Creating Generative Music in Bitwig Studio

Tutorial | Wed Dec 22 2021 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

In this video, I started with an empty project in Bitwig Studio and used a random module to generate pitch and gate information. I dialed the speed to 85 BPM, and used an attenuator to limit the pitch, followed by a quantizer to bring it to a scale. I then used a clock to sync the pitch and rhythm and added a delay modulator. I then added an oscillator and a noise source to create a drone and used an LFO to add sequencing. Finally, I added some drums, a clap, and a piano sound to give the generative track some meaning.

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Questions & Answers #

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

What is Bitwig Studio? #

Bitwig Studio is a music production and live performance software. It is a powerful tool for creating and performing music with a wide range of features and functions. It allows users to sequence, sample, synthesize and record audio, as well as create and modify audio effects. It also has advanced features such as an automated step sequencer, an extensive library of samples, an intuitive sound design system, and a powerful track editor.

How do you start a project in Bitwig Studio? #

To start a project in Bitwig Studio, open the software and create a new project. The project will open with an empty polygrid, ready for you to start programming. From there, you can add oscillators, audio outs, random generators, and other modules to produce your desired sound. Additionally, you can add modules such as filters, delays, and reverbs to create unique sounds and effects.

How do you synchronize signals in Bitwig Studio? #

To synchronize signals in Bitwig Studio, you can use a clock quantize module. The clock quantize module will take an input signal, such

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 guys what you can hear in the background is what we
[00:03.740] gonna create today and I start completely fresh from the ground up in Bitwig
[00:09.340] studio with an empty project then we gonna go to something like this here and I
[00:17.360] try to explain along the way what I'm doing and how it's gonna work in
[00:22.400] Bitwig studio and also how you can go from this kind of generator patch to a
[00:28.240] track that has some kind of meaning to it here with some additional tracks and
[00:33.600] yeah show you basically we'll start to finish how you do it okay so let's
[00:38.880] start grab a coffee and enjoy the ride so we start with an empty project in
[00:43.160] Bitwig studio and there's also an empty polygrid already here in place on a
[00:47.040] track I dialed in the speed here of 85 bpm I created a small loop so we can hit
[00:55.080] play here and it loops fire and inside the grid here we have nothing in it
[01:01.240] right and I start usually by using an oscillator an AD and audio out and when
[01:12.600] you have the pre-cuts here in place or for gate information and picture
[01:17.120] information you can play this on a on the keyboard when your track is armed and
[01:25.400] in this case here on this example we replace it pitch information with some
[01:31.880] signals and also the gate information with some signals so we generate this
[01:36.720] completely inside the grid so we have something generative and this time I'm
[01:41.600] gonna go with a random random module here and this time if you call here the
[01:52.640] help you can see then that when we use the feedback setting to the left side
[01:59.280] here it says blah blah blah and negative settings can lead to repeating patterns
[02:06.120] and this is interesting of course for music because music has a lot of
[02:10.640] repeating patterns we dials here to the left side and also here we have epoch
[02:17.000] 1235 length of sequence number of steps used by the feedback loop so for me
[02:22.960] it kind of sounds like we have like usually four times or we repeat four
[02:31.040] times the sequence that we generate here with the random generator so I'm trying
[02:37.280] to set this to four and this all the way to the left side here and also for
[02:42.440] the speed setting maybe I go to bar one bar and maybe call you an oscilloscope
[02:50.600] set this to slow so we can see what's going on and you want to use this here
[02:56.480] for pitch information and we can just hook this up here and go all the way to the
[03:01.920] left side and then maybe trigger this here just to see how it sounds and you
[03:10.280] see it's you know super high pitched and it's not what we want so we have to
[03:17.760] limit this a bit and they're using usually an attenuate for this so we can
[03:22.200] just dial this back to maybe 12% here you can see we get now pretty low
[03:28.480] signals also we switched the suit to bipolar so we get also negative negative
[03:34.240] values and this now we can use to yeah right for this pitch input but now we
[03:45.840] have these colliding nodes because we change the pitch between our while and
[03:51.280] trigger's active so we use an sample and hold go in here and also figure this
[03:59.200] so now we have clean pitches
[04:03.160] or maybe too slow
[04:10.000] that's okay so now we need the quantizer to bring this to a scale and of course
[04:16.160] I'm using D sharp minor I guess that and because we want to start here at the
[04:22.200] root node of D sharp instead of C because zero here on this graph or on this
[04:28.840] output in the signal is C3 so we have to step up and transpose here by three
[04:37.080] semi tones to start at D sharp and this gets us now some nice tones out of the
[04:45.480] scale
[04:51.920] okay but this kind of works and yeah we want to change probably also here the
[05:02.000] rhythm along the lines maybe the clock it's use a clock and quantize the
[05:12.280] output of the clock here which is just you know I'll trigger signals here we
[05:17.800] can change in in quantity we want to synchronize these two signals here we use
[05:28.200] a clock quantize for this and we use the 16th trigger output here which is
[05:32.920] pretty straight as an input or as a clock input here and we use the second
[05:38.400] thing here to synchronize this to the 16th node
[05:44.760] the gas signal you can use this here and we can change the clock signal without
[05:54.160] leaving the beat grid so maybe we can use here and what you'll
[06:15.680] later output we can just use this here and change the speed here after the LFO
[06:23.960] setting not only we change here the nodes or the pitch with this signal we
[06:30.560] also change the rhythm so it's kind of correlates with each other so we put
[06:41.360] this over here and maybe use a second one here and instead of two outputs here
[07:05.240] we use of course only one output and maybe mixer and here we want to have of
[07:18.720] course different rhythm maybe you also motivate us here the opposite
[07:29.080] direction instead of plus 0.7 we go minus 0.7 so we have kind of contrary
[07:39.400] motion or contrary rhythm and also maybe we pitch this down here by one octave
[07:49.520] for something like this or one octave higher
[08:11.680] we have something like this which is probably okay maybe we use here an volume
[08:17.720] knob at the end and this down a bit and maybe we use some audio effects here
[08:26.080] already so I'm going for a delay mod delay and I'm using the complete output of
[08:33.360] these two inputs and I want to go back into here but it's not possible so we
[08:41.720] have to use a long delay here the short setting and then we can go back and
[08:47.720] here we have kind of a feedback loop so this goes out into the delay back in
[09:08.240] and also the same output from here goes back into the delay again so we have
[09:12.640] kind of a feedback loop and maybe also split this here into stereo on left
[09:20.080] and right also use a merge stereo merge and choose here for the left and the
[09:29.320] right channel and all plus
[09:47.560] we get some kind of lush sounds but this is kind of a small
[10:02.560] reverb delay section here you can use so maybe we bring in some static sounds
[10:18.840] or some I don't know or maybe I pull this to the left side here and this a bit
[10:27.800] to the right side with kind of a stereo effect maybe also dial in here stereo
[10:34.880] effect on the oscillator
[10:44.560] that's could be nice
[10:47.960] okay so maybe let's create some drones here I'm using also a sign or
[10:58.480] oscillator here and what a drone I'm using the root node which is D sharp here in
[11:05.520] our case so I'm using a pitch down here we go to D sharp like this but instead of
[11:23.120] playing this maybe I use this as an input here for the oscillator face
[11:31.200] modulation we get some kind of belly belly sounds maybe an octopier maybe go
[11:48.960] here to 3 2 I think this is a perfect fifth here above the root yeah maybe a
[12:06.000] modulator these two parameters with a dice so a dice basically generates a
[12:12.000] random node every time you trigger it and we trigger this one here every time
[12:18.040] we trigger this of course and we use a modulator output modulator the amount
[12:27.480] maybe we use this also here and use to trigger for this we get more you know
[12:48.520] more like different the tonality into each each sound as could be also nice
[13:10.040] to modulate these big A settings okay so let's continue on the drone yeah maybe
[13:24.560] this is a second second sign but maybe the root node or an octave lower and maybe
[13:39.880] use a mixer sub mixer for this into that into that you know so we maybe call this
[13:52.440] tones so we have like a static drone but maybe dire it's a bit back here and modulate
[14:11.040] this in some form or another
[14:40.640] maybe a bit more 30 or something
[15:02.760] that's could be also nice but let's use here and step smart maybe a bit longer 32
[15:14.080] nodes generate random swap interpolate interpolation yeah maybe slow this down a bit
[15:29.320] here or that's too fast progressing and we need to face input we can slow this down
[15:44.040] here and use this as modulation here yeah also something could be nice if you
[16:11.760] modulate actually the pitch so we use the delay here on the output and maybe modulate
[16:20.480] this so then get some you know bit of pitch variation in there
[16:50.480] yeah this is better
[17:17.200] maybe pull this a bit down maybe a bit too fast also nice could be some kind of texture
[17:35.920] so maybe use some noise I'm going for pink noise stereo and of course we need to filter
[17:47.040] it some bad pass like this and maybe in a tune right here at the end let's down a bit
[18:02.600] and go into here and we use also here some kind of modulation
[18:19.120] fast
[18:46.560] we have kind of a wind noise maybe still too fast
[19:12.800] maybe we introduce something for the bass or actually just we insert just some super
[19:24.080] massive on the whole master
[19:52.520] yeah it doesn't look so nice but it works for now yeah let's create some bass maybe
[20:06.480] we'll go for pulls here pulls maybe a static trigger 16 notes maybe a low pass
[20:25.840] and then AD and also go here for rest of pitch and it's over here
[20:49.760] and we go into the output here
[21:18.240] that's a small little port to get the hint of an rhythm
[21:48.240] have to urge to actually modulate us here and maybe I use a dice for this
[22:18.240] I think that sounds better so maybe we can bring in some sequencing
[22:42.600] I usually use an LFO for that because you can use an LFO up to 32 bars which is quite
[22:54.880] enough so you can fade in and fade out stuff or maybe we can remove this here
[23:21.520] maybe we have here something free now we have all
[23:48.960] maybe pull this in here and we do another sub mix here and call this fxx sounds
[24:11.880] maybe do another one here maybe use a saw and to use the pitch information maybe without
[24:24.400] quantizing or here we use an AD and to use a trigger and to use probability here
[24:40.440] chance that's for him we can dial in your 16th note but the very low chance of actually
[24:57.760] playing this note
[25:14.360] maybe in sample and hold we don't have this glitch or gliding effect
[25:32.200] in octaves pitch this down here one octaves or two and we need a high pass
[26:32.200] maybe also here the envelope could be modulated so dice every time we grab the trigger modulate
[26:57.760] this
[27:11.360] or do you like also here the high pass which is too long here like this
[27:35.880] we have some kind of effects in there
[28:01.160] pull this down at the chance of being played
[28:28.000] could also try some tuned percussion stuff in here could be also nice actually modulating
[28:34.400] this something oh no I wanted to use this as a sequencer ok I see
[28:47.440] this is the bass this is the auto drones I bring a drones down here slowly fade in over
[29:03.920] time the 32 bars it's basic sequence here
[29:21.240] maybe bring this down here it's too not completely just a dead that's when it's enough I think
[29:51.240] so tuned percussions let's see maybe you see awesome noise for that and filtering
[30:11.000] AD maybe on here is a trigger and bolt us down here and maybe use the pitch from here
[30:38.440] ah simple note would be also nice here
[31:08.440] maybe distortion on the on the pitch signals we get more harmonics or more as a chubby
[31:23.360] chef here you know just alterating here the pitch signals we get more variety in the
[31:34.920] pitchers maybe I use the ice and the modulator output
[32:01.640] yeah maybe second one here for this
[32:10.280] ah maybe you use a chance here in front of this
[32:37.520] oh this gives a nice atmosphere do we have a pan here so we can pull this to the left
[32:58.400] or to the right here nice and put this in the bipolar mode
[33:29.400] let's do it this way maybe our boss yeah when we modulate this here this gets some nice
[33:53.600] glitchy effects I'll just copy this over here maybe a lag so we have some kind of
[34:11.080] transitioning phase here right when you use the oscilloscope you can see the die is basically
[34:18.480] produces random signals step signals and then you use a lag instead we have done a transitioning
[34:28.280] like you know more the glide effect so it moves the delay instead of stepping to new values
[34:49.280] oh yeah I think would be also nicely to let the signal actually in left and right
[35:03.920] move it's over here and now we do the same here
[35:21.360] down this modulate here plus 0.6 so I modulate here same we have a nice glitchy stereo effect
[35:51.360] but this is a nice backdrop here for some kind of song to be mentioned
[36:21.360] so let's add here some descriptions
[36:51.360] so this is here
[37:21.360] and this here or a glitch
[37:51.360] this is the base
[38:21.360] so the main clips
[38:48.320] is the no-generation here I think that's a nice setup here already
[39:11.800] ok
[39:41.800] That's the taunt!
[40:06.900] So, I think that's it.
[40:32.340] As we know, everything is synced to tempo here, and everything is quantized to a scale,
[40:39.100] kind of.
[40:40.100] And close this here, then uses as a backdrop for some kind of song.
[41:01.460] Now, give this whole generative stuff here a bit of meaning.
[41:31.460] Oh, I really caught something here.
[41:51.460] Oh, sorry.
[42:13.700] Oh, maybe bring in some hot grass synthesizer, am I my MOOC?
[42:35.700] All right.
[43:05.700] All right.
[43:25.700] Maybe some drums?
[43:51.700] All right.
[44:11.700] All right.
[44:37.700] Let's try it.
[44:49.700] Maybe a clap.
[44:57.700] Um, I could choose here the internal sequencer and...
[45:17.700] um, um, um, um.
[45:37.700] Um, um, um.
[45:57.700] Um, um, um.
[46:17.700] Nothing like this, right?
[46:39.700] You can add more and more elements here to it, maybe a piano sound.
[46:59.700] Um, um, um.
[47:19.700] And so on and so forth.
[47:37.700] This could be basically always a nice starting point for ambient journey.
[47:53.700] Or at least, you know, get some ambience to get some ideas.
[48:11.700] But yeah, this is basically it, I think, for this video.
[48:15.700] Um, you can download the spatula into the description below, of course, as always.
[48:29.700] Thanks for watching guys.
[48:39.700] So that's it for this video, I think. Um, and I know I forgot a long way sometimes to explain exactly what I'm doing.
[48:47.700] But bear with me.
[48:49.700] And if you have some questions, then please leave it in the comments below.
[48:53.700] I try to answer them.
[48:55.700] And, um, I probably do a lot of more of these videos in the future.
[48:59.700] So I'm probably also get better at explaining these things, um, while I'm doing stuff.
[49:05.700] Right. So it's also training for me. So again, thanks for watching and I see you in the next video.
[49:11.700] Bye.