence independently from the track, and change the MIDI CC's to create different modulation patterns.

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 back to another video. And today it's about something I call in the channel communication
[00:06.240] And it's about sending a signal from one channel to the other channel
[00:10.640] To change some parameters or you know some modulations. Maybe you want to create some kind of global
[00:18.840] Yeah, sequence attracted has a lot of modulations on it and you want to send these modulations to different subchannels and you want to
[00:27.360] Yeah, I have just one global channel where you can change everything and then the whole track and every
[00:34.320] Subtract changes with it. So I want to give you some ideas how you can achieve this and
[00:42.880] Yeah, what kind of possibilities you have so we switch here to
[00:48.600] a bit rig
[00:51.000] Of course, it's a bit rig a tutorial a bit vague of course and let's say this is our
[00:55.920] power
[00:56.920] Let's zoom in here. This is our global track here at the top and
[01:03.200] Maybe you want to introduce your some modulations that you want to then send to other other
[01:10.160] channels here. Maybe you have a fully sent you on channel three and you want to modulate this
[01:16.440] this cut off here and
[01:18.720] One way of doing this is you probably already noticed using a DC offset device
[01:24.680] And
[01:26.680] this DC offset device creates some some audio
[01:32.480] waveforms
[01:36.000] Some audio waveforms and you send this audio down to different subchannels. Maybe you go to the police and here and use an
[01:45.040] audio rate
[01:47.040] and
[01:48.040] the audio rate has a side channel or a side chain input here where you can go to the DC offset channel this first track here and
[01:57.200] you get
[01:58.480] Yeah, you just grab the audio from there and
[02:02.200] when you and let's create your random modulation
[02:08.200] Something like this
[02:10.200] So
[02:15.960] So we have some modulation here we send this as an audio signal out to the track and I muted the track so it doesn't disturb the
[02:24.240] the speakers now
[02:26.240] And in here we just grab this
[02:29.960] As you can see, oh, it's on we need to DC offset pre here you can see we get now here the
[02:35.240] Modulation in here and then we can use this to change it or the cut off
[02:41.000] So this is one way of doing this and the problem with this is you can only use
[02:48.000] One DC offset device. Maybe you use multiple DC offset devices in here in
[02:53.400] in parallel or in
[02:55.400] Yeah, one after another and then you just grab it here to multiple devices. That's one way of doing it
[03:02.280] But I want to give you also another way of doing this. So let's remove this here
[03:08.520] also the DC offset device and let's go for a MIDI CC device and
[03:14.760] MIDI CC sends out not notes, but only CC
[03:19.000] Informations and you can use the note receiver also to grab these kind of signals
[03:25.800] So maybe we go here to CC 10 maybe we call this cut off
[03:30.360] And we attach here a random modulator modulator's
[03:41.760] Maybe not too fast
[03:44.040] So something like this and now we can go into here and we can say
[03:51.600] Let's use a
[03:54.400] Note receiver
[03:56.160] This one and grab the signal from our MIDI CC channel here
[04:06.720] And we disable the input and then we can use here also a MIDI modulator
[04:14.120] CC and go to 10 and then we get here the modulations from the first
[04:20.360] channel
[04:21.880] that is back. So and the
[04:28.040] That bandage that you have with this is then you that you can clone this here and go maybe for CC 11 and
[04:36.280] When you modulate something different and do the same with
[04:41.960] With the CC 11 and when we call it
[04:45.800] resonance
[04:47.800] duplicators modulate your different signal and then you have a second
[04:54.840] Yeah, a second modulation
[04:57.480] Signal you can use on your track and you can
[05:01.000] Yeah, crank this up until this is this rack is full, but you can also go here and duplicate this and maybe go for
[05:09.080] 20 and let's go 21 here
[05:12.040] Yeah, and then we have here to modify this. I think we have to
[05:19.320] We'll do this and then we go here to 20
[05:26.160] 21
[05:28.160] Yeah, 21 20 and you can see we also get these
[05:33.200] Signals here or receiving these signals in the MIDI
[05:36.400] What you later and yeah, you can make as many as you want. I think up until
[05:44.560] 1227
[05:46.400] CC's that's that's what what is available and
[05:50.800] I haven't tried it out, but you can also maybe change it on MIDI channels
[05:56.560] Maybe try this. No, it's still receiving here. It doesn't care for the for the MIDI channel at all
[06:02.000] Um, maybe you can try it out and crank it up and um, yeah, try it out if it's
[06:08.720] Um, also receiving
[06:10.720] Channels way over or past 127, but I think it doesn't see a limited try to yeah, it's limited to 127. So yeah
[06:20.240] You kind of stuck with this, but you can send out 127 signals from one global channel and send it out to different
[06:28.800] uh multiple subchannels, right? You can then filter your out and say this is maybe 21 and here I want to have 20
[06:37.680] So you know, you kind of can use this to make a global modulation track and um, yeah paint in your some modulations instead of using
[06:50.160] Instead of using this. Yeah, so maybe let's create here a track
[06:53.680] Um, open up this one. We can move this here. This is cc10. We've used cc20 here
[07:02.960] Um, so we can paint this in
[07:08.400] And now we have basically the same
[07:14.000] That's this one here cc20. We have now this modulation in here on this track
[07:19.360] In this modulator available
[07:23.760] Okay, so we can use this here for the um
[07:28.240] For the cutoff
[07:31.040] Yeah, maybe let's let's paint in here some uh some kind of melody line. So you can show you the next trick
[07:37.280] Oh
[07:47.280] Oh
[07:59.120] Let's go out to cc20
[08:01.120] So
[08:14.560] So now that we have this
[08:17.600] You can say oh, I
[08:19.840] I want to have this here in here
[08:23.280] And we can just remove this here or just delete the modulation tally
[08:27.920] You can see we have now here the modulation part of the clip
[08:32.880] And you can uh, call this or
[08:36.640] Uh, brings up here by using here the automation editor panel
[08:40.480] And this is now part of the of the track and you can also change here the mid cc's
[08:45.200] And uh, yeah move between
[08:47.200] Different cc's and change the modulation for hcc differently
[08:51.840] But what you can do now with this is
[08:53.840] That we have now the possibility to play this over and over here
[08:58.800] Um, independently from this track. We can also say we want to um
[09:04.880] shorten the length here
[09:10.240] So if you like this
[09:17.120] So you can make like um
[09:19.440] fully rhythmical modulations by just changing here the length
[09:32.000] And you can also re-trick out this here when you um, I think when you say here
[09:37.520] Uh, launch quantization default, which is um, I think every beat can put this to off
[09:55.760] So you can re-trick out this uh, independently from this one here
[09:59.440] So it's kind of a multi-stage envelope generator
[10:02.720] Um, where you can re-trick out this at will and change here the um
[10:09.040] Yeah, basically the settings of this and you can also um
[10:13.440] Use up to 127 of these curves and um
[10:18.400] Yeah, modulate things on different tracks
[10:21.760] Um, it's also possible to um, yeah, make some kind of arc things uh, where you maybe do some kind of
[10:29.920] Soundtrack and you know exactly how long your soundtricks needs to be because you have a video
[10:36.880] Um, and
[10:39.840] Then you say for instance, oh, there's the intro here. I get
[10:43.600] I get less dynamics here. It's at
[10:46.320] It's at the fullest of all track and here it slowly goes down and then you can mark certain points in your video where you want to have
[10:53.760] um, or how you want to lay out the structure of your soundtrack to the video
[10:58.400] And then you just grab this
[11:02.320] Uh, to your one of your tracks and then decide maybe at this point here. I want to send more
[11:07.920] Loud or I want to cut off more open or I want to introduce a different uh, type of modulation at this point here
[11:16.000] So it kind of
[11:18.720] You can lay out basically your overall structure of your soundtrack and then get
[11:25.040] These informations into different subchannels and then act accordingly
[11:30.960] Uh, with the synth to it
[11:33.120] So this only covers basically the cc and modulations, but sometimes you have a different problem
[11:39.280] So let's say we have here and
[11:42.480] We have here and Polysynth
[11:45.040] Um, we can just leave here the melody on this
[11:50.080] Yeah, maybe let's remove this here. So
[11:52.240] So it's more simple simple setup
[11:56.160] And then you have here
[11:58.240] At the certain point in your chain
[12:00.640] You have a filter and you maybe have an ADS R
[12:04.640] And this ADS R is triggered by the notes, right?
[12:10.880] By the notes of this channel and maybe sometimes you don't have notes on the channel or you want to trigger this with a different channel
[12:18.320] Um, maybe I use your um
[12:23.040] Audio file
[12:28.240] Yeah, it's just use this it doesn't matter. It's not so important what I use here
[12:32.240] So let's bring this over here to the to the file. So let's say we have here a pad sound
[12:49.920] And there are no notes on this channel, right? So it's no way that ADS R get triggered by something
[12:55.680] And what we can do now is we can introduce notes to this audio channel
[13:02.160] So we can mix and
[13:04.240] Yeah, we can mix audio and MIDI at the same time on notes in case of Bitwig studio
[13:10.080] It's called notes actually no channels or note informations
[13:13.680] So we can bring in here the
[13:16.000] The note receiver and it doesn't give us the option because it's an audio channel
[13:21.680] So we have to select your different filter
[13:23.680] Um, note receiver there it is
[13:27.360] And then you can see it still passes through the audio from our audio channel
[13:32.560] So it doesn't interference with the with the audio at all and we can bring in notes from the police center
[13:39.520] So let's go for this maybe mute this
[13:44.800] So now we can see we get now your signals from this track here above
[13:49.280] So we basically have an audio channel
[13:53.120] One is audio channel does an audio waveform
[13:56.160] And we get MIDI information from from a different channel
[14:00.640] Without the sidechain it's all
[14:04.240] Basically done with the note receiver and now we can use this here to
[14:09.440] Yeah trigger this
[14:11.440] So
[14:18.080] So basically the note receiver lays the role of a of the sidechain input for maybe you have here the
[14:25.360] um outside chain something like this here, right
[14:30.160] Um, we can select something from a different channel
[14:33.360] But we don't have to see over the ads are so we need to implement this here with the note receiver basically
[14:41.520] So this is something you can do
[14:44.640] You can mix audio and note informations at the same time. It's no problem at all
[14:49.920] You can do this anywhere in your
[14:52.640] Um, yeah, in your chain it doesn't matter how deep or how many devices you have you can bring this all the time
[14:59.360] You can also do something like where you mix
[15:03.760] um different
[15:05.360] things here, I think
[15:07.520] Um, so we have now two
[15:10.720] Uh, two MIDI channels or instrument channels. Maybe we use a different notes just offset this a bit
[15:17.600] So maybe we use your chain
[15:29.920] Put this in here put this in here
[15:33.680] So we can see yes um option that's it's called mute. So this basically means that we can mute everything
[15:40.880] Every MIDI uh information coming from the front of the note receiver, right? So um when we duplicate this here to a second
[15:51.360] thing
[15:58.080] Now source
[16:00.400] You can see we receive MIDI information on here
[16:04.320] What on here we don't get anything by mute this
[16:07.760] We get informations. So when we activate this note receiver and have mute's input on
[16:15.760] Then everything that comes in from from from front of the chain device gets muted
[16:21.840] So we can select here the second Polysynth
[16:26.400] Maybe I make this a bit shorter
[16:30.720] So we have here the
[16:32.560] Fast ones and here we have the slow ones. If you want to mix basically these two together
[16:37.760] So we want to have the slow ones and here you have to want to have the slow ones and the fast ones
[16:42.400] You can just disable input here
[16:45.760] Um this button so you so we can mix basically these two together
[16:52.720] So this is something you can do
[16:56.080] Um another thing someone asked me was um
[16:59.920] um
[17:01.680] I think um
[17:03.280] Yeah, how you can create basically notes on an
[17:08.160] Yeah, on an audio channel. So we have audio here. So there's no way of creating notes on here
[17:13.360] I mean you could you can insert your some notes uh some note clips
[17:18.640] But sometimes you want to have for instance a filter
[17:24.400] Um something like this
[17:26.400] And
[17:28.400] We use here um again
[17:31.680] ADS R which is triggered by MIDI notes
[17:37.520] And without getting information
[17:40.000] Informations from anywhere else we can generate here something with a
[17:44.640] Replacer
[17:47.440] Um as you can see most of these things are
[17:50.880] filtered out
[17:52.720] Replacer we bring the mix to zero we use some sign or maybe you can DC offset device it's also
[17:59.840] possible
[18:01.120] Um music chain device
[18:03.600] So you can put everything in here
[18:07.120] Bring the mix down
[18:12.640] So this gets now here the the sound from our channel, but we don't want that so use a tool
[18:18.240] And mute this
[18:22.880] Also put it on here
[18:24.880] So as you can see no informations are coming into the replace here from our audio channel
[18:31.680] But you can now generate our own signals with this DC offset device as you can see here and every time we
[18:39.200] So pass or exceed here our threshold which we can change here with the threshold of course
[18:44.640] We trigger or we generate a node which is here c3 with velocity at 100%
[18:51.520] So you can introduce here a random modulator
[18:57.120] Um maybe make it a bit faster
[19:03.040] And when we change it to threshold
[19:06.960] Pull this up kind of create some kind of chance
[19:11.360] um
[19:13.360] Chance module chance of triggering
[19:32.160] It doesn't matter so we can generate now nodes here and
[19:36.160] Yeah, we need to to leak out basically now here the nodes. I think um
[19:45.360] Yeah
[19:53.920] Oh there it is
[19:57.520] I need to put this threshold down so now we can close this so we generate with this one here some nodes we can call this maybe
[20:03.840] uh, maybe
[20:06.240] meeting nodes
[20:09.520] And then trigger here some ads are ads are um and the logs with this
[20:17.360] And there's no other way you can trigger ads us without having a node so you need nodes
[20:22.800] There's no way of modulating this here with a different modulator
[20:26.880] Modulator to generate some and the logs so you need to
[20:30.640] uh use some kind of device here like I did here
[20:35.840] Um if you want to generate nodes from this audio signal you don't need to
[20:42.960] Don't need to use DC offset device here or this you can just
[20:48.240] You know just use the pad sound here and change the threshold
[20:52.720] And I can just use the replacement here to generate nodes from this audio signal. So this is also possible
[21:08.960] So without having a meaty channel or a node channel or instrument channel
[21:14.000] You can generate nodes on an audio track easily
[21:18.000] So back to our original example where we use maybe an instrument track here
[21:25.360] And on this instrument track we can also use a Poly-Grid
[21:29.520] And inside the Poly-Grid we have a lot of options of course
[21:32.960] With logic informations and also maybe
[21:36.320] Uh, let's use a trigger trigger module here. I use two trigger modules. Let's use this here as a clock 16
[21:44.480] 16 triggers
[21:45.920] Use a clock one ties
[21:48.160] uses as a clock information
[21:50.800] Maybe bring in here some uneven
[21:53.760] uneven triggers and we get here some
[21:59.680] Yeah, some informations out we can use on a
[22:02.960] Just on a module later out
[22:04.960] And then we can do the same basically we can
[22:08.240] We can say we want to instead of using a my grid node out we can also use
[22:14.000] um the midi cc device
[22:19.040] And maybe modulate here um cc 10
[22:26.400] Something like this
[22:30.240] And then we can go to the pad track here and say we want to filter this here
[22:36.320] Oh, let's use an audio filter
[22:38.400] use the midi cc device or midi cc modulator here cc 10
[22:46.480] And we need a receiver not receiver
[22:50.160] We get information from the Poly-Grid. Let's see
[22:55.360] And we have this information now in here
[22:57.360] And yeah, and uses here to modulate this one
[23:11.200] We can change here. Oh, we trigger this maybe
[23:14.400] We can use it on a d
[23:34.000] And if you want to you can also just duplicate this here use different
[23:38.320] Um timing in modulate your cc 2 or cc 12 or 11 let's go for this
[23:48.400] And go on the second track here
[23:50.400] And you get some nice rhythmic feel right and you can yeah use create this here on a global track maybe use this global
[24:08.560] global
[24:10.800] And grab this from from this channel to every sub track you want
[24:15.520] And use this maybe for modulations or whatever
[24:22.880] Um, but you can define basically all your global modulations in here up to 1 and 27
[24:29.520] Uh, modulations and then grab this to all kind of or bring this to all kinds of sub tracks which
[24:36.400] Can be kind of interesting to have this all in one place
[24:40.080] Uh, because now we can go in here and maybe you make a performance
[24:44.320] For an audience and you can change everything in here rhythmically and every sub track changes with it
[24:52.160] Could be interesting. So it's just an idea how you can approach something like this
[24:57.120] Um, in the bitwig scenario
[25:01.200] So another idea is to chain basically some
[25:05.120] Um, envelopes use an idea here and
[25:08.480] We're using gates module and we use this gate module here to trigger only at the start of the bar
[25:17.040] Uh trigger the first envelope as you can see it rocks pretty nice
[25:22.320] And then uh, we use and comparison module
[25:27.680] Hmm, this one here
[25:30.400] And use the second one
[25:32.400] So every time this envelope gets to zero
[25:40.800] Um, or comes back to zero
[25:44.240] Um, the input is zero and here our second input is empty, which is also zero
[25:48.320] So zero is zero and then this one gets triggered. So every time we go back here to zero
[25:53.520] This one gets triggered and so on. So we can um, just duplicate this here multiple times
[25:58.960] Um, that's
[26:04.560] And you can change basically here some some envelopes together
[26:14.400] It's kind of a movie stage envelope generator, right? And
[26:19.040] Yeah, we can use this here now to um
[26:23.440] Yeah, I'm not too late
[26:25.200] basically our
[26:27.200] Um, CC 10
[26:31.040] thing here
[26:33.360] So we combine in multiple envelopes here together
[26:37.280] Um, let's see how this rocks out
[26:41.520] So you can see it's in
[26:46.080] This strange waveform
[26:48.080] You can change this a bit
[27:19.040] Can you can make this change as long as you want? There's no
[27:22.720] Yeah, it's um, it's up to you
[27:26.320] Um another thing is maybe you can do the same
[27:30.800] As before with the clock quantizer and mix these signals just together
[27:36.480] Um
[27:39.040] It's free guy
[27:41.680] Um, go to 16
[27:43.680] You got this one
[27:51.280] Something like this
[27:53.280] Then you modulate this yeah, yeah, then you modulate this again
[27:58.880] Then you relate this again, then change here the settings
[28:03.280] You go to six
[28:04.960] Nine and then you get a weird combination of these sometimes you overlap the the modulation sometimes not
[28:12.480] Um, so you get some wild combinations
[28:17.600] In the end
[28:20.560] Get you get you some
[28:23.280] Yeah, interesting waveforms maybe and they are kind of rhythmically um
[28:27.360] Um, um, correct if you have to attack here at zero
[28:43.520] If you change here the timings
[29:07.520] So it gets you nice rhythms just by modulating this
[29:10.960] And yeah, as I just saw, I can use then here the note receiver and can pull this to every track and you have kind of a nice new rhythm
[29:21.120] What you later that is the same on every track you want to use
[29:25.760] Okay, so the last tip for today is about combining uh, MIDI channels to
[29:31.520] One MIDI channel
[29:33.200] So let's say we have here a note track with some random notes on it
[29:43.280] Doesn't matter what kind of notes and the second MIDI clip here
[29:52.640] So something like this and then you want to combine these two MIDI clips to just one MIDI clip or maybe you have three or four of these clips
[30:01.120] And you want to combine them. So in this case here this example I just used two, but you can use more
[30:07.120] Or let's use three for instance, right? So just for the example here
[30:11.360] Um
[30:12.960] Just move this uh in between here
[30:17.680] Something like this. I don't know. So now we want to combine all these three things here. So we use a fourth channel
[30:24.480] And on this channel we use a note receiver of course
[30:31.680] So we bring in here track number one
[30:35.520] obligators bring in track number two
[30:38.400] obligators bring in track number three
[30:41.360] mute these two inputs so we can receive also here everything from the first inputs
[30:47.440] and now we can use here of
[30:50.080] fifth
[30:52.080] thing and call bring in here basically everything from the note receiver
[30:57.280] hit record
[30:59.920] And just record everything you know to one channel as you can see
[31:05.040] We have basically now a combined MIDI um clip from these three tracks
[31:11.120] So this is something you can do maybe sometimes to this helpful or you want to do this
[31:15.920] um when you import some MIDI tracks or MIDI files from somewhere else and everything is split in up
[31:21.840] into
[31:23.120] Multiple tracks, so you can combine this easily with this kind of track
[31:26.880] So just use here a note receiver track pull in all the MIDI notes from all the tracks together
[31:33.680] And then record everything onto a fifth track and you are good
[31:38.880] So this is the last trick I think for the day
[31:42.560] So um
[31:44.640] Yeah, that's it. Thanks for watching out. It was pretty helpful
[31:47.840] uh leave a thumbs up if you found this helpful and subscribe to the channel if you're not subscribed
[31:54.400] And maybe think about the patreon subscription because this that keeps me alive
[31:59.200] And also thanks to all my current petitions for supporting me thumbs up
[32:03.520] Thanks to everyone and I see you in the next video. Bye