Pinging Filters in Bitwig

Tutorial | Apr 05, 2022

In this video, I demonstrated how to use pinging to create various audio effects with short bursts of noise. I showed how to use an EQ with a steep band pass, a Resonator Bank, a Phaser Plus, a Flanger, and an Comb Filter to create different sounds with pinging. I also showed how to use a Tool device to make a kick drum sound shorter, a Grid module to create a noise, and how to use Supermassive to create a resonator bank. Finally, I gave some examples of how to create clicks or excite sounds.

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Summary #

So in this video, I wanted to dive into a technique called 'pinging.' Pinging is when you excite an audio effect with a short burst of noise, like a click from a kick drum. Let’s start by taking a note clip, making the sound super short, and then using an EQ, like EQ Plus, to shape the tone. By adjusting the frequency of one of the bands, we can choose a specific tonality or note. For example, I can set the frequency to C3, and with the key track modulator in Bitwig Studio, I can modulate the frequency based on that note. This way, you can actually play a melody with an EQ, and depending on how you adjust the input burst, you get different tonalities. It almost becomes a kind of synthesizer.

What’s cool about this technique is that you can use any burst of noise—vinyl crackles, hand claps, whatever works—and apply it to a range of audio effects. You’re not limited to EQs; you can use filters or other effects that respond to this kind of input. For instance, Bitwig has a device called the Resonator Bank, which does exactly this with steep Q curves and bell settings. You can tune it to a specific note, just like we did with the EQ, and adjust the harmonics to create interesting tones. The Resonator Bank even has global settings, so you can shift everything an octave lower or adjust the glide for more tonal control.

Let’s take this further by applying it to a drum loop. You can use a note receiver to bring in notes from another track, say from a kick, and apply key tracking to control how the resonance behaves. This adds a tonal layer to the drum loop, creating a more musical feel. You can also apply this method with filters by boosting the resonance to get more feedback, which in turn increases the tonal response. A filter, like a band-pass filter, can essentially act like a resonator, especially when you set the resonance high enough.

Now, let’s look at some other devices. For example, the Phaser Plus has a feedback setting that can be manipulated to create resonant tones. By dialing in the right amount of modulation, you can craft unique sounds. The tricky part is that some devices don’t show frequency in musical terms, so you’ll need to fiddle with the settings to hit the right note. I often like to use EQ to tune the sound as a reference, and then adjust the phaser or flanger until I’m hitting the desired pitch.

This pinging technique also works with more advanced sound design tools. For example, you can use Bitwig’s Sampler to capture these resonant sounds and turn them into playable instruments. You can even distribute samples by velocity, so each time you hit a note with a different intensity, you get a slightly different sample. It’s a great way to add variety and texture to your sounds.

We can also apply pinging to comb filters, which are perfect for creating drone sounds. With 100% feedback, the comb filter generates a metallic, resonant tone that’s great for experimental soundscapes. By adding key tracking, you can control the pitch, making the comb filter function almost like an oscillator. If you want more control over the pitch, you can use a pitch modulator to fine-tune the frequencies.

One of my favorite things to do with pinging is to layer effects for even more interesting results. You can apply delays, like in Valhalla Supermassive, to create a resonator effect or simulate physical modeling. This can turn a simple click or noise burst into a complex, evolving sound. You can sample this and use it as a tonal element in your tracks.

Towards the end of the video, I also demonstrated how you can ping within Bitwig’s Poly-Grid by using a noise module or even a saw wave, which gives you a sharp transient to excite filters or resonators. This method allows you to stay completely within Bitwig’s environment without needing external devices.

One final trick is to use a filter with no input. When you crank the resonance up high enough, it starts self-oscillating, creating a tone out of nothing. This is an old synthesizer trick that allows you to use the filter itself as an oscillator. By feeding it short gate signals, you can control the rhythm of the sound, and using sample-and-hold modulation, you can add randomness to the frequency, creating even more variation.

I hope this gave you a lot of new ideas for using pinging as a sound design tool. From EQs and filters to resonators and comb filters, you can get really creative with how you shape and modulate sounds. Thanks for watching, and if you enjoyed this video, make sure to subscribe and leave a like. I’ll see you in the next one. Bye!

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] So what's Pinging? Pinging is basically you excite some kind of audio effect with some
[00:14.240] short burst of noise. So for instance if we have a short burst of noise with a click here,
[00:19.080] a kick drum and we take some kind of note clip here and let's see if we go here with
[00:31.320] C3, let's do something like this and then we make the sound super short and then you take
[00:57.480] for instance in EQ, here for EQ plus, take one band, you make the Q pretty steep and then
[01:08.200] you can decide here with the frequency which tonality or which note you want to hit. So we
[01:23.200] can switch in Bitwig Studio to the frequency of C3 so we can type in C3 in the filter band
[01:29.440] here and it switches here to the band of C or exactly to the frequency of C3 and then we
[01:36.040] can use here key track, modulator and modulate, it's based on C3 as you can see with the spread
[01:44.800] of 64 steps we can here modulate by exactly 64 steps and now we can basically play a melody
[02:02.440] with this and not only this you can also modify a bit how it sounds by changing the input
[02:20.680] burst here slightly so it's kind of a synthesizer
[02:41.840] and you can really take any noise burst you want to use can be some vinyl crackling or some
[02:49.440] hand claps just to short burst of something and you can use any kind of audio effect that
[02:57.920] doesn't need to be in EQ and I want to show you a bunch of devices you can use for this
[03:03.480] kind of technique. Of course there's also a specific device exactly for this kind of
[03:11.120] method or for this kind of synthesizer is in Bitwig Studio for instance we have here
[03:16.800] the let's remove this we have the resonator bank which does exactly that it's basically
[03:23.680] in EQ with steep cube curves here or bell settings so when we dial down all the bands here
[03:33.520] zero and just leave the first one in and see we have here frequency to send off frequency
[03:40.680] so we can dial in C3 like before and we have here Q setting and again and then we have
[03:47.680] here yeah let's play this and the key track is built in into this device we can just
[04:02.400] increase here the key tracking so you want to have this one or the fire then you can
[04:14.000] go here to C4 and you can also use the other bands as well of course and dial in your harmonics
[04:31.080] you want to use for this kind of sound so the resonator bank is perfectly made for this
[04:36.680] we have also here some global settings if you have a lot of bands used you just want
[04:40.800] to switch everything one octave lower you can do this here with the global knobs which
[04:46.360] apply to all settings in here right we have also glide nice
[04:57.360] if you mix now you can use this here maybe on a I don't know drum loop or something like
[05:02.480] this and bring in some tonality with this we also can do something like yeah maybe I
[05:09.640] show you this here quickly so let's search for drum loop that's not a drum loop let's
[05:19.360] see what I have here oh yeah it's a drum bass loop nice maybe go to here yeah let's increase
[05:35.600] here the volume a bit like this and we put this here on the audio track so this sounds
[05:45.240] just now like this without yeah let's make it a bit longer so it plays exactly the notes
[06:14.920] you are dialed in here but the key tracking is on there's no notes on this track so what
[06:20.040] you can do is you can bring in the notes from the track above so we use a note receiver
[06:31.960] and we can bring in the notes from the e-kick yeah that's not beautiful but it's
[06:49.800] so something like this but it's not exactly pinging it's just using a drum loop right
[07:07.720] and yeah using a filter to enhance the resonance bring in some tonality but this is what
[07:13.680] you can do so back here to our e-kick but just still just a short burst so you can also
[07:24.760] use of course here filters where we have here a steep band pass you say much much more
[07:34.120] resonance here and resonance is just another word for using increasing the feedback maybe double
[07:43.880] click here when you double click you can see the kind of frequency changes to C3 as you can see
[07:49.720] down below which is nice because now we can use here the key track so we can activate this I
[07:57.400] have this here by default on the filter bank so we can just also already the modulations already dialed in here
[08:04.680] by exactly 64 64 steps because we have a spread of 64 with the root note of C3 so now we have
[08:12.600] the same thing as before as in the resonator bank with the e-tracking dial in we can also go one
[08:30.360] hook the fire so right can make melodies with the kick drum not also the filter works also the EQ
[08:43.640] 2 works 2 the EQ 2 works 2 so every EQ works that has some kind of cue setting and you can so we
[09:01.960] can use EQs we can use filters inside the big studio we can also key track filters and EQs so we
[09:10.120] bring in melody lines if you want to but we can also use something like the new devices here
[09:16.840] for instance the phaser plus right there's a feedback setting look at this one here so
[09:24.600] the only thing you have to change is basically get the speed setting because the speed setting
[09:29.560] changes at the frequency all the time so to delete the speed setting here you can dial it down
[09:46.280] which brings it down to 0.01 Hz which is probably okay but you can also go here to the left side
[09:55.480] and the inspector and say manual over right it switches this here to a mod knob where you have
[10:02.040] to apply some modulation here to do the modulation for yourself basically with a
[10:08.280] modulator inside Bitwig studio in the panel so we just leave this alone here and we dial in your
[10:18.040] different modes of the phaser to see what sounds good hey sounds like a glass bottle
[10:37.960] let's see if we can bring in here some key tracking for this knob because it's in percentage
[10:43.400] the only this percentage is not frequency or notes or anything so we have to yeah we have
[10:51.640] to fiddle around a bit so let's use an EQ here at the end and see so we search for
[10:58.280] c3 or send a note let's see so this should be here maybe we also use here
[11:29.080] let's duplicate this here and use a Polysynth we can hear if it sounds the same
[11:39.560] yeah kind of
[11:48.680] just tune this a bit so now that we have c3 we can introduce here a key track
[11:54.120] and modulators and we don't know how much we need to modulate this here because there is no
[12:02.200] unit and it doesn't make really sense so so maybe focus here on c4 so let's see if we can hit actually c4
[12:17.240] just as a reference oh yeah so we need to apply a bit more
[12:47.720] I'm trying to hit the same note let's go to c5 here let's see how this sounds
[12:56.120] like the fire the five is here just need to first note
[13:16.280] I should be fine so now we should have here
[13:47.000] it's probably also that all these kind of different modes here have different settings for
[13:54.120] how much you need to dial in the key tracking and where the center frequency is so you have to
[13:59.480] probably tune all these modes differently but you can do it it's possible right and you get some
[14:06.760] kind of weird sounds out of it so it sounds like a glass bottle right oh this also changes the
[14:14.280] pitch here and it also has some kind of delay or latency to it so yeah for a small little glide
[14:28.440] it's probably because you have feedback and you change the delay on the feedback and then the
[14:35.160] the feedback loop basically needs a bit of time to get the new pitch on each iteration right so
[14:43.800] you have the small little pitch up or pitch down so it's not like an instrument you can play
[14:53.880] or there you can use it as a sound design tool I mean you could go in here and maybe
[15:00.120] let's say we really like the sound and you can say bounce post-fader you get a new new sample here
[15:16.680] then you get the sample of the fixed studio and you can use the files here which gives you this
[15:22.920] yeah this sample in here and I really like to track this out from here because when I
[15:30.680] track it out from here it doesn't rebound when I track this one in here you can see it bounce the
[15:37.640] bit with bounces the clip again for some reason so I really like to track this out from here
[15:43.160] yeah that would into in the sampler and now we can use in the sampler here the key-tracking by
[15:52.440] right-clicking detect wood key and it says E4 with three cents in there let's see how this sounds
[16:12.840] let's see if it's actually if the pitch is correct by adding a Polysynth kind of right
[16:30.680] yeah it's kind of it's the same pitch so yeah you can use it as a sound design tool
[16:36.280] so we can ping some random sounds and then feed it through the FX device and see what comes out of it
[16:44.120] so it's not like you can use the EKK you can also use like I said a sample to clip your hands
[16:51.160] you can crack all some paper or I don't know some random noise vinyl samples also work and then see
[16:59.880] if it's if it sounds good maybe you have some vinyl samples here on my hard drive I'm not sure if I
[17:06.040] offend one vinyl crackle yeah there's a lot of noise in there so let's use this here maybe
[17:30.280] crank up the volume yeah there's a lot of small little pigs in there nice
[17:41.640] so we can use yeah what did I use here the phaser okay let's use the phaser
[17:47.080] yeah maybe you can use the tool device here bring in down the volume and then we're using a follower
[18:04.840] envelope follower then let's bring out the cracks here at least a clip on there
[18:22.600] oh I need to remove the key to keep tracking here oh let's use let's use the key tracking here and
[18:38.680] use the use the notes from above I should delete it then okay so let's go yeah for
[18:54.600] this and we mute all the things on there and in here we use the note receiver to get the notes
[19:08.440] from the tracker bar from here right so a kick nice that's too much glide and I'll use your one
[19:25.880] note I can maybe use it to extract the rhythm from from the vinyl crackle here yeah this is just
[19:44.920] a short cross with using vinyl samples so what else so we can use EQ we can use filters we can use
[19:58.440] the resonator bank can also use something like a phaser of flanger actually did I use the flanger
[20:04.600] we didn't write so let's use a click again yeah no I didn't use the flanger I've used the phaser
[20:15.880] um nice
[20:41.560] yes one way to also make this click much much shorter because you can still hear as a kick drum
[20:50.280] is to use a tool device which I exactly is the same trick I showed before with the vinyl
[20:55.720] crackle but here on default on my tool device there's always this note side chain on it
[21:01.880] because I use it for side-chaining kick drums or side-chaining bass with the kick drum all the time
[21:06.760] um the modulation is just not applied it's just in there so when there's no no side-chain here
[21:14.600] defined you take the notes from the from in front of the device or from the yeah note clip here
[21:24.040] so we can see we get you the notes in from the note clip so to make this sound even shorter here
[21:31.320] from the kick drum we just dial down the volume to infinity so it's completely quiet and then we
[21:38.760] dial in here volume then we can decide here with decay how long it's actually like a transient
[21:50.120] shaper kind of or a gate that uses notes as an input so now we have pretty short yeah clicks
[22:01.240] and also change up at the volume a bit more
[22:31.320] this would probably super nice for creating some tuned percussion so let me um
[22:41.880] dials in here so maybe we take some multiple samples so we have here one here on here
[22:51.560] so let's let's run with four samples um let's call the tuned one this one is tuned to this one is
[23:06.040] tuned three tuned four bam and now we just modulate what do we modulate you maybe random
[23:20.200] this one a bit and we only change the modulation when the note comes in
[23:41.400] all right so we have something like this and then we can do
[23:44.920] um so we have names you define names so we can right click and say bounce
[23:54.440] we have four new samples in here can go to the files tab here we have now four samples in here
[24:02.920] we go to the sampler we say create new mood moody sample and now we can
[24:09.560] just put this in here we have now four samples and now we right click on here the text root key G3
[24:21.000] right act root key act root key okay now we should have here multiple samples in there um distribute
[24:40.920] velocity equally so let's use different samples for different velocity settings this is what you
[24:48.040] can do and then we can play on the keyboard here and with different velocities we use different
[24:59.880] samples and each sample has different tonality to it a slightly different tonality to it
[25:04.680] we can go completely wild with this um which which is what I really like what
[25:26.200] oh yeah let's modulate this this goes way beyond the tutorial right now but I'm really like this
[25:33.080] we'll do the same here we have go for hold we go for retry go on note
[25:45.240] it's even stereo
[25:53.560] so maybe we use also the supermassive here not too much
[25:57.560] just a short delay so now we duplicate this here we make more of these
[26:09.480] five this is six
[26:16.680] seven yeah I can create nice mood moody sample instruments with this
[26:22.360] let's bounce so everything is balanced we can go back to a second track with a sample
[26:35.080] creating moody sample uh oh I deleted back shit
[26:39.720] waiting with the sample
[26:48.120] doing all these tunes here and all the samples in um
[26:53.640] we'll do here I'm not sure if you can do this in batch so like select all and then
[27:01.400] take two with key for all set this for all samples at the same time I'm not really sure
[27:05.720] okay nice okay so now we have this we distribute by velocity here
[27:23.240] so each velocity gets a different sample
[27:25.880] nice so now you have a nice tune percussion instrument
[27:45.720] you
[27:47.720] so nice maybe to have some longer tonalities some more tails on it but for now it's
[28:17.720] oh yeah we need to change the velocity here um so you'll randomize
[28:38.920] so it's a nice sound design tool at least to read pinging in Bitwig studio and you can see it
[28:44.920] leads to new instruments you can build in the sample so another device we can use is of course
[28:51.960] the Comb filter so let's delete the flanger super massive um let's stick with this short burst
[28:59.000] yeah nice and just the comp filter and the comp filter is feedback yeah yeah that's 100%
[29:16.040] feedback now I ends so it should be perfect for creating drone sounds drone sounds or
[29:24.600] yeah I don't know okay long down those lines maybe use a random mode here
[29:35.480] and slightly change frequency here just a tab
[29:40.200] let me go to c3 oh it's a metal position
[29:53.880] you can also use your key track let's try this out oh it's also not not really
[30:15.320] I'm totally matched here with the you have to you have to also try it out here
[30:25.240] what kind of note you hit here so you have to tune it for yourself
[30:28.680] what you can do it
[30:39.000] yeah
[30:44.680] Ah, also negative feedback.
[31:10.840] And also just use without the com filter you can just use for Valhalla Supermassive, which
[31:15.480] gives you this reverb.
[31:22.600] You can also use a pretty short delay of 0 milliseconds or maybe 0.2 and a really high
[31:33.560] feedback.
[31:48.360] Also made a video about this how we can use Supermassive to as a resonator bank or as
[31:53.400] a resonator or how we can use it for a physical modeling.
[31:57.680] So at the end of the video I want to give you some examples how we can create some nice
[32:01.560] clicks or excite sounds.
[32:04.680] I showed you here the whole video using the e-kick and the tool to make it pretty short
[32:10.440] or the sound pretty short.
[32:12.040] There's also a possibility of using the grid.
[32:15.800] So you can use the Poly-Grid here and you remove basically everything.
[32:22.760] You use an envelope and you can use the noise module here.
[32:27.360] You have white noise, pink noise, and you can also switch it to stereo to make a short
[32:33.680] pink noise.
[32:34.680] Maybe you get this out here and you get a nice out.
[32:40.040] So we can use then here maybe what we use to use the resonator again, resonator bank with
[32:48.440] I have everything down, you can see three little tracking on.
[33:03.200] And let's enter here some kind of melody.
[33:27.480] When you change it the noise also changes a bit out the sound sounds.
[33:52.960] So using the noise here from the grid is an easy method.
[33:56.840] We can also use for instance something like a saw but instead of using using the sound
[34:12.520] here maybe let's style it down here what's the best method of using a pitch here go all
[34:39.480] the way down basically just get you know the switch here from zero to one in the saw
[34:52.280] wave gives you this really hot really hot crack.
[35:07.200] So if you don't want to use your external devices from BitwigStudio you can also completely
[35:12.080] do this all in the grid.
[35:14.600] So we have your switched off the pre-cords of the saw tool so when I place some notes
[35:20.400] on the keyboard nothing really happens we use your basically a fixed pitch which is E-7.
[35:28.880] So what you can do now is here of course using the com filter in here which has pitch
[35:36.360] tracking enabled so you get this all for free you can dial in on the resonance.
[35:43.360] It doesn't sound right we probably need a high cut I pass you probably want to have
[36:08.920] this over here.
[36:16.640] So this is basically like you know using co-plastron or the physical modelling what I showed
[36:21.880] you in some of my earlier tutorials you can also use here the flanger inside BitwigStudio
[36:38.880] you can pick use a mixer we need zero speed
[37:08.880] oh we need to re-trick on maybe here let's re-trick on the saw tool.
[37:32.880] And there's no pitch tracking on here so we have to do this for ourselves of course
[37:47.000] we can do this by using a pitch and let's relate that.
[38:14.920] Probably not correct here but you get the idea.
[38:44.920] Another technique is instead of using a click sample is using basically nothing.
[39:00.440] So we have here a lot of filters inside the grid I'm not really sure it works also
[39:05.320] with the filter in here but you can try this in a moment.
[39:11.760] For instance if you take here the XP filter and we are in mono-mode here in the grid and
[39:18.920] we just hook up the filter to the output right so there's no input and I don't press any
[39:25.200] buttons nothing it's just the filter hooked to the output here and we are in mono-mode
[39:29.720] so the voice is active all we need to do is using here a steep filter for instance a band
[39:36.520] pass for 12 dB per octave and we can just increase here the resonance over this magic line
[39:48.480] and you can see we can hear a sign we can change the frequency of the sign with this one
[39:58.000] here right.
[39:59.000] So if you increase the resonance on some of the devices just high enough then the pure
[40:07.200] fluid or the noise the fluid noise or input noise is enough to excite basically the filter
[40:16.920] and gets you a tonality or tone.
[40:22.200] And I think in all those synthesizers where you just had one oscillator and the filter
[40:26.800] people use that create or the use basically two oscillators so they use the filter with
[40:34.320] high resonance as one oscillator and the oscillator itself as one oscillator so it's basically
[40:42.280] a super all-trick.
[40:45.440] If you want to have more rhythmic stuff then of course you can use for instance something
[40:55.760] like the gate, the device here which outputs just clicked if you want oscillator so it's
[41:09.400] just the slow mode so we have here like these kind of tapes here you can switch this now
[41:15.840] to trigger which gets you uphills which gets you these shorter things here and you can
[41:24.120] also use a trigger and increase the figure speed so feel like this and we can use this as
[41:33.480] an audio input to the filter.
[41:37.480] Oh we can use a clock quantizer.
[42:06.560] And then we need something to change here of course the frequency here so we take a
[42:11.800] quantizer and maybe use the randomize, generate, sample and hold.
[42:38.880] Now we can also use maybe the gate length here to make the burst even shorter.
[43:04.360] Let's try the front filter here, it's like you know it's not so steep so we get more
[43:25.920] of these licks through so it's perfectly reasonable
[43:55.520] synthesizer or patch to do to create sounds.
[44:09.120] The layer is always nice.
[44:36.320] You maybe can also use your multiple of these as a mixer and delay one path slightly and
[44:50.880] use a different filter here, here we go to C4.
[45:13.440] You can also use this for kick drum here, let's see, maybe remove here this, we have
[45:43.200] no pitch input.
[46:12.760] I have, I can use the audio input.
[46:40.480] Oh you bit the distortion.
[46:59.960] Yeah so lost by using filters, no oscillator and just gate signals as an input, it's super
[47:13.120] easy to create something in the grid.
[47:22.880] The last trick is yeah using a triggers here, triggers module like before, like in the
[47:28.480] patch before and the trigger uses the audio output you're going through this AD and also
[47:35.920] the same signal as opening the AD so you get this click and I want to show you that
[47:44.360] you can use actually delay 2 or delay 1 with the feedback, right you get, don't feel
[48:01.640] like this but you can also go here to milliseconds, you get something like this, you can't go lower
[48:27.800] than 10 milliseconds but it's still enough to create some sounds, it's also delay 2, just
[48:46.280] feedback but you can also, don't go lower than 10 milliseconds.
[49:04.640] Don't you get something out of it, so let's modulate this here, we get a different sound.
[49:33.160] And we can sample this, we can sample this, of course.
[50:00.240] And now we can do the same trick as before, we can put this feedback thing into the sample
[50:14.800] here, we loop this bit here, and we find out the root here, and we pitch it all the way
[50:38.080] down, minus 24, we can use it as a synthesizer.
[51:08.080] The feedback is always nice and you can use it in all kinds of situations, it's helpful
[51:32.720] and the nice sound designing tool at least.
[51:35.600] Thanks for watching guys, please make sure you subscribe to the channel, leave a like
[51:39.120] if you liked the video and I'll see you in the next one, bye.