Creating Glitch Sounds with Bitwig Studio

Tutorial | Thu Jan 06 2022 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

In this tutorial, I show how to create glitch sounds in Bitwig Studio by using a sampler and an arpeggiator. I demonstrate how to select multiple samples and distribute them evenly across the rotary control. I also show how to modulate the decay, pitch and loudness of the patch and use a random modulator to select different samples. Finally, I use an FX grid with a recorder and repeater to create a glitchy noise texture.

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

Questions & Answers #

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

What is Polarity on the Music? #

Polarity on the Music is a new channel created by the video's narrator. It is a place to upload generative music, patches and other random bits of music that he creates on a daily basis.

What is Bitwig Studio? #

Bitwig Studio is a digital audio workstation that allows musicians and producers to compose and produce music. It features a variety of tools and features such as the sampler, arpeggiator, FX grid, and random modulator.

How can I create glitch sounds in Bitwig Studio? #

Glitch sounds can be created in Bitwig Studio by using the sampler and dropping in samples, then removing the key tracking, using an arpeggiator and random modulator, adding a filter and resonance, and then adding a repeater effect with an FX grid.

What is the difference between node and hold rate in Bitwig Studio? #

Node mode in Bitwig Studio causes the sampler to play different samples each time a new node is triggered. Hold rate causes each sample to be held for the length of the entire note before switching to the next sample.

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] Happy New Year, guys, and welcome back to another video on this channel.
[00:04.280] As you can see in here in the background, this type of ambient music is something I did
[00:09.920] over the holidays or the recent days, the recent weeks.
[00:13.640] And I also moved my whole mute stand back over to my urex stand or closer together so
[00:20.560] I can cross-mortulate.
[00:23.680] And also I created a new channel, which is called Polarity on the Music, and I uploaded
[00:28.280] some casual dump.
[00:31.920] It's basically a dump for all my videos I do on a daily basis where I just make these
[00:37.800] generative patches or some random bits of music.
[00:41.600] So I uploaded stuff there to not screw up the algorithm on this channel too much.
[00:47.560] And I uploaded some kind of generative video recently and someone said you need to add
[00:53.240] more glitch sounds.
[00:54.720] And today I started to do something like this in Bitwig Studio and I thought it's maybe
[00:58.960] a nice idea to create this as a kind of tutorial to also show you the modulation possibilities
[01:05.800] inside Bitwig Studio and you know, have a new kind of tutorial on this channel.
[01:11.960] So we have the Poly rack running in the background playing our small little patch.
[01:18.280] And there are a lot of ways to create glitch sounds, but in this tutorial I want to focus
[01:22.720] on the sampler.
[01:24.840] You can also use just some noise and then some filtering modulations, but this time I
[01:31.000] go for random samples.
[01:33.280] So we have now here created a new sampler and you can click this one here, create a new
[01:38.360] multi-sample, right?
[01:39.680] That's what we need.
[01:41.400] And it opens up here, this sample patch editor and we have to drop in here some samples
[01:47.680] as it says here, drop samples here.
[01:51.360] And then I go here most of the times for the sononym thing, which is basically a sample
[01:56.480] manager and it analyzes your hard drive for samples and classifies all these samples.
[02:03.280] So what you can do now is get out of these random samples I collected over the years.
[02:09.240] Again, get out some nips and snaps, this is a category here down on the categories tab.
[02:17.480] And it comes out, we have selected here a lot of nips and snaps, whatever it means.
[02:25.040] And select multiple samples, just click the first one and then you hold shift and maybe
[02:31.160] click here.
[02:32.320] Then you have all these samples in between selected and then you drag them over to the sample
[02:37.800] editor in Bitwig Studio.
[02:40.600] Now we have all these samples here as multiple layers in Bitwig mapped across the whole keyboard.
[02:54.440] Most of you are some of these samples here are only on C3 because they have probably
[03:03.160] meta text in there which says the samples only C3, we can stretch them out and we are good
[03:11.640] to go.
[03:12.720] The next step is select all these samples here on all these layers by holding control and
[03:18.040] A. And then we can remove the key track, don't need that.
[03:24.320] Key track is basically that the sample transposes every time you hit a different key on the
[03:30.040] keyboard.
[03:31.360] And we don't need that, we just want to have to play back basically as it is or as the
[03:36.560] sample is in this original pitch.
[03:40.240] And the next step would be to go over here to the select panel and select panel is basically
[03:51.600] what you select here with the snap or with this rotary control.
[03:56.760] Every state or every step here could select a different sample from this.
[04:02.280] Because now when we play back here the samples, when I put in here maybe just one note C3,
[04:09.040] we play all the samples at once, we just loaded in.
[04:13.120] So pretty loud.
[04:17.880] And that's not what we want.
[04:21.280] So back here to the editor and in this tab, we can now, or we have to select all these
[04:28.480] layers, which is currently the case and we can right click here and say distribute select
[04:33.320] equally.
[04:34.320] And then you can see here it moves basically one sample layer to each state of the
[04:42.880] rotary control.
[04:44.160] So every time we turn the service, select a different layer, a different sample.
[04:50.840] That's exactly what we want.
[04:52.760] The next step would be to use an arpeggiator here and maybe switch it to three modes here,
[05:00.000] I don't know how it's called, yeah, basically we don't want to synchronize it to the beat
[05:09.160] grid or maybe we can and go to 64, maybe this is totally okay.
[05:19.040] And then we play back basically just one sample, and maybe you can modulate also your
[05:25.640] the rate randomly, of course, we go to steps down, if you make it smooth.
[05:52.880] That's something like this.
[05:54.320] I think this is okay for now.
[05:56.480] And then we need a random modulator here to select a different sample with this one, right?
[06:04.600] And maybe we switch this here to node.
[06:06.440] So every time this gets a new node, which is triggered here by this arpeggiator, we get
[06:12.040] a different sample, maybe we switch this also here to hold rate.
[06:17.960] So this should be rocking nicely, we get this, and then of course we need a very short
[06:29.800] attack or decay time here, and maybe also we randomize this, so we randomize basically
[06:41.520] the decay setting here, and maybe also the pitch differently, or the minus 12, and then
[06:55.000] pitch it up here, 24, two octaves, but for like this, we can also maybe modulate the
[07:11.160] loudness of the patch, and we find the sweet spot here between two, two quiet and two
[07:27.080] loud, okay nice, so next up would be probably the filter, we do it the same thing, and
[07:44.360] also resonance, and then you turn up your resonance a bit more, you can hear at some point
[07:57.040] you get some nice, nice tonal bits, right?
[08:05.640] Almost sounds like feathering glass at some point, so I think this is okay for now,
[08:26.160] maybe going to band pass, maybe a peak limiter to get this a bit louder, a queue, cut
[08:45.120] off the low end, and what I use for reverb here is that that reverb by synaptic, which
[09:00.720] gets you this nice long reverb sounds, maybe delay, okay, what we also can do is maybe
[09:30.440] to create some repeater effect here at the end, with an FX grid, just a quick one, we have
[09:41.760] here audio coming in, audio going out, and we use a recorder in between, maybe just
[09:49.400] disabled here the dry signal, and we want to sample something at the start of the sequence
[09:59.120] of one bar, so every bar we sample here basically just a first bit, so this goes into recording
[10:06.680] back here, you can see every time we hear the first bar segment we sample something, and
[10:14.400] then we duplicate this, and we want to play back at the rest of the bar, maybe at these
[10:23.920] points here, and then you switch to G here, to gate, basically these two triggers form
[10:33.960] basically one gate, this is one playback section, one playback section, one playback section,
[10:43.120] so when we go here to oscilloscope you can see it really clearly, but this is basically
[10:51.000] one high signal here, and we switch to G to T, then we get for each individual bar or
[10:59.240] segment we get the trigger, and G is basically one combined signal, okay, so we want to
[11:08.440] playback here stuff, and we want to make it a bit more glitchy, so we need a repeater,
[11:24.360] it takes basically a gate signal and repeats it pretty fast up to audio rate, and of
[11:41.840] course we modulate this, we take a random mod here, we need to find the sweet spot here,
[12:00.200] again, so now this is completely free, and maybe we synchronize this, you also do our
[12:14.280] beat with the trigger, or triggers, and the clock quantizer, go into the clock quantizer
[12:24.880] here, go up to 64 nodes, and synchronize basically this random stuff to these 64 grid triggers,
[12:40.200] we have more like a red make feel, and this repeats, right, you can mix and original
[12:58.040] signal here,
[13:27.680] and the next step would be maybe to disable the glitch sound, because we don't want
[13:33.920] to have this glitch or this repeating glitch sound here all the time, so maybe we switch
[13:39.960] this off here at random, so it's off by default, and then we take this trigger here, and
[13:51.040] use a chance of maybe 30%, every time we get here a trigger from this chance back we
[14:01.680] select basically the output, we can hear so we have now sometimes a glitch sound and
[14:09.240] sometimes not, so pretty simple setup, we can also maybe remove this here, see how this
[14:27.860] sounds, yeah maybe it's even better this way,
[14:38.680] please put it in front of the re-bub.
[14:48.680] We can also use here maybe in front of the fx grid we just created, we can use a half
[15:14.520] time back in, which basically slows everything down to half of the speed, so with the mix
[15:23.120] here at 50%, we basically combine the original signal with the slow down version, which makes
[15:28.360] it even more complex, we get a nice red make glitchy noise texture, and this should
[15:48.600] be property on the grid, it can play around here a bit with the timings,
[16:14.080] maybe too much,
[16:32.640] and I think that it fits pretty nicely here, maybe a bit too loud, but for the sake of
[16:51.120] tutorial, we can hear what's going on, but maybe a bit wider in the background,
[17:17.360] yeah nice, oh I think it's maybe a bass sound,
[17:38.800] yeah I think that's it,
[18:07.920] that's it, thanks for watching guys, if you have some questions please leave it in
[18:28.840] comments, subscribe to the channel, also watch my other channels, my new channels, and also
[18:33.560] there's a German channel, hello Leute, everything is linked down in the description, and thanks
[18:41.120] for watching and I'll see you in the next one, bye.