Tags: posts polarity-music Bitwig Synthwave Sound-Design Polysynth Modulators Preset

How to Create a Hypersaw in Bitwig Studio without Unison Oscillators

Tutorial | May 22, 2023

In this video, I showed how to create a hypersaw sound in Bitwig Studio without using an oscillator with a unison feature. I used the polymer synthesizer and modulated the pitch and panning using the random mod. I also used voice stacking to create a dense sawtooth sound. To create the typical ray fleets, I modulated the note with the root, seventh, fifth, and two octaves lower. I also demonstrated the use of other oscillators like the wave table and the swarm oscillator to change up the sound. Multiple notes are necessary to achieve the desired effect. Overall, this is a simple and easy way to create a hypersaw sound.

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Questions & Answers

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

Question 1

What kind of sounds can you create with this method?

Answer: You can create a super dense saw, lead, sawtooth lead, which can be used for hardstep, trance, and other genres where you need a dense saw sound.

Question 2

What synthesizer is used to create the hypersaw sound and what feature is used to achieve it?

Answer: The polymer synthesizer is used, and the method used to achieve the hypersaw sound is by using the sawtooth oscillator without a unison feature and adding a random mod to it to modulate the pitch and the stereo spread.

Question 3

How many voices can be used in the wave table unison setting and what is the maximum frequency for the random mod?

Answer: The wave table unison setting can use up to 16 voices, while the maximum frequency for the random mod is 50kHz.

Question 4

What are some of the techniques used to modulate the pitch and stereo spread of the hypersaw sound?

Answer: Some of the techniques used to modulate the pitch and stereo spread of the hypersaw sound include using the minus 1 to plus 1 mod in voice stacking mode to detune the sound and spread it evenly across the panorama. Additionally, using multiple notes can also create diverse ray fleets.

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, today I want to show you how to create some kind
[00:05.240] of hypersaw inside of Bitvic Studio without using an oscillator with a unison feature.
[00:12.400] And you may use these kind of sounds for hardstep, trance, something along those lines where
[00:20.080] you need a super dense saw, lead, sawtooth, lead and maybe it's also something for synth
[00:27.320] wave, I have no idea.
[00:29.200] So I want to show you how to create this pretty easy, we take here a polymer synthesizer.
[00:36.880] And in here we can use the wave table, which features some kind of unison setting, up
[00:41.600] to 16 voices, detuning here and spread, which is nice, but we can also just use here the
[00:47.080] sawtooth oscillator, which doesn't have a unison feature.
[00:53.080] So it sounds like this, maybe you open up the filter here, so a pretty default.
[01:02.840] What we're going to do is we take here a random mod and switch this to kilohertz, which
[01:10.680] is audio rate, all the way up to 50 kilohertz, pull this here to smoothing, setting all
[01:16.000] the way to the right, maybe we use bipolar here, polyphonic, we want to have this for
[01:21.360] every voice.
[01:23.880] And then we're going to use here the modulator out of the random mod for the pitch, just
[01:29.920] a tad, not too much, just a bit.
[01:37.280] Then we switch here the polymer into voice stacking mode up to 5 voices, use a voice stack
[01:43.480] modulator.
[01:44.480] So now that we have 5 voices basically out of this preset, we just created, we can use
[01:50.320] it to the voice stacking in the minus 1 to plus 1 mod and use that also on the pitch.
[01:56.680] So we just slightly detune this.
[02:07.840] Just dial into taste, right, sometimes you want to have something more detuned, something
[02:12.280] like this.
[02:16.800] Maybe for hardstyle, for trends you probably want to have more, something more where you
[02:22.560] can hear a clear pitch, something like this, but it's up to you what you want to use for
[02:30.480] that.
[02:31.880] Then we can also use the minus 1 plus 1 for stereo spread, so we can spread this here
[02:37.960] in the panorama, so we go all the way up to 100%.
[02:41.800] So now the first voice is basically on the left side, the second voice is here all the
[02:47.280] way to the left, then the middle and so on, so all the 5 voices are spread out across
[02:52.760] the panorama evenly, which is nice, sounds like this.
[02:59.040] Maybe it's too much, so we can dial this back.
[03:08.120] So now we have 5 voices, basically with just one note.
[03:13.000] And to create these nice little, let's say, yeah, ray fleets, you need at least a mod
[03:22.340] the note and here we use the root note, we use maybe the seventh, we use one octave lower,
[03:32.080] two octave slower, and then also I think a fifth, one octave higher, so it sounds like this.
[03:43.480] Way too much, so we can dial this back here.
[03:48.520] So we get this kind of sound, maybe we can also dial in here the randomization for the
[04:08.080] pitch a bit more.
[04:11.840] Okay, so it gets a bit noisy, but when you use the filter for that.
[04:34.800] Right, it sounds a bit better, maybe not right, you have to find a sweet spot.
[05:04.360] So you get these typical ray fleets, and if that's not enough, you can even switch here
[05:21.080] to maybe the swarm oscillator, which is basically just, yeah, and saw oscillator with multiple
[05:28.600] voices, so we have here the spread, and we can also change the distribution of the spread.
[05:49.800] You can use that to change up the sound, or maybe go back to the wave table here and
[05:55.240] use also a sound with you listen, or we kill you basically the voices, we have only 12 voices,
[06:07.800] let's completely kill the CPU, but when your CPU is not dying out then you get a fat sound,
[06:28.280] but yeah, you can just use sawtooth for that here with a bit of voice tagging and the random
[06:36.920] mode to modulate the pitch and the panning, and then you get this nice fix out. It's also important
[06:45.000] you to use multiple notes of course, because these ray fleets are never just one single pitch.
[06:50.760] We have also always here the root and the fifth in there at some point,
[06:59.240] maybe our minus 24 is too much, we can also go here to plus 12 with rock 2,
[07:06.600] right, or maybe minus 5,
[07:28.280] I think it sounds legit, so this is basically the video for today, I want to give you a quick idea
[07:34.120] how to create this kind of hypersource with the polymer, of course you can do this also in the grid,
[07:39.560] if you want to, or with the policing itself, you don't need to use the polymer, but that's my way
[07:46.840] of doing it. Thanks for watching, leave a like if you liked the video, subscribe and see you on the
[07:51.640] next one. Bye.