Creating a Chord Progression Tool in Bitwig Studio

Tutorial | Wed Oct 20 2021 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

In this video, I demonstrated how to create a code progression tool or preset inside Bitwig Studio. I explained step-by-step how to create quads, change the relationships between notes, introduce rhythmic elements, apply swing and groove, route notes to different instruments, bounce MIDI clips, and tweak further. I also showed how the Poly-Grid device works and how it can interact with VST instruments, synthesizers and external hardware. Finally, I introduced some tips such as using attinuates to scale down the pitch range, creating chromatic chords, quantizing the rhythm with sample and holds, and using a macro knob to change the scale from the outside.

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 do I create a code progression tool or preset in Bitwig Studio? #

To create a code progression tool or preset in Bitwig Studio, you first need to create a Poly-Grid device. This device is comprised of various modules, such as a value knob, oscilloscope, pitch scalar, quantizer, transposal, mixer, and octave. You can then use these modules to create chord progressions. You can use the value knob to change the pitch, the scalar to scale down the pitch range, the quantizer to narrow the signal down to a specific scale, the transposal to offset the signal to the root key of the scale, the mixer to beat all the voices together, and the octave to shift the bass note one octave lower. Additionally, you can also introduce chromatic notes, use more attenuates to change the note scale, and use sample and hold modules and a clock quantizer to sync the chord progression to the rhythm of the track.

How can I make changes to the chord progression over time? #

To make changes to the chord progression over time, you can use macro knobs to modulate the pitch from the outside, and use an LFO to

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 on this channel. In today's tutorial I try to create
[00:05.200] a code progression tool or preset inside Bitwig Studio and I try to be as clear
[00:14.040] and simple as possible and I try to explain it step by step. Maybe try and
[00:19.680] recreate it alongside with me while you're watching but you can also download
[00:25.040] the preset of course then afterwards in the description. But there's a lot of
[00:30.000] stuff actually in this video. A lot of stuff to learn. I try to explain how you
[00:36.080] create these quads, how you can change the relationship between each of these
[00:40.080] notes, how you can bring in rhythmic elements to the chord progressions, how you
[00:45.080] can apply some swing and groove, how you get these notes out of the grid into
[00:52.560] different instruments, maybe VSC instruments, Bitwig instruments or external
[00:56.880] hardware, how you get these notes to different tracks, how you can bounce it
[01:00.400] down to MIDI clips, tweak it even further. So there's a lot of things in there
[01:05.680] and a lot of things to learn about Bitwig and the grid itself. As I said I try
[01:11.280] to be as simple as possible so don't shy away of watching this video. Maybe
[01:18.160] there's some kind of switch where you get some things you haven't
[01:24.320] understand before. So yeah let's start. But before we start I show you here on
[01:30.560] an instrument track in a note clip what we are gonna try and do so you can see it
[01:35.200] in a kind of familiar environment. So you all know how to build chords right?
[01:41.280] We have a root key here, maybe it's C3 or C2. Then we have a third, 1, 2, 3, 4 or
[01:50.240] maybe a minor third, 1, 2, 3, 4, it's the fifth. And maybe we also build a
[01:57.040] seventh, 1, 2, 3 here. And we have basically here a root pitch
[02:04.640] which is 0 and then we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. These are basically
[02:14.400] the semitones we need. And maybe we also create a bass note here which is 1
[02:20.080] octave lower than the root key. So we all try to do this and create this
[02:26.800] inside the grid. Also everything is tweakable with some macron knobs which
[02:32.240] means you can modulate this or automate to make changes over time.
[02:39.600] And yeah it's pretty interesting you probably learn a lot how the grid works
[02:46.160] and how the grid can interact with the VST instruments and also with the
[02:54.000] synthesizers and so on. So okay let's remove this.
[02:59.680] Go on this instrument track here and we create a new Poly-Grid device.
[03:06.000] That's that. We can switch into the Poly-Grid here by clicking on it and we
[03:10.160] can delete everything we don't need it. So the first module we need is a value
[03:19.360] value knob which just defines some values and we can use an oscillate oscilloscope.
[03:26.320] You can see at the zero position we are exactly in the middle
[03:29.840] which is zero. We turn this up we can go to 100%, 100% is the value of 1.
[03:35.840] You can also use your readout. Don't trust me.
[03:41.920] It's 1, 0. And when we select this value knob here and switch to bipolar
[03:47.200] and the left inspector panel we get now also the negative range
[03:53.040] minus 1 plus 1 is 0. And we call this slider here
[03:59.760] pitch because that's the value that changes our pitch for our chords.
[04:07.200] Okay let's remove this here and the problem with the pitch now is when we use
[04:13.120] your Sine-Oscillator and also an output here and when when we use here the
[04:23.600] pitch for the input we get now
[04:31.040] pretty high pitches and also pretty low pitches and it's also not
[04:41.520] stepped. It's not quantized to a scale. We get in between
[04:46.720] pitches or in between note pitches so we have to fix that.
[04:52.160] But you can also see here you can change the pitch often oscillator by
[04:57.680] using your input check, feeding in some kind of signal
[05:01.360] and disabling here the pre-cord. The pre-cord is basically just
[05:05.360] you know the Sine-Oscillator receiving input from the keyboard
[05:09.840] or from the note piano from the piano roll. We don't want that. We only want to
[05:15.040] interact with the Sine-Oscillator here with the cables so I disabled
[05:20.320] basically this pre-cord. Okay so we can remove here
[05:25.680] oh no we actually let this in. So the range or the note range or the
[05:32.080] pitch range is pretty high so we have to scale this down and there is a
[05:37.520] note scalar in bitric. Looks like this your
[05:42.320] pitch scalar but I don't use it. I think it's way too big.
[05:48.800] So I'm using an attinuate here which does basically kind of the same
[05:54.240] thing. So when you use your two oscilloscopes and we feed this into the
[05:59.200] attinuate and then go into the second thing here
[06:03.200] you can see it's the same signal but when we scale this down to maybe 50%
[06:09.520] you can see the range is different. At 100% we are only at 50% here in the
[06:15.520] positive range and also 50% in the negative range
[06:19.520] which equals to a value of zero minus zero dot five and plus zero dot five.
[06:25.120] We can use it attinuate to scale this signal and it's exactly what we want. We want to
[06:31.040] um yeah we don't want to exceed a sub pitch range so when we use this here as
[06:38.240] an input
[06:50.480] we can define our highest and lowest pitch
[06:54.720] with this attinuate. So we can call this here scalar
[06:59.760] maybe also remove the oscilloscope it's just to show you what's going on.
[07:06.720] So the next thing is we need to narrow the signal down to a scale to a
[07:13.040] node scale and I'm using a quantizer for this here
[07:19.360] and when we use here some of the keys and turn the knob
[07:25.680] you can see it's now stepped it's a stepped signal maybe switch it off so
[07:30.720] the scope to this mode. You can see now it's it's a
[07:39.280] it's a stepped signal it's not that fluid anymore like before here
[07:43.920] where it's all over the place so we quantize the signal and narrow
[07:48.800] everything down to a scale that's what we want
[07:53.520] um but for our example I'm using the scale of D sharp minor which is
[07:57.840] all the black keys and the benefit of this is the D sharp minor scale is
[08:04.000] when you use only the black keys it's pentatonic it's basically the main
[08:09.280] the important keys of the minor of the of the minor scale
[08:14.560] um that are pretty useful for melodies and there are only five keys one two three
[08:20.080] four five instead of seven um I think when you add these two nodes here you get
[08:26.640] the full D sharp minor scale but we stick with the pentatonic scale for now
[08:33.600] and the problem now is the root node of D sharp minor is D sharp which is this
[08:38.080] one here but we are at C sharp
[08:42.320] and when we enable your C we are going back to or this quantizer goes
[08:48.320] back here to the C C node so that that's because our signal is at zero at the
[08:58.720] value of zero here and the value of zero is
[09:03.680] in the signal or in the pitch signal range
[09:07.440] always in bitwig at least C3
[09:11.760] um so we have to offset the signal by three semitones
[09:19.840] with the transposal here
[09:24.640] because we want to go from C to D sharp right this is just an offset
[09:30.240] go to the root node of our key of our scale
[09:37.280] when the pitch signal is at zero so every time you go back to
[09:41.680] zero here with the slider over the knob then you are at the root node of our
[09:48.560] scale which is D sharp okay so this is the offset
[09:53.600] um okay what else so now this should be
[09:58.480] that should sound pretty nice or at least useful
[10:10.720] so we have now a pitch knob here which we also
[10:14.160] can bring into the device run panel here by using a macro knob
[10:18.880] switching this to bipolar mode modulating this here by one
[10:24.880] and call this also pitch we can change the pitch from outside the grid so we
[10:30.000] don't need to actually go into the drag into the grid
[10:35.200] patch and then change it here we can change it from the outside
[10:39.120] so it's just a quality of life thing basically
[10:44.320] so now that we have a pitch that we can change we have a scalar that scales down
[10:48.240] our pitch range of maybe two octaves we have an offset here that brings up the
[10:53.280] root key to our D sharp minor key here which is the root of our scale
[11:00.000] and we can change the pitch and change also
[11:04.000] yeah the outcome of the Sine-Oscillator so um so I bring this over here
[11:09.920] because we now we now create some
[11:13.680] bootable voices so this is our root here and then of course we are creating
[11:23.680] the second voice which is our third here
[11:29.120] and maybe we create also the seventh the fifth
[11:37.680] and also the base so the base is special because it's just one octave lower
[11:47.120] and we can do this by using an octave here in front
[11:52.560] and just say just pitch this down one or two octaves
[11:57.440] so this is pretty easy um this is our root key so nothing changes this is our
[12:04.560] third so we can use here a transpose and bring this up
[12:10.560] three semitones or it doesn't matter really
[12:15.600] um and use the transpose here also for the fifth and bring this up
[12:22.640] seven semitones and maybe we can also create here
[12:28.320] um the seventh which is ten semitones up
[12:38.560] um so that's that this should be already creating a nice chord
[12:43.600] maybe not the right chord but it's creating a chord so we
[12:47.040] using a mixer here beating everything together
[12:58.640] maybe use an volume not here at the end so we can change the volume
[13:10.880] so it's already a chord and we can change the chord by
[13:18.240] using the pitch here
[13:27.200] and because all of these voices are quantized here with the
[13:31.040] pitch quantizer they are all within the scale so it's
[13:36.080] you get diatonic chords really easily so to make this more
[13:41.440] interesting um we have to make changes to some of these voices
[13:46.080] and there are multiple options that are interesting of course
[13:50.000] for instance we can say well the bass the bass line maybe
[13:56.320] should not move that that much and also
[14:01.440] I don't want to have maybe not all the keys of the scale uh for the bass
[14:06.400] so we can narrow the bass down here to these three important keys maybe
[14:11.920] you bring in this one here i don't know it's it's completely up to you
[14:16.640] what sounds good to you um maybe we stick here for the root key to
[14:22.880] our um maybe go here with a four D sharp minor scale
[14:31.360] then the third here maybe it's okay to stick to bandatonic or maybe this one
[14:35.680] key and the fifth um it's important probably for the melody
[14:41.040] so melody is nice to have only the diatonic um notes in there so this could
[14:47.920] be already sounding nice so every voice now has different quantized
[14:53.200] options which means it's depending on what input you do
[14:57.840] they are quantizing differently and switching to different
[15:01.440] notes because some of these notes have more options and
[15:05.440] or more quantize um more quantize options here so
[15:10.960] it's shifting differently and it's behaving in a
[15:15.200] non-controllable way but it's still everything is diatonic
[15:20.480] uh maybe listen to this
[15:34.640] so now it's uh now we can maybe also introduce some
[15:39.200] um chromatic notes um you can maybe do this by just
[15:44.480] yeah allowing our keys and then just turning off these keys you
[15:49.920] think are not fitting
[16:09.280] if you turn this bit down here
[16:25.040] or we can leave this completely chromatic
[16:45.200] I think this even fridge in here if you switch from this to this
[16:50.720] I'm not wrong but you can also just leave it diatonic um
[17:01.120] so yeah you can play around with this and can bring in some out-of-scale
[17:05.600] chords and maybe experiment with this uh make the changes
[17:10.240] chances higher that the chords are not that boring um
[17:15.120] okay so that's that you can also introduce your
[17:18.400] more attinuates and change the note scale of some of these
[17:23.520] voices even more um let's say you have the bass
[17:30.400] sound here and you want to have even slower movement or not that many
[17:36.640] octaves of range of bass notes can do this here by attinuate with 50 percent
[17:42.240] maybe you can also use an which is pretty unusual using a volume knob here
[17:48.640] which just amplifies the signal it's not not something you can use
[17:53.440] only for audio signals you can also use this up here um
[17:59.040] change this here um so what this does is maybe use an
[18:03.920] oscilloscope here um
[18:07.920] or two go with the signal in here and then out of the volume in here
[18:14.160] amplify the signal you can see and I'll change here the pitch
[18:20.880] this one changes faster than this one just by adding here a volume knob
[18:28.640] to offsetting basically the yeah the how the signal changes
[18:34.160] over time so you can bring in with the volume knob here some
[18:39.760] differences to some of the voices and this can be interesting because here the
[18:44.000] seventh now a seventh uh voice what note um
[18:49.120] should be maybe move more in a different
[18:53.520] note range than all the other notes it can be maybe interesting
[19:23.520] that's already really nice
[19:40.640] um so now the next problem is that um there is no
[19:46.560] really quantization to the rhythm
[19:49.920] um when a pitch changes is more decided by the quantizer itself than the
[19:56.560] than the rhythm of the track so we can uh change this or fix this by using
[20:02.560] sample and holds um it's a device looks like this here
[20:09.280] and this this device takes basically a signal in our case hit pitch
[20:14.880] and holds the pitch until it gets a pulse or signal on this input here
[20:21.040] and for this we just use the trigger and the trigger module sends out the
[20:26.960] pulse every four notes as you can see here
[20:29.760] and the uses on here so this one now changes the pitch or holds the
[20:35.920] pitch um only until we get the new trigger from this trigger module
[20:41.600] so what the stars is quantizes basically our pitch change to the rhythm
[20:48.320] to our transport speed maybe go to 85 bpm here
[20:56.400] and you sample and hold your on all of these
[21:04.960] oscillators bam now we need to trigger here for all of these
[21:13.120] sample and holds
[21:18.320] okay so when we change now the pitch i also activate here the
[21:23.520] metronome so you can hear the rhythm we change now with the pitch
[21:45.440] doesn't matter how fast you change the pitch it's always synchronizing to the
[21:50.400] bottom notes
[21:59.360] we can also go up to 8
[22:10.320] so this is a bit boring because everything changes at the same time
[22:14.720] so we have to make different triggers for different
[22:19.360] yeah for different voices um so you may be
[22:24.320] clone this here and use a different trigger for each of these sample and holds
[22:28.640] this is something you can do but what i like to do is
[22:32.720] just use one trigger and call this one clock
[22:37.280] go up to 16 notes which is probably high-hat speed so 16th notes
[22:45.040] and then use a clock quantizer this device here and the clock quantizer takes
[22:53.440] um two inputs here the clock itself which is this one here
[22:58.960] and maybe just remove this and
[23:04.240] listen this one
[23:08.640] call it clock just remove all the cables so this is the clock here
[23:14.480] and changes your trigger mode instead of gates
[23:19.920] and then we can input your second signal this one
[23:22.960] 8 8 triggers and when we go here to uneven numbers
[23:29.360] let's say 11 so tries to synchronize 11 pulses with 16 pulses which is
[23:37.040] something that's not really fitting but to get interesting rhythms out of
[23:42.400] this and all of these rhythms are synced to a 16th note grid and it sounds
[23:47.840] pretty nice actually and yeah we do this here for each step
[23:53.680] so let's do this um copy this here copy this here
[24:01.920] yeah it's here so now we use this for that
[24:06.800] just for that just connecting everything so now we can dial in here different
[24:14.560] speeds for different voices so the bass should be
[24:17.360] maybe playing a bit slower so maybe go for three here
[24:21.440] this is the root key maybe two five uh six
[24:30.800] seven this is just some uneven numbers
[24:35.200] and being interesting okay so now that we have this here we have a
[24:40.960] quantizer different triggers and the clock
[24:44.720] get maybe
[25:15.520] get already a nice interesting sounding chord progression
[25:23.920] um we also can use your macro maybe for the scalar and change the scale
[25:30.160] from the outside just a tab here and use it or call it no range
[25:36.640] because that's what it does it changes how far the notes go up and down
[25:43.840] so maybe pull this down go on there maybe let's play it
[26:02.080] so we can bring in here with the note range and maybe an LFO
[26:06.800] classic LFO and this LFO is pretty slow two bars and
[26:13.840] modulating at the note range just a tab which changes the note range
[26:20.400] and it gets already a nice sounding effect
[26:26.880] it doesn't change the chord it just changes yeah it changes the chord a bit but
[26:33.360] the root note is always the same
[26:44.320] but you get interesting movements in there just with the LFO and changing the
[26:49.840] the note range okay so what we don't have is the notes are playing all the
[27:10.880] times we have a continuously um tone happening it's almost like a drone
[27:17.920] so what we can do about this is introducing some gates or ADS-Rs
[27:24.160] these ones here and these ADS-Rs are triggered also from the keyboard or from the
[27:30.560] from the piano roll but we don't want to or we don't want to do that we want to
[27:36.320] use the input checks here so just disable this and
[27:41.360] hook these up here to the oscillators also here
[27:48.960] disable disable disable disable okay so we can now use the same
[27:57.040] quantized trigger signals here we are using for the sample notes also for the ADS
[28:02.480] this should be sound already pretty interesting
[28:06.240] just connect these two oh it's already the sounds like this
[28:15.040] let's hit play here
[28:23.520] let's add the reverb maybe the bass sound here
[29:23.520] I think the sounds already pretty nice
[29:45.200] um it leads you
[29:57.920] as we can also always go back to the root note by just double clicking
[30:15.600] add so fun to play around with this and when you're not happy with the
[30:19.760] with the result with how this chord sounds um just remember you can step in
[30:25.600] bring in here some chromatic notes for certain voices
[30:31.200] you can change the relationship of the of the pitch to every other voice by
[30:37.520] using the scalars or these attinuates scaling the
[30:41.840] signal differently for each voice and yeah getting different chords out of
[30:46.960] this um so it's all like a thing of tweaking and
[30:53.200] finding the right settings the right um the right numbers for each of these
[30:58.880] voices um so yeah that's that's basically it what I wanted to show you but
[31:05.280] I want to continue and show you how you get these pitch signals and gate
[31:11.360] signals out of the grid and use it for uh maybe VST instruments
[31:17.520] and Bitwigs synthesizers okay so for this um maybe I saved this here actually
[31:26.880] call it chord rocker let's call it this
[31:33.120] and say note generates chords in D sharp
[31:43.440] minor and I probably want to share this another video
[31:47.840] so you can just download this maybe maybe I
[31:52.880] publish it a bit later so you are forced to try it out for yourself to build it
[31:58.320] for yourself and learn actually something
[32:01.760] instead of me just you know putting download up and you download it and
[32:06.080] play around it for five minutes and then we will see
[32:12.240] okay so to output these things here as notes we don't need
[32:19.280] all the oscillators because they are generating sound and we don't need to
[32:24.640] use the envelopes here don't need the mixer we don't need an output volume
[32:30.400] no output nothing we only need pitches and
[32:35.840] the gate signals okay so to output that we need
[32:41.920] what is called modulator here
[32:44.960] and this one is the pitch well maybe I just
[32:48.880] clone this here multiple times first
[32:57.600] so this is the first one is the pitch
[33:02.480] and we have the gate signal yeah
[33:07.120] baram baram baram baram okay and to output these signals we
[33:14.720] need some kind of a hack or we also don't need you to reverb anymore
[33:19.040] inside the fxbox here of the of the Poly-Grid
[33:24.640] we insert the preset which is called grid notes out and this is
[33:30.720] this is a preset by myself and it's also available for free the
[33:35.920] link is down in the description you can just download this preset
[33:39.680] drag it into bitwig and then save it as a preset and
[33:43.840] yeah have it there for every time you need it
[33:51.040] so this crit node out generates a note and you can modulate from inside the
[33:56.000] grid with these modulators all these macronops here
[34:00.000] or remote controls and by modulating the pitch
[34:04.080] and the gate it generates a note at the end here
[34:07.840] of the grid node out but we need mutable nodes because
[34:13.760] we have we have caught right the caught needs mutable nodes
[34:17.920] so what we need before this grid node out is an fx layer
[34:25.360] node fx layer this one here just put this in there so we have one layer with
[34:32.240] one grid node out and then we can just select this layer
[34:35.280] and hit ctrl and d to duplicate this mutable times
[34:41.680] and just rename this here with ctrl and r
[34:47.120] this is probably seventh
[34:50.560] oh seventh fifth third this is the root
[35:03.680] and this is the base and we renamed this node if x layer here to
[35:11.040] caught generator just to just to find it better
[35:18.080] afterwards in the select box in the drop down menus
[35:23.040] so now that we have this we need to connect each of these remote controls here
[35:28.080] so the seventh is a gate it's this one
[35:33.360] the pitch is this one just modulate it here
[35:36.560] the all the way just click and drag all the way
[35:41.360] the modulate by two this is the fifth pitch
[35:51.520] this is the gate this is the pitch this is the gate
[35:59.920] root node this is the pitch this is the gate
[36:05.840] pitch gate so I can see we already generating nodes here
[36:12.720] so now that we have this we can actually put in a
[36:16.320] police and after this yeah after this device here inside fxbox
[36:23.120] still but they're still not done yet it's just to
[36:27.040] demonstrating what we've done so far so now we can trigger here the
[36:32.080] pitches and the gates from within the grid this
[36:35.840] policing okay but that's not really what we want so far we want to have
[36:45.920] a real nice yeah separated node generator so what we what we do now as we
[36:55.360] put this into a chain device
[36:59.600] call a chain device here and a chain device is just dummy container where you
[37:04.240] could put in some devices of bitwig and just group it together basically
[37:10.640] but the the good thing about this chain devices that it leaks
[37:15.680] nodes out the fxbox here doesn't leak nodes out basically all these
[37:21.120] nodes that are out putting into this fxbox are not coming out after this
[37:25.680] polygrid so if you put a Poly sent here after the Poly-Grid
[37:32.480] you see you don't hear anything you have to put it into the fxbox after the
[37:37.520] core generator okay so that's the important part that's why we doing this
[37:45.840] so what we do now is we put the Poly-Grid into the chain device
[37:50.480] and after the Poly-Grid device we are using a node receiver
[37:55.600] it's getting it's getting tricky node receiver and with this node receiver we
[38:02.480] can pull out the nodes from within the fxbox we do this by going
[38:10.000] pull this in Poly chain chain fx core generator and it can hear it works so fxbox
[38:23.280] doesn't leak out nodes so we're using a node receiver pulling out the nodes
[38:29.200] from the fxbox putting out the nodes after the node receiver and the
[38:33.600] chain device leaks the nodes out of the chain container to the Poly sent
[38:40.480] after the chain container so what this does now is that we can save this as a
[38:45.120] preset and we know this generates nodes and put
[38:48.880] some random synth after after the chain device we can even use here
[38:54.800] I don't know random random VST instrument
[39:00.880] let's see if I have something here instrument
[39:13.840] so right it's just via synth instrument getting the nodes
[39:17.600] from the node receiver and the node receiver getting the nodes from the fxbox
[39:23.040] and the node chain radar has different layers on each layer there's a node grid
[39:27.040] node out receiving signals from each of these modulators here you know it's
[39:35.200] quite hacky but it works I really hope we get a grid node
[39:43.280] output in some of the next updates I think a lot of people waiting for this
[39:49.120] for two years and I created this grid node output I think one or two
[39:53.760] years ago and it's still heavily used by the community
[39:59.280] now I use it also a lot of times it's pretty handy actually
[40:03.120] so it works so now that we have this we can put all these
[40:13.120] things here in front of the chain device maybe we call it
[40:18.560] call it rocker again and at the preset page
[40:26.160] and we change the pitch we change the node range
[40:30.720] and maybe we also change here the amount of this one
[40:37.680] the left all amount changes the node range right so when we pull this down
[40:44.080] no modulation is applied to the node range pull this up it's modulating here
[40:50.640] heavily so and then we can save this here to
[40:56.560] port rocker the second and it's a neat little device you can use now
[41:04.880] and pull it into your projects that are generating chords
[41:08.320] you just like like I showed you here use some some device
[41:15.040] do you like it's actually some kind of piano sound in here
[41:26.000] it's actually in spot working right digital
[41:28.880] electro gear other piano keys oh it's pretty quiet
[41:42.080] yeah it's pretty quiet
[42:12.320] and you can generate nice sounding chords on the fly
[42:22.960] and if you're not happy with the chords then you can always step in
[42:27.680] change some settings here inside the the Poly-Grid device
[42:32.560] you know to have like different behaviors for different songs different
[42:37.440] projects or for some life acts I don't know
[42:48.400] okay that's that maybe maybe you don't want to have all nodes playing just on
[42:57.040] one instrument maybe you want to have a separate
[43:02.720] yeah a separate channel for maybe the bass
[43:08.640] um maybe this one is here playing only the third
[43:20.320] something like this can use your always the node receiver
[43:26.640] and just grab the signal from the chord rocker go into the chains here
[43:31.360] Poly-Grid chains and instead trapping the signal from the chord generator
[43:36.800] he can go into the chord generator and can grab here maybe the third from the
[43:41.120] grid node out
[43:50.640] and also grab the bass here maybe pull chord rocker chord chains
[44:01.920] oh no no I misclicked FX bass
[44:09.360] so I have this here now as a bass
[44:24.800] chord rocker adds a bit setting this up is a bit hard but you know it rocks
[44:31.840] yes yeah why not
[44:51.120] and maybe we can also use a maybe piano for
[44:54.320] the for the 7th I don't know yeah that's used here piano
[45:07.280] this one yeah let's grab here chord rocker chains
[45:29.360] FX 7th that's actually pretty quiet maybe we need to
[45:40.560] implement your velocity to amp up everything
[45:51.440] yeah that's also something I can tell you um you can also change the velocity
[45:55.680] of course and some CCs if you want
[46:07.120] so I'm going to change the pitch everything changes
[46:14.480] so something we can do is maybe also introduce here some rhythmic changes
[46:28.320] so we have here these different triggers right um maybe you can add some
[46:36.400] macros to it but we just for the sake of this tutorial I make it a bit
[46:41.200] quicker um maybe I just pull the remotes on on the chain um device here
[46:52.480] so we just change at the steps and some of these um let's listen
[47:22.720] yeah as you can see it's you can add a lot of different changes it just by
[47:31.520] adding modulators and so um of course you can modulate this if you want to we
[47:38.240] can add here an LFO um to that and say change the steps over time right make it
[47:48.320] pretty slow the rhythm changes then all the time what in a in a behavior you
[47:56.000] can predict so that's also possible so it's it's like all everything you do
[48:02.960] it's basically to make it a bit more complex but still predictable and
[48:07.280] keep it in a flow and keep it interesting and so on so um what we also can do
[48:14.000] is introduce swing for instance um you can hear it this is pretty pretty straight right
[48:29.280] ding ding ding ding ding ding ding it's it's pretty straight of course these
[48:35.440] clock timers here getting a phase signal from the device itself which is the Poly-Grid
[48:41.120] and you can see when you click here the device itself you can see this here the left side device
[48:47.200] phase you can change how long a phase is in this case here it's just one bar but you can also
[48:53.360] apply shuffle here if you click this um then all these phase signals will be modulated and when you
[49:01.520] go into the play uh knob here and enable the global groove you can dial in shuffle and this
[49:11.120] global shuffle then is applied to the device to the Poly-Grid and the Poly-Grid then
[49:16.320] applies it to this clock signal so we get yeah shuffle basically so it sounds like this
[49:31.920] so this is pretty straight then when you have to set zero
[49:34.240] just turn this up so you can hear it better when you dial in the shuffle
[49:44.720] we can get in more groove also something I can do if you don't want to use the global the global
[50:06.480] groove and just want to apply some groove to some of these notes here you can always go for um switching
[50:14.960] to pre-code off here or this one here pre-code off or maybe it's even better just to switch just
[50:20.160] this off here switch to pre-code off and get the phase in so this is basically the same as before
[50:29.040] instead of this enabled and nothing input and this disabled and this as an input it's the same
[50:35.200] and then you can bring in I think you have to use the shift device here and then modulate this
[50:44.480] with an LFO it's the it's the same thing let's find out yeah um let's play it back and listen to it
[51:15.440] so it gets groove in there with just offsetting or modulating here the base signal a bit
[51:31.680] okay so just as a yeah just as a tip if you want to create more rhythmically interesting things
[51:38.400] um another thing is when you are in the grid here we are generating only the gate signal
[51:48.240] and the pitch signal which is okay but you can also introduce here in my grid node out we have
[51:55.920] also velocity and this is the motveel cc's some cc's you can change so if you want you can also
[52:04.720] create some interesting signal lines for velocity for instance you can just use a step mod here
[52:13.200] and maybe add interpolation right and then modulate your velocity yeah this is the piano basically
[52:23.600] let's let's see you can see the velocity now changes over time this is because of this
[52:39.760] so you can just use the step mod here or maybe also make an interesting algorithmic approach
[52:55.200] to how you want to create these velocity settings there are kinds of phase you can also use an
[53:01.920] LFO here or maybe mix in multiple LFOs you know a lot of ways possible just to give you this tip
[53:12.000] what you can create what you can change to to make it better or to make it more interesting
[53:19.360] so you can influence the pitch you can influence the ratios between the different nodes you can
[53:24.240] influence the groove the loudness the rhythm so everything it's it's all there and you can
[53:33.120] drag out every setting in front into the front panel of these devices here make it easy
[53:38.960] accessible with these remote controls maybe use your MIDI keyboards in all your eight controllers
[53:45.680] on it and then perform it or find sweet spots how you can perform it easily for yourself and then
[53:54.800] in the end you just record it oh yeah that's maybe also something I can show you oh you can record
[54:02.560] it actually so how do you record it it's basically instead of using here the node receiver going
[54:11.440] into the Polysynth you just use it as a MIDI input not your MIDI keyboards but you can go here
[54:21.600] down to tracks right you can go to court rocker and then go to if x court generator right then
[54:34.080] just record it here get all these nodes
[54:44.560] when I turn it this knob around and yeah get different chords out of it
[54:54.240] so this is yeah also something you can do and then maybe make a dedicated project just for this
[55:00.560] and use it for generating interesting chords so you can use this and tweak it around find sweet
[55:07.920] spots I think it's it's a great way of creating rhythmic interesting court progressions
[55:17.440] at least it's a start and if you want to generate generative music then this is also something
[55:26.800] you need maybe to learn and implement it in your projects