Crazy Bitwig EQ Modulations
Tutorial | Feb 12, 2024
In this video, I demonstrate creative ideas for using the EQ inside Bitwig Studio. By utilizing the FX grid and voice stacking, I show how to apply polyphonic modulations to the EQ Plus. This technique allows for unique waveforms, modulation offsets, and the ability to sequence and morph between EQ settings.
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Questions & Answers #
Maybe you dont watch the video, here are some important takeaways:
How can the EQ plus in Bitwig Studio be used creatively? #
The EQ plus in Bitwig Studio can be used creatively by utilizing the FX grid and voice stacking to apply polyphonic modulations to the EQ. By using an LFO in polyphonic mode and modulating the EQ parameters, unique and dynamic EQ effects can be created.
What are some examples of creative ideas for using the EQ plus? #
Some creative ideas for using the EQ plus include using the LFO in voice stacking mode with different phase offsets to create wave-like modulations, sequencing the EQ parameters using a step modulator, and using multiple EQ plus devices with different modulation settings to create evolving EQ effects.
How can the EQ plus be applied to different voices within the FX grid? #
To apply the EQ plus to different voices within the FX grid, the voice talk device can be used to mute or enable certain voices. Each voice can then be extracted and modulated individually, allowing for unique modulations on each voice of the EQ plus.
How can the creative use of the EQ plus be expanded beyond EQ effects? #
The creative use of the EQ plus can be expanded beyond EQ effects by applying the same techniques to other monophonic devices within Bitwig Studio. By using voice stacking and modulating different parameters on different voices, a wide range of unique and dynamic effects can be achieved.
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] So in this video, I want to show you some creative ideas for the EQ inside of Bitwig
[00:00:04] Studio and all we need for that is here some kind of Polymer synthesizer running just a
[00:00:11] saw wave and we want to use this here with the EQ plus and the EQ plus itself is just
[00:00:16] a monophonic, monophonic FX device, but we can utilize the FX grid and voice stacking
[00:00:25] to actually apply polyphonic modulations to the EQ plus.
[00:00:31] So we can use here an FX grid, right, and put the EQ plus inside of the post FX box
[00:00:39] here and then we can put the FX grid into voice stacking mode, let's say eight voices
[00:00:45] and we can add here an LFO.
[00:00:47] I use the classic LFO here and the LFO at the moment is a monophonic mode, but we can
[00:00:53] switch this here on the left side in the Inspector to Per-Voice mode.
[00:00:56] So now we have eight dots here, which means we have eight LFOs running per voice because
[00:01:01] we selected eight voices.
[00:01:03] We have now eight modulations on this device and all of these LFOs have the same speed and
[00:01:09] are in the same phase, which is kind of okay.
[00:01:13] Inside of the FX grid here, we use a value knob.
[00:01:18] The value knob also has, is in bipolar mode and we modulate here the value knob with this
[00:01:23] LFO of course by just 100%.
[00:01:28] So now we need here a device called voice talk, which makes it possible to mute or to enable
[00:01:37] certain voices inside of the grid because we are in voice deck mode.
[00:01:40] We have here eight voices available, but we deselect every voice here because we only
[00:01:48] want to have voice one here and I want to use your modulator out.
[00:01:54] So now we duplicate this eight times.
[00:01:56] So voice one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
[00:02:03] So we have eight voices and we want to extract for each modulator a different voice.
[00:02:09] So voice three, this is four, five, six, seven and eight.
[00:02:19] Okay, so now we have each LFO here, one of these dots on each of these modulators.
[00:02:27] So now we can create here on the EQ plus different EQ parameters exactly eight and we want to
[00:02:35] select here some kind of scale, right?
[00:02:39] So I'm choosing here, choosing here frequencies in a scale.
[00:02:44] So let's go for D sharp zero, D sharp, let's say D sharp one, D sharp two, D sharp three,
[00:03:04] D sharp four, five, six, seven.
[00:03:13] Okay, so we have only selected here the note D sharp in multiple octaves and we also can
[00:03:20] apply now stack spread modulator here from zero to plus one.
[00:03:26] So now what we do is we just offset the face of the LFO, right?
[00:03:30] We have here a face of zero percent for all of these things and we use a stack spread modulator
[00:03:36] to change the face for each LFO on these voices.
[00:03:40] So we just apply here 50% on another mod phase, 50%.
[00:03:49] And now we get this nice little wave here, right?
[00:03:52] So all we have to do now is to take all these modulators, modulator out here and modulate
[00:03:58] the amount on each of these parameters.
[00:04:00] So this is voice one, it's voice two, three, four, six, seven, eight.
[00:04:18] Okay, so now we have this nice little wave running here and we want to add here a macro
[00:04:27] and we want to change the cue with this.
[00:04:29] So let's add here this modulation to all the parameters.
[00:04:39] You may be want to also do this here per voice, but I want to change all the cue parameters
[00:04:46] with the same amount.
[00:04:49] So I can make this pretty narrow or broad.
[00:04:57] You can also add here an amplifier to amplify the signal and sounds like this.
[00:05:12] Maybe we add here a peak limiter at the end or randomized.
[00:05:32] You remember this is still a sound wave, right?
[00:05:54] And if you don't want to change the frequency here manually, you can just use a step mod.
[00:06:02] Put this into 16 note steps here, randomized this and then we change this here.
[00:06:12] Let's go to eight, six steps maybe here and change the cue.
[00:06:29] So you can sequence the whole thing if you want to.
[00:06:42] That's the idea here.
[00:06:46] We can also take here the phase.
[00:06:49] At the moment here we make basically a linear offset for each LFO, right?
[00:06:54] You see this wave and the wave never changes.
[00:06:56] It's basically just a wave, which is kind of cool.
[00:07:00] Let's dial this in a bit more.
[00:07:05] Just kind of nice.
[00:07:06] But we can also use here the step spread modulator to change or to offset the frequency for each
[00:07:12] LFO slightly.
[00:07:14] So then it becomes like a pulley meter.
[00:07:16] So maybe do this here.
[00:07:17] So you can see it's still a wave, but then it changes slightly because every dot has a
[00:07:23] different frequency.
[00:07:24] It becomes a pulley meter.
[00:07:25] Right?
[00:07:26] Now it becomes the waves get steeper and steeper and then you have this random motion here.
[00:07:36] And at some point they get basically in phase to the same thing.
[00:07:46] So it's not like random.
[00:07:47] It's more like a pulley meter, right?
[00:07:49] It's constantly changing in an algorithmic way.
[00:07:53] This can be also interesting maybe.
[00:08:03] Okay.
[00:08:20] So you can offset the LFO speed here with the step spread modulator quite easily and
[00:08:26] it gives you then these pulley meter modulations.
[00:08:29] So just double click this here and we use here a note retrigger and everything is back
[00:08:35] into phase or at least in the same linear phase offset here.
[00:08:40] Okay.
[00:08:41] So now that we have this, we can also say instead of just using one EQ plus, we use two EQs,
[00:08:48] right?
[00:08:49] Something like this.
[00:08:50] They have the same modulation.
[00:08:52] They have the same waveform here playing, which can be also nice, but we want to change
[00:08:59] that.
[00:09:00] We want to use here, let's say 16 voices.
[00:09:05] So we duplicate this.
[00:09:06] We switch it to voice stacking to 16.
[00:09:11] And on this one, we delete all the modulations here.
[00:09:19] Okay.
[00:09:24] So there's no modulation here to the second one.
[00:09:27] And here we select different voices.
[00:09:29] So we start with nine.
[00:09:31] This is 10, 11, 12.
[00:09:36] 14, 15, 16.
[00:09:46] Okay.
[00:09:47] And then we have to apply here again the modulations with a new bunch of modulators here to the
[00:09:54] modulation to the band gain.
[00:10:02] Okay.
[00:10:10] So now because we have here 16 voice stacks, we have 16 LFOs and all of these LFOs are
[00:10:18] slightly offset by the same amount here for the, for the phase offset.
[00:10:24] And now we have basically this wave running from one EQ to the other EQ, right?
[00:10:29] Just one continuously waving wave.
[00:10:34] We still can change it to Q setting.
[00:10:39] And you can amplify here this.
[00:10:42] So it's kind of connected here.
[00:10:49] So now we can do the same things.
[00:10:53] And maybe instead of using the same frequencies here, we can offset the whole EQ by just
[00:10:58] one octave maybe or two octaves or maybe just a fifth, something like this.
[00:11:05] So this is instead of D sharp.
[00:11:07] We have here now A sharp.
[00:11:16] It looks kind of cool, right?
[00:11:40] You can also put a big mode if you want to.
[00:11:45] But yeah, you can do all kinds of crazy things just with this kind of modulation inside of
[00:11:52] Bitwig.
[00:11:53] So another idea would be to instead of using the LFO and also changing here the LFO speed
[00:12:01] offset, we can also say we want to use instead of the LFO, we want to use a step modulator.
[00:12:08] So let's use a step modulator here and we remove here the modulation amount to the value
[00:12:12] completely, right?
[00:12:14] So this is not modulating anything.
[00:12:16] So we want to use here the step modulator for this.
[00:12:19] So we have 16 voices.
[00:12:20] We have also 16 steps in here.
[00:12:24] We clear this out and we put this LFO into per voice mode also.
[00:12:28] And we want to use here this modulation out from the stacks with modulator and we apply
[00:12:33] this to the face modulation here by exactly 100%.
[00:12:40] Exactly.
[00:12:41] One.
[00:12:42] That's okay.
[00:12:43] And we put this here into hold.
[00:12:46] So now each draw or each bar becomes basically a cue setting.
[00:12:51] So we can dial in here.
[00:12:53] We have to apply the modulation amount of course 100%.
[00:12:56] Put this into bipolar mode.
[00:13:00] It's here.
[00:13:04] And then I'll put file us here a bit.
[00:13:07] So now we can basically dial in here a cue settings with the step modulator, which is
[00:13:15] easy to draw.
[00:13:18] And we can draw in frequencies across two, yeah, two EQs and it's still in a scale.
[00:13:27] So all these parameters are basically in D sharp minor.
[00:13:31] This is D sharps and this is all A sharps.
[00:13:35] So it's still highly musical, right?
[00:13:45] And instead of just using one step modulator, we can use two and we can randomize this.
[00:13:51] We have different settings.
[00:13:52] And instead of using this modulator and modulating at the value directly, we use a mix modulator,
[00:13:59] not Mac mix.
[00:14:02] And with this one, we modulate your basically day by 100%.
[00:14:08] And this one would be 100%.
[00:14:14] And then we put this modulator here, this mix modulator also in per voice mode.
[00:14:19] It's important.
[00:14:21] So now we can fade, I think, we have to modulate the value again.
[00:14:27] So this one modulates then the value.
[00:14:29] So now we can fade between this step mode and this step mode, right?
[00:14:34] We have two EQ settings here.
[00:14:48] And then you can morph between this one, this one, you can randomize and using the step
[00:14:53] mode, it's even safe to save your project or save it as a preset or anything like this.
[00:15:01] And this is preserved basically.
[00:15:03] It's saved with the preset and with the project.
[00:15:06] We can also apply here this LFO back again slightly or maybe full time 100%.
[00:15:16] So we bring back this wave form here into that.
[00:15:19] Use a macro modulator here and change the amount with that.
[00:15:24] And call this wave.
[00:15:35] Okay.
[00:15:39] So instead of having an static EQ or two static settings, you bring in the wave with a bit
[00:15:52] of modulation here to bring in movement into your sound.
[00:15:58] So these are my ideas for the EQ plus.
[00:16:01] Like I said, you can also use this on an EQ five if you want to.
[00:16:05] It works exactly the same way, but here you only have five parameters.
[00:16:11] You can also use this for all kinds of different effects if you want to.
[00:16:15] The idea here is basically that you use a monophonic device, put it into a polyphonic device like
[00:16:23] the FX grid, then you use voice stacking to actually make these LFOs or modulators polyphonic
[00:16:31] and then use stack spread modulators and different modulations to change them differently on
[00:16:38] different voices and then extract these different voices here to modulations onto these monophonic
[00:16:44] devices.
[00:16:45] So it's actually not that hard if you get the idea how it works and it's easy to apply.
[00:16:51] All you need to do is basically use these voice talks here and then extract different
[00:16:58] voices from these modulations.
[00:17:00] Yeah, it's actually not that hard.
[00:17:02] And I think it's pretty crazy what you can do inside of Bitwig just with the few modulations
[00:17:07] and a bit of voice stacking.
[00:17:10] Yeah, it's quite creative and yeah, it sounds probably interesting or it gives you some
[00:17:18] interesting ideas for sound design.
[00:17:20] Okay, that's it for today's video.
[00:17:22] Thanks for watching.
[00:17:23] Leave a like if you liked the video.
[00:17:24] If you have some questions, please let me know in the comments down below.
[00:17:28] Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video.
[00:17:30] Bye.