Unleash Bitwig Studio's Modulation Power: Create Mind-Blowing Transitions!
Tutorial | Sep 22, 2023
In this video, I discuss the topic of using the transit plugin in Bitwig Studio and whether it is worth it. While some may find the presets of the plugin useful, I personally find that I can easily replicate the effects and transitions using Bitwig Studio's modulation capabilities. I explain how to create similar effects within Bitwig Studio, showcasing the flexibility and potential of the software.
You can watch the Video on Youtube - support me on Patreon
Questions & Answers #
Maybe you dont watch the video, here are some important takeaways:
How does Bitwig Studio compare to other plugins like Transit? #
In my opinion, Bitwig Studio offers a lot more flexibility and creative possibilities than plugins like Transit. With Bitwig Studio's extensive modulation capabilities, I can easily create smooth transitions and risers using a variety of effects and modulations within the software itself, without relying on external plugins.
What is the benefit of using Bitwig Studio for modulation? #
The benefit of using Bitwig Studio for modulation is that it offers a wide range of options and flexibility for creating dynamic and interesting music. Modulation is key to shaping and evolving sound, and Bitwig Studio excels in this aspect, allowing me to modulate not only effects but also synths, MIDI, and more, creating a rich and complex musical experience.
Is it necessary to buy plugins like Transit if using Bitwig Studio? #
While plugins like Transit can be useful for quickly adding transitions and creating presets, they are not necessary if you are using Bitwig Studio. With the extensive modulation capabilities and access to a wide range of effects and instruments within Bitwig Studio, you can easily replicate the effects of plugins like Transit and create even more complex and unique sounds.
How can I make the most of Bitwig Studio's modulation capabilities? #
To make the most of Bitwig Studio's modulation capabilities, I recommend experimenting with different modulations on various elements of your tracks, such as synths, effects, and MIDI. Explore the use of macros, track modulators, and step sequencers to create dynamic and evolving sounds. Don't be afraid to think outside the box and push the boundaries of what can be achieved with modulation in Bitwig Studio.
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.
[00:00:00] Hey folks, welcome back to another video. Initially I planned to do another video on
[00:00:06] plug data, but it keeps crashing on me for some reason. I'm still on a nightly build,
[00:00:11] so I have to try it on a different day, different version, and yeah, get this out hopefully pretty
[00:00:16] soon. So someone out of the blue messaged me about transit, and I get a lot of messages
[00:00:22] about transit. Can you use Bitwig Studio? It's actually worth it in Bitwig Studio. Can
[00:00:27] you replicate it in Bitwig Studio? Do you use it? Do I have to use it? What's the benefit?
[00:00:34] Is it worth it? You know, all these typical questions people have on YouTube. And I never
[00:00:42] made a video about this because I already did a similar video about DataLive Endless
[00:00:50] Smile and UGM Final Boost, which basically does the same. It's just one knob. You turn
[00:00:55] the macro knob up, and then you bring in a lot of different effects, and you create transitions
[00:00:59] and risers this way, right? So this is how it looks like here. That's the website. And
[00:01:08] I really like baby audio. They make great audio plug ins. They look great. They work
[00:01:14] great. So I have nothing against them, right? The thing is for me, I don't use this because
[00:01:22] I can do this in Bitwig Studio just like with no effort at all. The only benefit maybe of
[00:01:28] this plug in for me would be to use the presets, right? So I have not to put in the work to
[00:01:36] create these different transitions for myself. But actually creating these transitions in
[00:01:42] Bitwig Studio is for me half of the creative work. And sometimes someone commented under
[00:01:49] my videos, "Okay, we get it. Bitwig is great at modulation. Does it anything else?" Right?
[00:01:57] And in my head, it's like probably what modulation is basically everything. You can see an arrangement
[00:02:07] as modulation, right? You start slow, and then you go up in intensity, and then you go back
[00:02:12] down. It's basically a sine wave. It's a modulation. Bringing in sounds and out is a modulation.
[00:02:20] Sound itself is a modulation, just a fast modulation. And then the modulation itself, right? Cut
[00:02:27] off and so on over time. Everything is basically modulation. Also, if you look at maybe some
[00:02:37] notes, right? This can be seen also as a modulation. Notes go up and down, right? In a certain
[00:02:43] way. It's a modulation. So everything is basically modulation. If you have a DAW or a system where
[00:02:49] your modulation is pretty much on point, or a system that excels at modulation, then this
[00:02:55] is a good system. And that's why I use Bitwig Studio because modulation is key to everything,
[00:03:01] for me at least. It's maybe not for everyone else, but for me, modulation is everything.
[00:03:09] So in terms of these smoothie effect devices, right? We have here a master bus, and I can
[00:03:15] put on here Data Live and LaSmile, and it basically does the same like transit. Maybe
[00:03:20] you don't have influence on all these effect chains. You just have a pre-made preset here,
[00:03:27] and you can turn up the macro knob here. Let's see. So to me, it almost sounds like you bring
[00:03:47] in a reverb, you bring in a low cut and a bit of chorus maybe or something like that.
[00:03:53] So it's not that much to this preset here for me. Sounds like there's a delay and also
[00:04:05] a low cut. So this is kind of something you can replicate pretty easily in Bitwig Studio,
[00:04:13] and I do this all the time. But not just in this concentrated way, right? We have here
[00:04:19] basically one plug-in sitting on one channel at a certain point and bringing in some audio
[00:04:25] effects. That's basically all it does. It's a smoothie effect device or smoothie effect
[00:04:30] VST plug-in. And there are some others like, like I said, infiltrator, glitch is maybe
[00:04:38] also a plug-in like this. I use a lot. See, instead of a macro knob, you basically have
[00:04:45] a sequencer here to bring in all of these different effects over time. So it's all of
[00:04:53] kind of same stuff. So to replicate basically this effect here, I can say I want to have
[00:05:00] here a filter. This filter is a low cut here, right? So we use a macro knob, a global one,
[00:05:11] bring in the filter, bring in a bit of resonance, amp up the volume, maybe use Blanger here.
[00:05:20] Blanger is coming in, bit of feedback, bit of different color. Let's see. Speed is ramping
[00:05:29] up over time. Depth is going in. Yeah, let's try this. It's maybe too much here. We can
[00:05:54] create easily stuff like we did before with DataLife and Last Smile, just a bit like Studio,
[00:05:59] just with one knob and, you know, restock devices. So it's a no-brainer. You can also
[00:06:07] bring in here maybe a small reverb. Let's see here. Cut this out of the Tank FX here.
[00:06:17] Maybe smaller size. Yeah, bring in the mix of the reverb up here. Now we can even cut
[00:06:36] out here the EQ. So that's basically it. That's the magic of these plug-ins. And if you create
[00:06:52] multiple iterations of this, you can easily create some presets. You can also just say
[00:06:58] I want to have a chain device here, put all of that into a chain. It's over here. Bam.
[00:07:09] Then use this macro knob here and put this in front of the chain device. Right, like
[00:07:16] here. Move it over here. All these modulations are still intact. You basically have Endless
[00:07:21] Smile here as a plug-in replicated inside of Bitwig Studio.
[00:07:25] So you save this as Endless. One, two, I make multiple iterations of this with different
[00:07:40] effects. Maybe use a frequency shifter here. Maybe use a different filter. Use a different
[00:07:45] reverb setting. Yeah, frequency shifter, low cut, low pass. Maybe band pass filter on here.
[00:07:54] Maybe peak limiter on the end. So you can put on a lot of stuff and create these kind
[00:07:59] of riser effects in no time, in less than two seconds inside of Bitwig Studio. There's
[00:08:05] really no need to buy these plug-ins if you use Bitwig Studio, in my opinion. You can
[00:08:12] still buy it and use these presets that they made. It's not a problem, but you don't need
[00:08:19] to do it. It's not a necessary thing to do to buy these plug-ins if you use Bitwig Studio.
[00:08:26] So in Bitwig Studio, you can also create these global modulators here and do stuff like this
[00:08:33] on the master. But you can also say, I don't want to have this on the master. I want to
[00:08:38] make different things on different channels. So you can say, I have here this macro knob
[00:08:47] and I want to maybe open up the filter of the bass. Do a different bass here. So we bring
[00:09:12] up here the bass in kind of tonality. We also go to the music bus here. We use a filter.
[00:09:23] Low cut. Bring the low cut up with the resonance. Bring up the loudness. And maybe on the drums
[00:09:45] I want to, I don't know, make the kick drum shorter. Something like this. Or maybe bring
[00:09:55] up the tonality here. You can change the kick drum here on the synth itself. There's a clap
[00:10:13] here. So maybe use delay here. I actually use a MIDI effect here. I use an echo. Something
[00:10:27] like this. But we switch it off and we switch it on with the macro. We use also your this
[00:10:32] on/off with the logarithmic. So it switches on earlier. Maybe you also open up the filter
[00:10:41] here. You can do stuff like this in Bitlix Studio pretty easily. You can modify MIDI
[00:11:02] effects. You can modify audio effects. You can modify synthesizer settings. All that
[00:11:09] stuff and it creates a much bigger, richer result in the end than just using one VST
[00:11:15] plug-in on one channel with one macro knob and just these standard effects like chorus
[00:11:20] and flanger and stuff like this. You can do much more by just modulating the synth and
[00:11:25] the effect itself on these channels here with these macro knobs. You can use multiple
[00:11:30] macro knobs. You can use these curve m-sacs here to bring stuff in automatically without
[00:11:37] using a knob here. So there's so much stuff you can do just by modulating things. Then
[00:11:45] there's stuff like let me see here all the tracks itself. Let's see this track here.
[00:11:55] It's playing multiple sequences here with the step sequencer I built. It's also using
[00:12:03] your step mods to modify stuff on this synth itself. You can click on this and you can
[00:12:09] see here a lot of modulations are actually used. I use this mod knob here. This mod knob
[00:12:18] changes the modulation amount here. Let me see here steps 2. I think this one modulates
[00:12:26] the index of the wave table. You can see this here. This mod knob here changes the modulation
[00:12:34] amount from this to that. If I turn this down, this one doesn't modulate this index anymore.
[00:12:41] I do this on multiple tracks here. So I can bring down the modulation amount of all these
[00:12:47] synths and effects at the same time. I can use this to arrange stuff. That's what I did
[00:12:55] in the video I showed you. That's how I use clover modulators.
[00:13:02] So, this is in my opinion how you should use Bitfix Studio.
[00:13:32] This is what Bitfix Studio is all about. That's why they introduce the clover modulators
[00:13:42] and the track modulators and so on. That you put in all these modulations and then turn
[00:13:48] and twist everything and everything changes in multiple colourful ways. Just using VST
[00:13:54] and putting some of these VSTs on one channel and then turn one mod knob is cool. But you
[00:14:01] know, it's not like you have Bitfix. You have access to all of that stuff. You can do all
[00:14:08] these multiple things at once. So just use it instead of just putting one VST on one channel
[00:14:14] and then call it day. You can do it and it's easy, sure, but maybe use Bitfix to its full
[00:14:23] potential and make use of it and make your music dynamic and interesting.
[00:14:32] So like I said, link to all these videos I showed you is in the description below so
[00:14:38] you can rewatch these videos. I explained everything in there in all kinds of different
[00:14:44] ways. I want to recap this. Also, I want to put the tag of this plug-in transit in the
[00:14:52] title of this video to grab some attention from search engines. That's how YouTube works.
[00:15:02] And yeah, if you liked the video, please leave a like. Subscribe to the channel. Thanks
[00:15:06] for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Bye.
[00:15:08] [BLANK_AUDIO]