Short Production Stream - Creating Pets and Melodies with Bitwig Studio

Tutorial | Apr 19, 2023

In this video, I am working on creating some pets using Bitwig and my MIDI keyboard. I start by recording some audio material and then work on manipulating it using different modules and effects. I enjoy exploring different sounds and creating something new each time. I also talk about my own process of making music and how it is fluid for me, with sound design and mixing all being part of the same process. I take suggestions from the chat and try out different techniques for creating percussion sounds. Overall, it is a chill and meditative process for me.

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 the purpose of this stream? #

The purpose of this stream is to create some quick and easy pet sounds and melodies while interacting with the chat. The plan is to keep the production short and simple without getting too complicated.

How does the streamer approach sound design and production? #

The streamer approaches sound design and production in a fluid and intuitive manner. There is no strict separation of different stages, but rather a constant listening and adapting to what needs to be changed in the track. The creative process is not overthought and there is a focus on doing what feels right in the moment.

How does the streamer use different modules and effects in Bitwig? #

The streamer makes use of a variety of modules and effects in Bitwig to create unique sounds and textures. They experiment with different parameters and settings to create interesting rhythmic and melodic patterns. They also use effects such as delays, filters, and phasers to add depth and movement to the sound.

What advice does the streamer have for music producers? #

The streamer's advice for music producers is to not overthink the creative process and to do what feels right in the moment. They suggest experimenting with different sounds and textures and not being afraid to try something new. They also emphasize the importance of experience and practice in developing one's production skills.

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] a fox walk on back to another polarity live stream they are want to create
[00:06.560] some pets um nothing complicated not a long stream just you know short
[00:15.480] production stream laying down some pets some melodies talking to the chat
[00:21.040] something like this something along those lines um at least that's that's the
[00:26.280] plan I'm nothing I have nothing nothing prepared actually so it's the same as
[00:33.560] always and yeah looks like it looks like it works
[00:41.920] on okay um I'll probably start by just recording some audio material this time
[01:05.280] Fernando on Facebook hey welcome to the stream
[01:25.640] or maybe something something higher
[01:35.240] so feel like this it should be enough at the sampler you know the deal
[01:54.880] we track this in here crank this up by the boot key e3 minus 2 cents wow I'm
[02:13.240] pretty much on point okay so we take cycles speed goes down to maybe let's freeze
[02:27.960] this here that's okay and I take a key track relative key track that's what I
[02:41.640] need goes to 50% 115 it's much later this hey Adrien hey two oven welcome to the
[02:55.840] stream guys so every time I press a key I have a different position here in the
[03:03.320] wave table and maybe I'm what you'll let you at the phone and it checks the
[03:13.720] T.
[03:17.640] hard-smooting NOTepuypola
[03:23.500] bipolar. Maybe I need to take also a voice stacking, voice stack, and then I go minus
[03:49.680] 2, 2 plus 1, not that much. I also use this here for the format. So each voice has a
[04:13.000] different format setting here. Maybe a slight offset also. Ok attack, slow release. Let's go
[04:40.320] with the delay plus here. It has a nice space diffusion setting here.
[05:10.320] Maybe a bit of a filter on torque here.
[05:40.320] Let's use a chorus plus. Just slightly mixed in 8 voices. Actually it's a delay 2, yeah.
[08:10.320] That's enough. Hey state, welcome to the stream man. It's a bit late for me today but I thought I
[08:28.640] could give it a go.
[09:58.640] I think something crashed, slime.
[10:27.360] Sign 5. Something crashed here, how do you appear to hang? That's unfortunate.
[10:51.600] Could be my sound card, yeah. Sound card is working.
[11:12.640] I can't even close it down, damn it. It's actually the first crash I have.
[11:38.160] It can happen.
[11:53.600] Everything is restored, right?
[12:19.040] I think something is with my sound card, I think that's a problem. I should at least have
[12:37.000] a signal here.
[16:39.880] I need to switch off my sound card.
[17:05.320] My hands are itching to make a song a bit big 5.
[17:16.520] I can't really listen to the stream at the moment, so we can still have my engagement number.
[17:24.760] We can also rewatch the world if you want to, of course.
[17:34.760] I have no idea if I actually use the launchpad that often, but I want to dive into it.
[17:47.720] It seems interesting to use all the scale features of the launchpad.
[17:59.720] It's also interesting, so I want to try it out.
[18:07.640] Oh, that's also nice here.
[18:25.640] It's not the right.
[18:40.920] Science by octave. This is also nice here, so every step in the wave table is basically an octave.
[18:55.560] It's dead this year, it's a super nice affair.
[19:14.680] Good talk. Me lucky fire.
[19:22.120] As state, I saw you use something like this, the push 2, right?
[19:31.480] Ah, I think I put my push back on my main desk.
[19:41.480] I think the problem with the clip launcher thing is that you have to prepare a lot of clips that
[19:46.440] are actually nice to work with, so I have to come up with some kind of workflow, how I use this,
[19:52.920] because I'm not the big guy with preparation, prepare life sets and stuff like this.
[19:58.600] I always want to do stuff on the fly in some kind of way, so I'm not into preparing drum loops or
[20:06.760] stuff like this. It's not my thing, but I moved it away for quite a while. I don't know why.
[20:21.480] I mean, you have a lot of toys to play around with, right? I mean, if I watch, if I see your studio,
[20:28.040] you have a lot of toys, so there's always something new that distracts you from
[20:35.960] diving teeth into something, probably. I don't know.
[20:42.680] Just kept using mouse and keyboard. Yeah, it's a habit. It's the same for me. I always try to
[20:47.480] go away from the keyboard and mouse and so on, but I always go back to that because it's so fast,
[20:52.680] or I am so fast with it. Yeah, into preparation exactly. That was always the problem for me.
[21:12.200] Kind of don't enjoy it, actually, it's not fun for me. When I prepare some kind of life set,
[21:17.640] I mean, I did something like this with drum bass in the early 2000s. I did something with drum bass,
[21:24.280] and when you prepare the set, you take maybe two or three hours in preparing all that stuff,
[21:30.200] and then you kind of board with it, and then you don't have that much fun actually performing it
[21:36.120] live because you heard everything multiple times, and so I'm more into creating everything on the
[21:44.600] flyer.
[22:04.760] Oh, I record your maybe the stuff.
[22:14.600] It's coming in from the keystep here, from the sequencer for off from the internal arpeggiator.
[22:27.000] So I can switch this off here.
[22:44.600] In front of you, is the touch screen? Yeah, it's a touch screen.
[22:59.640] Okay, the sound is completely different than what I had just recorded.
[23:02.920] Let's go with this.
[23:14.600] I think it's the same for everyone, probably. Sure, there are some people who really enjoy preparing things,
[23:36.600] but I'm not that guy.
[23:50.200] I think that's better.
[23:51.160] I hope that I really can come up with some kind of nice workflow for what the launchpad and
[24:09.240] Bitwig and for me. I really have to do it. At least it looks good on paper or in my head I can
[24:17.720] imagine I can come up with something.
[24:26.280] We'll see.
[24:48.040] I don't need that. I just want this here.
[25:01.640] Where's the files?
[25:15.400] D sharp 3. Look at that. Minus 9 cents.
[25:18.920] Yeah, the problem with push 2 is for me that it's actually dedicated for able to live and it feels
[25:34.440] weird for me to use a device that's dedicated for a different door. I guess the script from
[25:42.200] most is pretty nice. No doubt about it, but I don't know. It feels weird to me too.
[25:49.000] Actually, it's also quite expensive to push to. I think it's like 600 bucks or something.
[25:56.920] For me, it's too much actually to try this out.
[25:59.320] It's super massive.
[26:10.280] Oh, let's switch this here to cycles. Also, 3-smot, a key track.
[26:30.840] It's my new gem using the key track for some reason.
[26:39.640] So each key basically gets a different position here on the wave table.
[27:00.840] I switched from Ableton. Okay, nice.
[27:21.560] I found laying around that I ended up not using much after a while.
[27:30.440] Okay, I see. Yeah, that's a problem with a lot of devices, right? They look great.
[27:35.320] If you watch a lot of YouTube videos, they're all these nice LEDs,
[27:40.440] all these nice little features and thousands of functions you can use.
[27:45.560] And then it looks good on paper and then you order it. You have it at home. You play around one
[27:49.720] week and then you never touch it again. That's how it goes for me at least.
[28:03.240] I need a full dock on that.
[28:33.240] Then, can you give a shout-out to the audience, ae, to
[29:03.240] my friend VVAC. Hey VVAC! No problem. Always by use, yeah. Such expensive things like the push-to,
[29:18.120] let's say so, yeah.
[29:20.120] I would say my voice is actually the best pet machine
[29:50.120] it's the best pet machine I've ever had,
[30:20.120] and it's the best pet machine I
[30:50.120] I've ever had, and it's the best pet machine I've ever had, and it's the best pet machine I've ever had, and it's the best pet machine
[31:20.120] There's a bit too loud here
[31:50.120] Which scale is it? You know which scale. You all know the D sharp polarity scale.
[32:04.120] How do you move from sound design and exploration to serious production and arrangement?
[32:09.120] Because the sound design stage is very flow state like you don't have to think much.
[32:20.120] That's a good question.
[32:28.120] I have the feeling sometimes I treat everything the same. It's not separated for me.
[32:34.120] It's not like that when I'm switching in my head.
[32:36.120] Okay, now I'm doing sound design. Now I do this. Now I do that.
[32:40.120] It's basically just one thing in my head, right?
[32:44.120] And I listen to my track and I know exactly what needs to change, okay?
[32:50.120] And then I go directly into what I want to change and I change it.
[32:55.120] And sometimes it's mixing and sometimes it's sound design and sometimes it's some creative choices.
[33:03.120] But in my head it's not really that separated.
[33:14.120] Yeah, like that says stick around just one in one scale and just play these notes.
[33:25.120] Stick maybe to the root note and to the fifth and to the fourth. Sounds always nice.
[33:32.120] And then you wander off in different keys in the same scale and put a lot of reverb on it and that's yeah.
[33:43.120] Half the rent. Maybe I overthink too much.
[33:49.120] Yeah, that's a problem. Probably of most people when they do music they think too much and try to categorize a lot of things, right?
[33:58.120] Making music is for me a lot about switching off and doing whatever I want to do and just do it.
[34:10.120] But a lot of stuff comes probably from experience also.
[34:25.120] Ah, airdberschnitzel is also a modern fate.
[34:31.120] So that's your new name, right? Modern fate instead of airdberschnitzel?
[34:39.120] So you can see here sometimes I'm going through these pads and I've thrown down here the velocity setting because I think some of these sounds are too loud.
[34:59.120] So is that then mixing? Is it sound designing? I don't know. It's completely fluid for me sometimes.
[35:08.120] But it's simple actually some.
[35:18.120] It's simple actually some.
[35:48.120] At the fortune, fortune cookie earlier.
[36:48.120] Hey, Sasha, thanks for subscribing.
[37:18.120] I'm glad you created some sound design.
[37:46.120] But this is completely mono using a stereo split with once lift into the left channel and one on the right and one on the right gets a different setting.
[38:06.120] I think there was sensitivity down here.
[38:17.120] Is it frequency split? Just want here some upper frequencies.
[38:40.120] Let's show off this is platform.
[38:49.120] Maybe switch this to hybrid track with audio and instrument track at the same time.
[39:19.120] And then I'm using an fx grid.
[39:34.120] With pitch tracking of course. There should be also an input I can use my MIDI keyboard.
[39:53.120] This is the MIDI coming in.
[40:23.120] Oh, maybe on this track as well with the ring module later.
[40:51.120] And instead of the oscillator we take here the crackle and this goes nowhere.
[41:20.120] It's not interesting.
[41:33.120] Maybe slightly in the background.
[41:59.120] Thanks to the embrace, I feel the coolest stuff is often not planned but just happens.
[42:18.120] I'm listening to music like this and then I get some kind of random idea like this stuff for the crackle here.
[42:33.120] I could try out in this certain circumstance.
[42:52.120] Let's bring in a bass here.
[43:07.120] This needs to be mono.
[43:36.120] Just a simple bass line here starting on the root.
[44:05.120] Maybe two bass sounds good.
[44:35.120] What's your often two saw waves in the same frequency we get here this volume fluctuation?
[45:04.120] Let's try to count on this here with the compressor basically. I kind of like it.
[45:34.120] Maybe the tip too deep.
[46:01.120] Yeah, because it's not really here and even bar length so it's only six bars.
[46:18.120] It doesn't loop in the same way as all the other loops because it's ambient I don't care.
[46:34.120] When it sounds good no one cares.
[47:00.120] Maybe I don't use the band.
[47:30.120] Maybe I want to use a low cut.
[47:55.120] Can you leave this video? Yeah, it's after the stream it's up as a bot can download this and rewatch this if you want to.
[48:13.120] Maybe you can add into your streams in overlay mode mini meters. I would like very much to see the music you made.
[48:27.120] Um, where is it here?
[48:41.120] It's rocking, yeah.
[49:03.120] It's better, right? But it's not always inside.
[49:26.120] Yeah, maybe let's save this here or a crash, a crash bit we get again.
[49:47.120] The glide bass, yeah. I love glide bass. Sometimes it makes the track.
[49:58.120] Also, when you hear this on a loud, on a big system, you have this big deep bass and it slowly goes up and down.
[50:08.120] Sounds really nice.
[50:21.120] You can also add some slides.
[50:39.120] So I could try to create some kind of percussion here in the grid. Let's see if I get something going.
[50:47.120] I've already made a lot of presets for percussion sounds but I really like to do it every time from scratch. I don't know why but it's something I like to do.
[51:01.120] What you need to do is use some noise and a bit of attack or at least an envelope here with a steep attack time and shorter decay time.
[51:18.120] Maybe band pass filter, not too steep.
[51:41.120] Let's get some new probabilities later on. Let's get this in here.
[52:02.120] Probably need a phaser.
[52:09.120] A phaser in here and I want to use manual speed setting.
[52:40.120] We need just some kind of pitch in there. Let's use what do we use for pitch pitches.
[52:53.120] The quantizer here, the sharp polarity into the pitch input and we need to sample and hold of course.
[53:06.120] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[53:35.120] This is a new module here by the way. It goes up to 800% amplifier.
[53:51.120] And I need to use a screwdriver.
[54:12.120] That's just a slope.
[54:42.120] Let's speed this up here with a scanner.
[55:05.120] A phaser input.
[55:20.120] Let's use a dice.
[55:30.120] Let's do an idea at the end again.
[55:53.120] And the dice here modulates some things.
[56:17.120] It seems like you need to try a bit with it.
[56:37.120] Something I'm trying to figure out how to do is connect the tail of the kick to the root of the bass glide style.
[56:55.120] Sometimes it's not needed and sometimes I made a video about how you can construct the bass and kick out of the same oscillator.
[57:13.120] Or you then have to figure out how to offset the kick drum so it fits the face of the bass kind of.
[57:25.120] But you don't really need to do it only in very rare cases.
[57:34.120] There are some ways you can do it.
[57:44.120] The distortion on the percussion is always nice.
[58:04.120] It's too much.
[58:18.120] So this is what I really like to do.
[58:43.120] And it's also something I do off-stream.
[58:53.120] It's kind of meditating for me, chill out, relax, find out new patch situations, new patches.
[59:19.120] It's now a mixing right eye attack here out low end because of the bass here already in there.
[59:34.120] Sounding nice? Okay. Cool.
[59:44.120] There's a percussion here.
[59:54.120] It's a lot of these sounds you're actually based on my voice.