Exploring Generative Music with Bitwig Studio and Polisphere Presets

Tutorial | Fri Jan 28 2022 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

In this video, I explained what Polisphere is and how it works in Bitwig Studio. It's a library of musical sounding presets that can be used to create generative music with the clip launcher. I showed how to set up the clip launcher and how to add Polisphere's pad sounds to create a big atmosphere. I also talked about how this idea came from other producers and how they use presets to create their music.

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 Polisphere? #

Polisphere is a library of musical sounding presets for Bitwig Studio created by the YouTube channel Polarity Packs. The library is constantly updated with new presets and it is designed to be used for creating music with Bitwig Studio.

How can we get Polisphere? #

Polisphere is available for download on the Polarity Packs Patreon page. You need to have a Patreon subscription to be able to download the package.

How can we use Polisphere in Bitwig Studio? #

You can use Polisphere in Bitwig Studio by adding the directory of Polisphere to the sound sources in Bitwig Studio. Once it is added, you can browse through the presets and add them to your project. You can also use the clip launcher to layer multiple presets together and create a generative atmosphere.

What is the main goal of Polisphere? #

The main goal of Polisphere is to create a library of musical sounding presets for Bitwig Studio that can be used for creating music. The library is aimed at providing usable and musical sounding presets that can be used in any context. The library is constantly updated with new presets and is designed to be used

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] Hey folks, welcome back to another video. In today's video, I explained to you what
[00:04.760] Polisphere is, how we can get it, and also I showcase how we can use it in Bitwig
[00:11.360] Studio in conjunction with the clip launcher and how we can make some kind of
[00:17.200] yeah, generated music with the clip launcher or at least how I do it. And I already
[00:22.960] explained this in my in a recent video on my German channel, but I want to also
[00:28.000] include this here on this channel in this video with these presets. So Polisphere
[00:32.920] is basically a big library of good sounding or musical sounding presets for Bitwig
[00:38.760] Studio. I maintain on my Patreon page and of course you need the Patreon
[00:42.560] subscription to download the package and it's not complete yet because I want
[00:47.320] to add every month some kind of presets to it and want to maintain it
[00:52.880] basically, but at some point we should have a nice big Bitwig Studio library of
[01:00.360] good sounding musical sounding presets. This is at least my goal and the main
[01:07.000] reason for that was when I use some presets from all over the place, different
[01:14.520] synthesizers, I have the feeling that most of these presets are basically made
[01:19.480] for experimentation or for showing off what the synth can do or like you
[01:26.360] know, going off basically how you can use the synth or something like this and
[01:31.840] just my minority of presets are actually made for the musical context and I want
[01:39.000] to change that a bit kind of and want to bring you some usable musical
[01:44.960] sounding presets you can instantly use for your project. And the first patch of
[01:51.560] sounds or presets for this library is aimed at pad sounds. So in this video I'll
[01:57.280] show you how you can use these presets and layer them and create a nice big
[02:02.320] sounding atmosphere that's also kind of generative but not really and you
[02:07.840] also only use the clip launch for that, but you don't need to grid or anything
[02:13.400] fancy for that. It's just, you know, your MIDI keyboard, you record some lines,
[02:17.520] use the clip launcher and everything evolves and changes all the time. So I got
[02:24.760] this idea of course from first only sphere because it's a nice big library of
[02:30.920] sounds and you know way out there I think they have over 2000 presets also in
[02:37.640] the library and every reset sounds super nice. So I'm completely far off from
[02:45.200] that but it's more like, you know, I took the name for having a goal or
[02:51.840] going basically where I want to go. I want to have a big library of nice
[02:57.760] sounding musical presets. That's the main goal and yeah there will be also added
[03:05.240] of course some pad sounds for phase 4 or maybe a policing and so on and also
[03:11.600] the sampler and yeah that's the main goal basically. I'm my main vision for
[03:17.080] that and yeah I got this idea of from only sphere and of course from different
[03:22.880] producers I watch on Twitch on YouTube how they construct music and a lot of
[03:29.600] them use presets for bread and butter sound right. You need some electric piano
[03:35.960] you took a preset you don't construct that you need a nice pad sound in the
[03:40.960] background you just take an omnisphere preset. So it's not a shame to use these
[03:47.160] presets I think I also like to keep them as simple as possible and usable as
[03:53.040] possible. You know these presets when you load up for instance from native
[03:56.640] instruments and you just hit one key on the keyboard and then you have this whole
[04:01.560] dimension opening up different layers of sound in there they have a base already
[04:07.560] in there a mid sound you have some versatile sound top, the textures we have
[04:12.160] already a really full frequency spectrum but these presets are basically made to
[04:19.480] show you to make you go wow this sounds nice but it's not like something you
[04:24.320] really want to use that fits into your track because you have just a narrow
[04:28.680] frequency band you have to fill with maybe a pad sound but then you load up
[04:33.360] these big presets and everything becomes too much. So when you download Pudy
[04:39.760] Sphere you can't just put it in some random directory on your hard drive. I
[04:44.680] have it here on my hard drive D music production I have it here in my
[04:49.880] polarity packs directory and it's just called Bitwig Pudy Sphere right and then
[04:55.840] you have your pad sounds in it and your all the presets currently and in Bitwig
[05:01.840] Studio you can just go to the settings here and go to locations and can add
[05:08.960] this directory to the sound locations. I have it here I think you would
[05:15.600] polarity packs D slash polarity packs and then you can just call it up in the
[05:23.880] browser here. So when you go to presets you can also input of course with the
[05:31.200] directory name which should be working fine and you see all the presets in
[05:37.040] this directory here right. So it's super simple you don't need to go into your
[05:43.680] library of Bitwig Studio just add it to some random directory and add the
[05:48.200] directory to the sound sources in Bitwig Studio itself and it should be
[05:52.680] show up fine. So let's start and actually record something. I have here set my
[05:58.520] loop range I have died in 85 ppm and I have here activated the loop button and
[06:05.400] what I usually do is to start here by clicking the play button and go down to
[06:12.480] post-recording action delay and set this to play recorded. Then I set here
[06:18.920] maybe 8 or 16 bars. What it does is basically when you start on hit record on
[06:24.640] a clip in the clip launcher it stops the record after 8 bars and then it
[06:29.520] switches to play what you just recorded. So it's super handy in this workflow
[06:34.360] and I show it this in a minute and then maybe you switch here to default
[06:38.520] launch quantization to maybe 24 or 8 depends on what you want to do but this
[06:45.040] basically delays your recording your your record starting until you know the
[06:53.680] transport is at the division of 8 or 4 or 2 in your project. So it starts on
[07:00.040] time the recording starts in time so you can delay this here. I usually have
[07:04.600] this at 2 probably. So these two settings or three settings this is what we
[07:10.720] need and then we need to here at least some some preset and I start your
[07:17.760] dear cat because it's a nice little cat I recorded on my euro rack I think and
[07:24.720] you can just put in here clip and we don't need to record something here
[07:30.360] because it's just a straight straight note because it defines our root note
[07:35.840] which is the root drone. So let's play here maybe make this a bit longer scale
[07:42.520] 200 percent so it plays basically the root note as a drone and gives us some
[07:55.960] kind of anchor or some fundamental and we can add something to it maybe you can
[08:05.160] also add the same note just the octave lower and feel like this and that's it
[08:13.840] and it's probably plays throughout the whole song or throughout the whole yeah
[08:21.520] session that's okay now we can start to bring in some different sounds here
[08:38.640] maybe this one let's drag it in it's here the aim button and we can use here I use
[08:47.680] my central central morph MPE controller and can add some layers on top so I
[09:01.160] start record here and just record something and it's not really important
[09:05.120] that it's in time or on the beat or I don't need a thing here a metronome to
[09:13.320] actually get me in time it doesn't matter it's more like ambient stuff so it
[09:18.200] doesn't it doesn't matter
[09:49.200] I can see it automatically stops the record and Jen switches over to playing
[09:55.000] back the sequence we just recorded and this plays back now over and over the
[10:01.920] problem with this is I don't want to have this playing back all the time so I'm
[10:12.440] adding here empty clips thus by double clicking here on these fields and
[10:19.480] select all these clips and go here to the left side and say after 8 bars play
[10:27.640] a random different clip and now after 8 bars bit big decides to maybe switch
[10:40.840] this clip or this clip or this clip or maybe this clip and the more empty clips
[10:46.920] you add the lower chance is or the lower the chance is that the first clip is
[10:55.200] being played so you can't decide basically by adding empty clips or lower the
[11:02.360] chance of the first clip being played so it's kind of a randomization or
[11:08.800] probability thing you can do just by adding empty clips here so it's
[11:16.240] can now you can see here after 8 bars it starts to play back this one which is
[11:20.440] empty so we don't hear the sequence we played so we can add more of these
[11:28.160] things here
[11:58.160] And here we can do the same thing. Maybe only we're adding only two empty clips here.
[12:20.040] So a pass we switch to play random. Okay, let's add more.
[14:50.040] Yeah, you can do this with all these presets. I usually do your 20 tracks sometimes because
[15:11.000] just it's because it's fun. But then at some point you can add maybe more like a
[15:19.640] more characteristic sounds like an arpeggiator or melody or a bass line. Maybe at the
[15:29.280] police center like this, arpeggiator.
[15:59.280] Maybe we add here some kind of listen to the music.
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