Creating a Jazzy Loop in Bitwig Studio

Tutorial | Jan 04, 2024

In this video, I explore creating a jazzy loop in Bitwig Studio, despite having no knowledge of jazz. I demonstrate various techniques, such as using chords, the Wurlitzer instrument, and manipulating drum patterns. I also highlight a new feature I discovered in Bitwig Studio relating to note snapping and share other tricks like using the note grid and synchronizing clocks with side chain signals.

You can watch the Video on Youtube - support me on Patreon

This Bitwig Studio tutorial demonstrates creating a jazzy loop, combining techniques from previous videos. The process includes:

1. Chord Progression Creation:

   • Using a Wurlitzer from Bitwig's Electric Keys package.
   • Adjustments like increased release, tremolo, and chorus.
   • Constructing a major chord using the root note, major third, perfect fifth, major seventh, minor ninth, and major eleventh.
   • Adding velocity variation and strumming effects for realism.

2. Drum Pattern with XO:

   • Using the XO plugin to select jazz-style drum samples.
   • Creating a basic drum loop with kick, snare, hi-hats, and additional elements.
   • Discussing a new feature (or possibly unnoticed) of note snapping in Bitwig.

3. Bassline with Jazz Bass from Kontakt:

   • Implementing a simple bassline using the Kontakt library.
   • Using an arpeggiator for rhythm variation.
   • Synchronizing the bassline's timing with the drums using Bitwig's note grid and sidechain feature.

4. Additional Elements and Effects:

   • Adding piano and saxophone parts, ensuring they harmonically fit the chord progression.
   • Utilizing reverb for texture.
   • Discussing recording techniques like punch out for perfect loop length.
   • Mastering with plugins for a retro sound.

5. Integration of Techniques:

   • The tutorial emphasizes integrating multiple techniques and Bitwig features.
   • The tutorial ends with an invitation for questions and a reminder that the project is available on Patreon.

The video is a practical example of combining previous lessons to create a cohesive jazzy loop in Bitwig Studio.

Questions & Answers #

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

What is the main focus of this video? #

The main focus of this video is to create a jazzy loop in Bitwig Studio, using various techniques and tricks that were shown in previous videos. The goal is to combine these techniques and create a unique jazz-inspired loop, even if the creator has no prior knowledge of jazz.

What is the new feature or discovery regarding drums in Bitwig Studio? #

The creator mentions a new feature or discovery in Bitwig Studio related to drum notes snapping to the grid. They are unsure if this is a new feature or if it has always been present but went unnoticed. They ask the viewers to comment and share their knowledge about this feature.

What are the key steps in creating the jazzy loop? #

The key steps in creating the jazzy loop are as follows: using chords from the Wurlitzer instrument in Bitwig Studio, creating a note clip with the desired chord progression, adjusting velocities and strumming, utilizing various plugins and effects for drums, setting up choking and probability for certain drum samples, adding a bassline using a jazz bass contact library, and incorporating a piano and saxophone using the note grid for quantization.

What are the main takeaways and practical examples demonstrated in this video? #

The main takeaways from this video include techniques for creating chords, manipulating drum patterns with snapping and choking, using the note grid to quantize and synchronize tracks, and adding additional instruments like piano and saxophone to enhance the jazzy loop. The video showcases practical examples of how these techniques can be applied 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.
[00:00:02] Today we want to create some kind of jazzy loop inside of Bitwig Studio and the funny
[00:00:06] part about this is I have zero idea about jazz.
[00:00:10] So don't laugh about me, I just try to combine certain things I showed you in the last video,
[00:00:16] some tricks.
[00:00:17] And I've also some kind of question later on with the drums because there's something
[00:00:21] in Bitwig I never noticed before and I have no idea if this is a new feature or if this
[00:00:27] is in forever and I just never just noticed it.
[00:00:31] Okay, so we start here by using some chords and use a Wurlitzer which is part of the electric
[00:00:41] keys package of Bitwig Studio.
[00:00:43] So if you use Bitwig Studio, you can download this for free.
[00:00:47] Sounds like this.
[00:00:53] So we use more release, we use more.
[00:00:55] Tremolo here, chorus.
[00:01:07] So then we don't need the clip launcher, we create a note clip here.
[00:01:13] In here we want to start with a major chord.
[00:01:15] So just use your root note.
[00:01:19] It's D sharp, then 1, 2, 3, 4 major 3rd, 1, 2, 3 perfect 5th, 1, 2, 3, 4 major 7th, 1,
[00:01:33] 2, 3 minor 9, 1, 2, 3 major 11.
[00:01:40] Is this correct?
[00:01:42] This is correct.
[00:01:44] Yeah.
[00:01:47] Pretty too much velocity here.
[00:01:50] And a bit more.
[00:01:53] Nice.
[00:01:54] We go down here to 80ppm.
[00:01:59] Make this two bars long.
[00:02:05] That's the first chord.
[00:02:06] The second chord is the same chord, just four semitones lower.
[00:02:10] 1, 2, 3, 4.
[00:02:13] And then we pull some things up here.
[00:02:20] Okay.
[00:02:27] Then we do this twice.
[00:02:32] And this is the same chord as before.
[00:02:34] Here we bring some notes close together, so there's a bit of dissonance here.
[00:02:41] Here we open up the chord a bit more.
[00:02:58] Then we go back to the first chord.
[00:03:05] Okay.
[00:03:08] So there we select everything and we go for velocity spread here, maybe 20%.
[00:03:13] So not every velocity setting on each of these notes is the same.
[00:03:18] Then we use maybe strumming here at the beginning.
[00:03:26] Pretty fast.
[00:03:33] Then we randomize the strumming.
[00:03:40] Then we use your channel filter, so we can use this later on to grab some notes.
[00:03:52] You can also use something different, maybe a note transpose.
[00:03:57] It doesn't matter without the transposition here.
[00:04:01] Then we can call this here, grab that.
[00:04:07] So we can basically grab the notes from here instead from after the strumming.
[00:04:12] So we want to have here the chords from here.
[00:04:15] So I use some kind of dummy device all the time.
[00:04:21] So now that we have this, we want to create some drums.
[00:04:24] So I use XO here.
[00:04:28] In XO I search for jazz, kick drum, maybe a rim shot, a snare, hi-hat, maybe a clap,
[00:04:52] and hi-hat, this one, and a snap.
[00:05:08] Another snap.
[00:05:15] Why not?
[00:05:17] So we have some drums we can use.
[00:05:20] So we create your nice small little drum loop, kick drum, snare or rim shot, hi-hat, lower
[00:05:41] the velocity here.
[00:05:45] Okay, so then I use here maybe my crossover plug-in so it gets a bit louder.
[00:06:03] Okay, so this is nice.
[00:06:12] Then we use here the second hats and just offset them a bit, just a tad, something like this.
[00:06:26] And here this is my question.
[00:06:28] I have basically here a note and I can snap to the grid, right?
[00:06:33] It snaps to the grid, but it also snaps to other notes.
[00:06:36] So I can move this here.
[00:06:38] You can see it snaps to this note.
[00:06:40] This is actually new.
[00:06:41] I never noticed this before, to be honest.
[00:06:43] It's the first time I'm experiencing this.
[00:06:47] So you can answer this in the comments if this is actually in for a while or it's a new feature.
[00:06:53] I have no idea.
[00:07:00] So here I want to have an open hi-hat.
[00:07:09] Then I want to choke this here with the first hi-hat.
[00:07:13] So I put this here into choke group, mute group, mute group.
[00:07:21] So now these two samples basically choke each other.
[00:07:51] So this one here, this sample is only played at the end of four iterations.
[00:08:21] And these two drums here are played by probability 20%.
[00:08:48] So now we need the bass.
[00:09:01] And I use here just jazz bass contact.
[00:09:04] It's a contact library acoustic bass.
[00:09:10] That's like this.
[00:09:21] So now we need here a small pick limiter.
[00:09:27] And we use the same notes here.
[00:09:28] We use the bottom notes in here.
[00:09:35] Bam.
[00:09:40] And we use an arpeggiator here with three steps.
[00:09:46] Seven semitones and 12.
[00:10:10] Just nice.
[00:10:11] But I want to change the speed setting here at certain points.
[00:10:14] Maybe let's go to three steps.
[00:10:19] I'll relate this by two.
[00:10:29] So now the timing is a bit off.
[00:10:31] So I use here a note grid.
[00:10:35] In here I use a value.
[00:10:39] And we get here basically the notes.
[00:10:44] Sidechain, note sidechain.
[00:10:51] Get the notes from the drums.
[00:10:55] So now we have here basically the kick snare, hi-hat and so on as triggers.
[00:11:02] And we use this for a clock quantizer as the clock.
[00:11:08] And then we quantize basically the note inputs here from the bass.
[00:11:12] And we need to use a note and select and maybe get input.
[00:11:30] So I feel like that.
[00:11:47] So basically the drums with the small little shuffle change how the bass is triggered.
[00:12:10] Or we actually use drums as a clock signal.
[00:12:14] So yeah, this is basically also a trick.
[00:12:16] So I showed you basically this here in the video how you create these chords.
[00:12:19] I showed you also now this kind of snapping trick.
[00:12:26] I don't know if it's actually a trick.
[00:12:29] Then you have this with the note grid that you can actually quantize some notes from
[00:12:34] with the sidechain signal.
[00:12:37] And now we're going to use here, let's say a piano.
[00:12:43] And let's go for this one.
[00:12:46] And with the piano here in front, use also note grid.
[00:12:51] And here we use the quantizer, this one.
[00:12:57] And this one has a dynamic feature where we can just grab here the notes from the burly,
[00:13:02] grab that, right?
[00:13:03] And it uses these notes as a quantize input here.
[00:13:07] And then we can quantize this track to these notes on the other channel.
[00:13:12] Actually, that's wrong.
[00:13:16] So yeah, we quantize basically notes from one channel to the other channel.
[00:13:22] This note grid here uses 12 notes, voice, polyphonic notes.
[00:13:29] And now we can play.
[00:13:40] Yeah, inside of this, this chord progression here, we have certain notes.
[00:14:00] That actually repeat.
[00:14:02] You can see we have here D sharp, D sharp in every chord is basically a D sharp.
[00:14:09] So we can play safely D sharp on every chord here.
[00:14:14] Also A I think should be in there, which is the fifth A here, A sharp, A sharp here.
[00:14:22] So on can basically play D sharp and A sharp on each chord.
[00:14:29] Because we don't need to actually think about what notes are actually working over this
[00:14:35] chord.
[00:14:36] So all these notes are in every chord.
[00:14:38] And I think F is also in there.
[00:14:41] Yeah, F basically on every chord.
[00:14:46] Just nice.
[00:14:47] So we can use a reverb on that because it doesn't really matter.
[00:14:52] We don't need change basically the harmonics on top.
[00:14:55] We use here super massive.
[00:15:09] Oh yeah, let me record this.
[00:15:24] Actually switch off loop and use your punch out.
[00:15:28] So punch out is basically it stops recording at the end of this loop segment here.
[00:15:34] We can see this here in a minute.
[00:16:07] Right, it stops then here recording and you have exactly the length of the loop and it
[00:16:13] doesn't overdub then at the end when you have this loop enabled.
[00:16:19] So this is more like a pad actually.
[00:16:21] It's not really a solo.
[00:16:44] Okay on the master we put your let's say an Aussie 20.
[00:16:50] We stand out for making things like retro.
[00:17:18] Now we don't use clap here.
[00:18:00] Let's use here this pedal and maybe pull down the volume a bit.
[00:18:07] We can also use now the note grid here on a new track and then use the Silverwood sax
[00:18:18] reactor I am.
[00:18:20] As also free preset you can download on the native instruments user library page.
[00:18:26] Sounds like this.
[00:18:38] Let's bring the volume up and we can maybe also use a reverb on that.
[00:18:44] Let's use the same one here for some reason.
[00:19:13] Yeah make it smooth.
[00:19:15] Maybe duplicate this here and record over two sections.
[00:19:21] Let's see.
[00:19:52] Nice.
[00:20:21] This is basically how you create a fake jazzy loop inside of Bitwig with a few tips and tricks.
[00:20:30] So again it's a combination of things I showed you in the last videos.
[00:20:37] How to create these chords here.
[00:20:39] I made a video then we have here this trick with the note grid where you can synchronize
[00:20:46] the clock quantize basically to trigger us to another track with the side chain.
[00:20:51] Then we have here the note grid trick with the quantizer where you can import notes from
[00:20:57] a different track and then quantize these notes.
[00:21:00] So a lot of things in this video just to combine everything and show a practical example of this.
[00:21:10] Let me know if you have questions in the comments below.
[00:21:14] Like the video and subscribe to the channel of course.
[00:21:18] See you in the next one.
[00:21:20] And this track or this project is actually available on my Patreon of course.
[00:21:23] So see you in the next video.
[00:21:25] Bye.