Creating Chord Memory Presets with Note FX Selector and Note Grid

Bitwig Tutorial | Dec 12, 2022

This video explains how to use a chord memory preset to play different chord shapes with various root keys. It also explains how to use the note FX selector and note grid to achieve this.

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Transcription #

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[00:00.920] Hey, folks, welcome back to another video.
[00:03.000] The day it's about creating and chord memory preset
[00:07.120] where you can fire up some chords, some chord shapes
[00:11.080] and also different root keys for the chords.
[00:15.400] And yeah, you probably already know
[00:18.160] that you can use the multi-note for that.
[00:21.020] You can paint in here or type in certain key or chord shapes.
[00:31.020] Let's use a major chord here.
[00:34.020] Maybe also knock the floor for the bass.
[00:43.420] So you can play different keys.
[00:45.500] And each key you are using is basically the root key
[00:51.860] or the same root key of the key you are pressing.
[00:53.980] So because we are using the zero, right?
[00:56.820] And then all the upper notes here also in there.
[01:00.700] So you change the root key with your key
[01:03.380] and also the chord shape is always the same.
[01:08.300] So we can change this in different multiple ways.
[01:10.940] We can use, for instance, use here a pitch 12, which
[01:17.420] gives you a whole octave here of modulator.
[01:19.980] So every time you press a different key,
[01:21.940] you see lighting up or flashing up here a different modulator.
[01:32.500] So you can say every time I press C3 here,
[01:36.820] nothing happens when I press maybe D. I want to change this
[01:42.100] to a minor chord here.
[01:43.340] So I go down one semitone.
[01:46.980] And you also have to probably pull down at the leg.
[01:55.420] And then you can use all these modulators
[01:57.780] and create a different chord shape for each key
[02:02.060] you are pressing.
[02:03.260] The problem here is this is basically a combined octave.
[02:06.380] So you only have an octave of modulators.
[02:08.940] If you go up two octaves, it's the same modulators
[02:12.740] that are triggered.
[02:13.860] So every time you press a C, it doesn't matter which octave.
[02:17.340] You always get this modulator active here.
[02:20.540] So there are certain limitations for that.
[02:23.820] But it's kind of possible.
[02:25.900] So the other way would be to just use here the chord shape,
[02:29.300] put this into a note FX layer, and then
[02:34.700] switch to a note FX selector.
[02:37.260] So with the note FX layer here, we
[02:39.460] can use multiple note FX devices in parallel.
[02:43.460] But we want to switch to only one layer at a time.
[02:48.700] So we use here convert to note FX selector.
[02:53.060] And then on the first layer, we use here the major chord shape.
[02:58.260] Duplicate this here with control ND.
[03:00.660] And on the second layer, we use maybe a minor chord.
[03:04.300] And on the third layer, we use a suspended chord, maybe.
[03:09.020] And maybe use your fourth one and go to a different suspended.
[03:15.420] I think this is sus4, this is sus2.
[03:19.340] Yeah, kind of.
[03:20.940] So now we can switch between different shapes
[03:24.020] by just clicking on these layers here.
[03:25.900] So I play only C.
[03:27.340] Right, so we can use different chord shapes.
[03:37.260] To switch between these layers automatically,
[03:40.300] you can use different methods.
[03:41.660] You can select the note FX selector
[03:44.140] and go to key switches, for instance.
[03:47.660] And with key switches, you have a different set of notes
[03:51.300] or octave you can use to switch between the layers.
[03:54.700] Here, it's defined by C minus 2 to D sharp minus 2.
[03:59.860] So we can use your note clip.
[04:03.020] Use the root key here.
[04:10.300] Right, go up.
[04:14.740] So the root note goes up, but the chord shape is always the same.
[04:18.060] So we switch the chord shape here with the second pair of notes.
[04:27.580] Right, so we switch through the layers here.
[04:32.420] As you can see, because we are using
[04:34.380] at the second pair of notes in the same note clip.
[04:38.620] Can I zoom this out here?
[04:39.820] No, it's basically three octaves lower.
[04:43.700] And you can say we want to hear this chord shape.
[04:45.860] And on this note, you want to have this chord shape.
[04:48.140] And here, we want to have this one.
[04:52.820] Right, this also kind of works, but you
[04:56.860] need two different set of notes, basically.
[05:01.980] And sometimes you want to have one key.
[05:04.300] You play one key, for instance, C3.
[05:06.500] And you want to fire up a different chord shape
[05:09.220] with a completely different root note.
[05:11.740] So this is also possible.
[05:14.220] And you could also utilize here the pitch 12
[05:17.580] and maybe transpose and so on and transpose everything around.
[05:21.420] But what I would suggest is to use a note grid for that.
[05:26.180] So we use a note grid here.
[05:31.020] And in here, we get note input, gate input, pitch input,
[05:35.860] velocity input.
[05:37.740] And we use the note FX selector and put this into post FX here.
[05:41.420] And what we do is we disconnect here the pitch.
[05:44.780] So now we can play a note.
[05:50.540] You can see we play different notes here, but it's always C3.
[05:56.540] So we can change this here on the fly with using a key module.
[06:02.340] And every time we press C1, or maybe go up to C3 here,
[06:08.700] C3, or maybe C sharp 3, or maybe D.
[06:15.620] We use a modulator out for each of these.
[06:21.940] And we say every time we press C sharp 3,
[06:25.220] we want to go to actually do D sharp, which is three
[06:31.660] semitones higher.
[06:32.540] And we want to go to manual here, note FX selector.
[06:39.300] And we want to go to the third layer.
[06:41.460] So we modulate this by 2.
[06:47.460] Right?
[06:48.180] And every time I press now C3, we change the root key
[06:55.940] and change the layer at the same time.
[06:59.700] And this only works for this octave and for this note.
[07:03.100] So C sharp 3 is only triggering this.
[07:06.300] And you can define as many notes or key maps you want.
[07:13.540] So there's no limitation.
[07:15.820] So for D here, we maybe go down 2 to A sharp.
[07:23.380] And we use also a different chord shape, maybe up to 3.
[07:33.460] This one here goes maybe on up.
[07:37.420] So with this method, you can define chord shape and the root
[07:55.860] key at the same time, just with one note from your keyboard
[08:00.500] and can fire up certain things.
[08:03.500] So yeah, I think it's a nice way of doing that.
[08:07.380] You can also use this here, of course, for audio FX
[08:10.340] when you want to do something like a trigger FX preset,
[08:14.660] where you want to trigger with the keyboard
[08:16.460] different stellar effects or something like this.
[08:19.940] From an audio FX selector, then you
[08:22.860] can do this too here with a note grid or with a Poly-Grid.
[08:26.300] It's also possible.
[08:27.820] So just to give you this idea, maybe to try it out.
[08:32.660] And yeah, that's it for this video, I think.
[08:35.460] Leave a thumbs up if you liked it.
[08:37.100] If you have some questions about it,
[08:38.660] then leave it in the comments.
[08:40.500] And thanks for watching.
[08:41.860] Until next time, bye.