Unlocking Real-Time Audio Pitch Shifting: Easy Techniques in Bitwig Studio

Tutorial | Oct 30, 2023

In this video, I show you how to achieve real-time audio pitch shifting in Bitwig Studio using the FX Grid. By utilizing the mod delay and LFO, you can easily control the pitch shift amount and timing. I also demonstrate how to create interesting effects by stacking multiple voices with different pitch shift settings and introducing panning.

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 video about? #

The video is about audio pitch shifting in real time inside of Bitwig Studio. It shows a new tip that makes the process easier and more efficient by using the grid feature in the software.

How is the pitch shifting set up in Bitwig Studio? #

To set up the pitch shifting in Bitwig Studio, first create a sound or noise using a step sequencer and a synthesizer. Then, in the FX grid, use the mod delay and connect the delay modulation amount and input to an LFO. Make sure to select the same timing for the LFO and the mod delay, and adjust the settings for the desired pitch shift effect.

What are some additional features and effects that can be added? #

In addition to pitch shifting, other effects such as reverb, delay, and peak limiter can be added to enhance the sound. Voice stacking can also be used to create different pitch shifts for each voice, and effects like band pass filters and all pass filters can be introduced to shape the audio signals and create unique sounds.

Where can I find the presets and additional resources mentioned in the video? #

Presets and other resources mentioned in the video can be found on the creator's Patreon page. By becoming a Patreon supporter, viewers can access and download the presets, step sequencer, and other content related to 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.
[00:00:01] Today it's about audio pitch shifting in real time inside of Bitwig Studio.
[00:00:06] And I already showed you something like this some some time ago inside of the
[00:00:11] grid, what I got the new tip from Borough, which is one of my heavy
[00:00:16] Patreon supporters.
[00:00:17] Thanks for that.
[00:00:18] And also thanks for making me look smart on my own channel.
[00:00:21] Um, so this tip is basically, is basically easier to set up inside of the
[00:00:27] grid. It has some better features and it's a bit smaller in size.
[00:00:32] So, um, because it's not always better, right?
[00:00:35] So let's go into the grid here.
[00:00:38] Um, well, actually in Bitwig Studio, and we need to set up something, um,
[00:00:43] that makes sound or makes noise.
[00:00:45] So I'm using here, uh, one of my step sequencers use a bit of random
[00:00:50] pitches here, smaller step size and maybe some kind of, uh,
[00:00:56] synthesizer here, polymer.
[00:00:58] Let's, let's use that.
[00:01:00] Um, maybe go your odds to 85 BPM.
[00:01:04] Let's see how this sounds.
[00:01:06] At least we have a melody, right?
[00:01:09] So we can also use your pressure.
[00:01:11] And maybe I use a different wave table just for the levels.
[00:01:17] Something like that.
[00:01:24] Um, I switch back here and also use the looping and I use a bit of reverb
[00:01:29] with the convolution reverb here and I use a delay too.
[00:01:34] Yes.
[00:01:35] Sounds much better.
[00:01:39] Ah, maybe a peak limiter at the end here.
[00:01:46] It's a bit quiet.
[00:01:54] Okay.
[00:01:54] So now that this runs here perfectly nice inside of Bitwig, we want to
[00:01:59] create some audio pitch shifting delays on top of that, right?
[00:02:02] So I'm going to create here an FX grid.
[00:02:05] So inside of the FX grid, we don't use the long delay because longer
[00:02:11] is not always better.
[00:02:12] And we don't modulate here the delay unit scaler.
[00:02:16] We use the mod delay and we're going to use the delay
[00:02:23] modulation amount here and the delay modulation input.
[00:02:27] And we're going to use an LFO.
[00:02:30] We switch the LFO here to this shape and we go to zero percent.
[00:02:36] So we have this and what the thing here.
[00:02:37] Um, and then we just connect these two.
[00:02:40] And the important part now is that you select the same timing here that you use here.
[00:02:45] So we select here a quarter note and one.
[00:02:48] So one quarter note.
[00:02:49] So we have to select your one, uh, quarter.
[00:02:52] This is fourth and one.
[00:02:54] So one fourth is basically one quarter note.
[00:02:57] And now when you hit play, and we also have to disable here the pre-code for the
[00:03:03] gate input, because we generate a lot of notes here.
[00:03:06] And every time you generate a note, you retrigger the LFO, which is what we don't
[00:03:11] want.
[00:03:11] So now when we hit play, it sounds like this.
[00:03:21] This is the original signal.
[00:03:22] Okay.
[00:03:26] So nothing changed.
[00:03:28] So we need to go here and say minus 50%.
[00:03:30] Or you can go 100%.
[00:03:49] So minus 50% is basically half time speed.
[00:03:52] It's exactly one octave lower.
[00:03:53] You can mix this here with original signal.
[00:03:58] So the, the important part is that you choose the same timing here and here.
[00:04:06] So one quarter note, one quarter note.
[00:04:08] You can also change that, uh, delay buffer size.
[00:04:11] You can say, um, I want to go to 16 notes here, one 16 node.
[00:04:16] So the delay buffers exactly one 16 node long.
[00:04:20] And then you have to select also your 160 note.
[00:04:22] It sounds a bit different because the delay buffer is now smaller,
[00:04:27] but you get the same octave shift or pitch shift as before,
[00:04:35] but it sounds a bit different.
[00:04:37] And now you can hear the small little crackle or popping.
[00:04:40] That's basically coming here from this LFO shape where we
[00:04:44] modulate the delay timing here.
[00:04:46] And when you use an oscilloscope, it looks like this.
[00:04:51] So this is the signal we use to basically modify the delay timing here.
[00:04:58] Maybe let's go to, uh, eight note, one eight note, one eight note.
[00:05:05] Okay.
[00:05:06] So we get this pop up, this pop or crackling sound.
[00:05:12] Every time we switch here back to the one or to the zero.
[00:05:16] So we can try and make a volume shape out of this.
[00:05:20] So we use a mirror.
[00:05:22] So the mirror basically changes this ramp signal into a triangle.
[00:05:28] This is how it looks like before.
[00:05:31] Or maybe you make this even slower.
[00:05:32] Let's go back to a quarter note.
[00:05:41] I hope you can see this here.
[00:05:42] So this LFO signal is basically a ramp and this mirror signal is now a triangle.
[00:05:49] And every time we hit here, basically this important phase where it switches from
[00:05:56] zero to one pretty fast, we use the mirror signal to shift the volume down to zero.
[00:06:02] And we can do this by just using a multiply and put this in there.
[00:06:09] So every time you switch back with the delay buffer here to zero or to one, uh, we bring
[00:06:17] the volume down to zero.
[00:06:18] It's exactly what we do with this mirror here.
[00:06:21] And if you want to, you can even bring in here a blend or not a blend, a band.
[00:06:28] And make this triangle, give the triangle a different rounding.
[00:06:36] Right now it's round.
[00:06:38] You have more volume in there, but still every time we switch it back to zero or to
[00:06:43] one, we have zero volume.
[00:06:45] So this is the trick about it.
[00:06:47] So that's the easiest set up to make an audio pitch shifter here.
[00:06:51] The only important part is basically that you, um, select you at the same timing here
[00:06:57] and LFO that you use on the mod delay.
[00:07:07] So now that we can pitch shift down and we can pitch shift up here to 100%.
[00:07:11] We can make interesting effects with this.
[00:07:21] So we can say the original voice is half time speed.
[00:07:26] And maybe it uses here one fourth note, one quarter note.
[00:07:33] And we select here the device.
[00:07:35] We say voice taking, let's say two voices and we use your stack control.
[00:07:41] So this is the first voice.
[00:07:45] We don't change anything.
[00:07:48] Second voice here gets basically instead of pitch down, we pitch shift up.
[00:07:52] Say one five.
[00:07:56] Right.
[00:07:58] So the first voice is half time.
[00:08:00] The second voice is double time.
[00:08:04] And we want to change the volume probably here a bit.
[00:08:06] Let's bring us down a bit.
[00:08:13] Maybe eight.
[00:08:15] Okay.
[00:08:17] So now we can say we want to have three voices.
[00:08:21] And the third voice does exactly the same.
[00:08:26] We go up here by one five.
[00:08:29] We go down one eight.
[00:08:34] And you want to introduce panning.
[00:08:35] So use a pen up here.
[00:08:38] So second voice is hard pen left.
[00:08:41] Third voice is hard pen right.
[00:08:45] So now we use different settings here for the mod delay.
[00:08:51] Let's say the third voice is one fourth.
[00:08:55] Let's go up here to.
[00:08:58] And let's go also up here to.
[00:09:01] So now we have a different delay buffer here and different LFO setting for the third voice.
[00:09:10] And you can hear it sounds different on the left channel than on the right channel.
[00:09:14] I hope this makes sense.
[00:09:21] Okay.
[00:09:29] So that's an easy way of creating audio pitch shifting inside of Bitwig Studio with just a
[00:09:38] mod delay LFO and maybe hear the mirror and the band helper to shape the volume with the
[00:09:44] multiply.
[00:09:45] But when you use then the voice stacking with that, he can create up to 16 voices of audio
[00:09:50] pitch shifters here in there.
[00:09:53] Bring in a lot of different effects, maybe band pass filters, maybe all pass filters,
[00:10:00] all kinds of different ideas, right?
[00:10:02] You can bring in for different voices to shape the audio signals and pitch it up or down.
[00:10:06] So for instance, really nice sounds if you use here, let's say an alpass.
[00:10:14] In here or maybe in front of that.
[00:10:18] And let's go zero milliseconds here.
[00:10:20] And then you can say you want to have different delay timings for different voices here.
[00:10:27] Let's let's try this.
[00:10:28] That sounds really grainy in my opinion.
[00:10:58] Even though it's not a grain delay, but you split up the signal and use the alpass device
[00:11:03] with these small little delay tabs to create this, yeah, this kind of grain sound.
[00:11:10] And let's create more for voices.
[00:11:24] And say.
[00:11:39] Yeah, and then you blend in here the original signal.
[00:11:49] And that's your next ambient delay.
[00:12:05] Yeah.
[00:12:20] So I don't want to make this video too long.
[00:12:24] I just wanted to share this tip with you, show you how you can create this kind of
[00:12:28] granular pitch shifting effects inside of Bitwig Studio more easy,
[00:12:33] more easier than before.
[00:12:35] And I also want to create some presets for this kind of idea that you can download on my Patreon.
[00:12:42] You can also download the step sequence on my Patreon.
[00:12:45] Of course, you can download basically everything on my Patreon.
[00:12:48] So that's what I want to say.
[00:12:49] That's the main, it's the main takeaway of this.
[00:12:51] Okay, so that's it for this video.
[00:12:55] Thanks for watching.
[00:12:56] Leave a like if you like the video, subscribe to the channel, and I'll see you in the next one.
[00:12:59] Bye.