Creating Notes from Monophonic Audio Material in Bitwig Studio

Tutorial | Mar 07, 2022

I showed how to create note information from monophonic audio material inside Bitwig Studio. I demonstrated how to use the audio receiver, spectrum device, and various filters to extract the clean fundamental sine wave from the vocals or audio material. I also showed how to use a zero crossing module, analog follower, volume knob, and polysens to create notes from the audio track. Finally, I demonstrated how to use a microphone as an input to sing and create notes at the same time.

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Questions & Answers #

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

What is the best way to create notes from audio material in Bitwig Studio? #

The best way to create notes from audio material in Bitwig Studio is to use the Zero Crossing tool with a chain device, an EQ, an analog follower, a polysens, an average, and a peak limiter. The Zero Crossing tool will help you to find the fundamental frequency of the audio material, while the chain device, EQ, and analog follower will help to filter out any noise or overtones. The polysens and average will help to create a smooth signal, and the peak limiter will help to get a more consistent signal.

How can I use my microphone to create notes? #

You can use your microphone to create notes by setting up an audio track and an instrument track. Connect the microphone to the audio track and then bring the signal into the instrument track using an audio receiver. Add a spectrum device to the instrument track to ensure that you only capture the fundamental frequency. Add the Zero Crossing tool, a chain device, an EQ, an analog follower, a polysens, an average and a peak limiter to the instrument track to help smooth out the signal and get a more consistent output

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 guys, welcome back to the day. It's about creating note information from monophonic audio material inside able to live you have like the small to the function where you right click on an audio track and then you create a media clip from it.
[00:14.000] We don't have anything like this in bitik studio, but we have to zero crossing small to show you how you can create note from audio material.
[00:23.000] Not only from note wave files, you can also input of course your microphone and use it in real time and basically sing and create notes at the same time.
[00:34.000] So why not do it? It's a nice exercise. It's a fun way of learning the grid. Let's start.
[00:41.000] So we have an audio track here with some random generic vocal.
[00:55.000] So we want to convert this here to some notes in the editor.
[01:01.000] And we create your new audio track, our new instrument track and we need of course a receiver audio receiver to get the sound from the vocal track here into the second track.
[01:19.000] Let's use the pre source. And you can not only use vocals, you can also use strings or cellos, something like this to get some notes out.
[01:38.000] The important thing is that it's actually monophonic content, so polyphonic content like chords doesn't work, but monophonic it's just fine. And we get this here now to the second track, so maybe just mute this here.
[01:53.000] And we add a spectrum device, we can see what's going on.
[02:04.000] As you can see, we need to get rid of all these overtones here, all these harmonics. We only want to fund the metal frequency.
[02:11.000] And we can do this of course by using EQs. We have everything above C4 maybe, C1, and that's the vocal range maybe can be 3.
[02:34.000] And when we see this on a oscilloscope.
[02:52.000] And see it's a nice smooth signal instead of this. You can see a lot of value changes, a lot of small little noises on top of the fundamental, so we get rid of this here with EQ.
[03:13.000] And maybe we can use 2 EQs or 3 EQs to make this even cleaner.
[03:24.000] So this is what we want to analyze.
[03:28.000] So we have here the audio receiver, maybe we use a chain device, it's just an empty container, but inside this container we can now hook up here or bring in the audio receiver, chain device we can call audio,
[03:42.000] you need more notes, it's actually notes inside Bitwig, there are no MIDI inside Bitwig.
[03:56.000] Audio 2 notes and then we need probably a note grid here.
[04:06.000] And inside here we can use a side chain, get the notes or get the audio in from the audio receiver, audio receiver out, there it is.
[04:19.000] We use a oscilloscope. Now we get basically the filtered output of the audio receiver here, the audio receiver gets the signal from the try and try vocals audio track here.
[04:41.000] And now we use zero crossing module, and this one gives us already some pitch signals, but you can still see here a lot of parameter chums or value chums.
[04:59.000] So we need to smooth this audio, maybe with the average.
[05:05.000] It's much much smoother now.
[05:12.000] Okay, so now that we have this, we need also something to create the gate signal from it, so we use maybe an analog follower.
[05:29.000] This one here, but we need to create actually a trigger signal, so maybe we use, let me see what we can do.
[05:57.000] Maybe you can just output this here to the gate signal, it should be fine.
[06:03.000] And we can use an volume knob here, change actually the threshold because everything that's above zero dot five, this line here is interpreted.
[06:19.000] Yeah, the grid basically makes it to a gate signal or a one and everything below zero dot five is zero.
[06:28.000] So when we change the gain here, we can influence how much, how many nodes we create.
[06:53.000] So it should be fine. And now we can also output the amplitude here as a pressure signal.
[07:06.000] And when we add here a polysens, and you can use any VSTs, you don't need to use the Bitwigsens here.
[07:15.000] We should get out here some sound and also can use the tambourier.
[07:25.000] The amplitude modulates basically cut off.
[07:29.000] Maybe you should also use here an average signal, let's use this one.
[07:37.000] You can basically smooth out the signal a bit more, so it's not that drastic changes in it.
[07:49.000] Or we need to actually also do up here the output.
[08:19.000] Maybe you see a peak limiter, get a more consistent signal.
[08:44.000] Maybe you shift the C up to C2 to C4.
[09:09.000] So you see it kind of works, it's not perfect, and it doesn't work 100% all the time.
[09:21.000] But the hard part is that you have to fiddle around with all these small little settings here. Find the right amount of pulse rate, rice rate, average smoothing, and maybe limiting any cueing here the right vocal range.
[09:40.000] To extract the clean fundamental sine wave from the vocals or from the audio material.
[09:51.000] And that's probably also the longest or the hardest part of it to maybe invest some time to find the right amount of values for all these small little devices.
[10:03.000] But you can see you can get actually something out of it. Also you see an audio track just record from the audio to notes here from the channel above record here the second track.
[10:27.000] And then you watch the C on the MIDI editor you can see we have basically created your multiple notes.
[10:35.000] And the pitch changes for some of these gates. So the pitch changes while a gate is active.
[10:42.000] And we bring in here basically micro pitch.
[10:47.000] You also can change then of course if you want to just to show you this instead of using here the vocals. You can also use the audio track and use your microphone as an input if your mono in.
[11:00.000] When I switch my microphone on and switch also on OBS my vocals also you don't so I don't sidechain actually the output you can hear that you can actually sing and yeah bring in some notes this way.
[11:16.000] So it's not perfect but you can see we get just a note.
[11:44.000] The micro pitch also it breaks down here in some of our frequencies but you can count that is a bit more over the EQs like I said you have to find the sweet spot for filtering out the right amount of frequencies.
[12:00.000] But you go I'm sure you think you you find it out you will fit around and find the right spot for your vocals or for your vocal range.
[12:10.000] So yes this is maybe not an perfect out of the box experience like you get an avid life but it's your effect you can customize it.
[12:18.000] For instance you can exchange the EQ 2 for maybe a spectral filter like feel by Z-plane or before you send your vocals into the note grid you pitch correct it with pitch map or something different.
[12:31.000] So you can customize it and it's your own little effect that you can make perfect for your use case and it's also a nice experience you gain or you gain experience in creating grid patches you learn a lot alongside the way how to treat vocals how to treat signals.
[12:52.000] And it's it's fun it's fun to do so give it a try. Please if you like if you like the video leave a comment if you have some questions and thanks for watching see you in the next video.
[13:03.000] Bye.