Tags: posts polarity-music Ambient Bitwig Generative Tutorial Poly-Grid

Creating Pitch Maze a Generative Grid Patch for Bitwig

Tutorial | Jul 22, 2024

In this video, I create a generative patch using a Poly-Grid instrument track in monophonic mode. I experiment with feedback for pitch generation and incorporate audio pitch modulation. I add various effects like delay, chorus, filter, and reverb to shape the sound, and create a complex and evolving composition.

You can watch the Video on Youtube

Today, I'm creating a Generative Patch using Bitwig's Poly-Grid. I'll walk through setting it up, focusing on pitch generation using feedback and modulation techniques. Here's a brief overview and the main steps:

Overview:

Steps:

  1. Setup:

    • Create a new Poly-Grid in monophonic mode.
    • Add a sine oscillator set to D#3.

  2. Pitch Down Effect:

    • Use a long delay set to a quarter note.
    • Apply an LFO to modulate the delay, creating a pitch-down effect.
    • Blend the original and the pitch-down signals.

  3. Volume Fade:

    • Use a ramp signal to create volume fades, reducing crackling sounds.
    • Apply a sine window to smooth the ramp signal.

  4. Extended Delays:

    • Implement longer delays for richer textures.
    • Add another delay to create an octave pitch-down effect.

  5. Triggering Envelopes:

    • Use disrupted pitch signals to trigger envelopes.
    • Quantize the pitch signal to fit within a scale.

  6. Rhythm and Feedback:

    • Create a rhythm by combining different delay times.
    • Use a stereo split to add slight variations between channels.

  7. Effects:

    • Apply filters to manage overtones.
    • Add a phaser and all-pass delay for texture.
    • Use convolution reverb for space and depth.

  8. Final Adjustments:

    • Tweak phase modulation and add pitch wobble using an LFO.
    • Apply EQ to balance the final sound.

The preset can be downloaded from the description. I'll let this patch run on my music channel with added piano layers for an extended performance.

Questions & Answers

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

Patch Description

What is the purpose of the patch?

What techniques and modules are used in the patch?

What is the overall result of the patch?

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] [Music]
[00:00:13] I haven't made the Generative Patch in a while, so maybe we do just this today.
[00:00:17] So I'm gonna create here on this instrument track a new Poly-Grid.
[00:00:22] And this one is in monophonic mode, so voice is a mono, that's important.
[00:00:29] So it's self-running.
[00:00:30] And by the way, I have no idea what I'm doing today.
[00:00:34] I just want to use probably some feedback for pitch generation.
[00:00:39] I think this is always great.
[00:00:41] And maybe I'm using a bit of audio pitch in there.
[00:00:46] So I start here with the sign oscillator.
[00:00:49] And this gives us at least a sound.
[00:00:54] And I start with an initial pitch here.
[00:00:57] So I'm gonna use here the D#3 and I disable the pre-chord here.
[00:01:05] This gives us at least a sound in D#3.
[00:01:11] And then I want to implement some kind of pitch down, audio pitch down or audio pitch.
[00:01:19] So I'm going to use here long delay.
[00:01:23] So I'm gonna use one quarter note and I'm going to use an LFO.
[00:01:32] This one is also quarter notes, one quarter note long.
[00:01:38] And I simulate your more or less ramp signal with this.
[00:01:42] I go into the long delay and then I just modulate here the offset.
[00:01:49] So this should give us at least one octave pitch down.
[00:02:03] And we'll see a blend.
[00:02:07] We can blend in the original signal with the one octave lower signal.
[00:02:18] Just make a test here with a tuner.
[00:02:21] This is D#3.
[00:02:26] This is D#4.
[00:02:29] So a nice little audio pitch there.
[00:02:34] Then we get here this crackling sound.
[00:02:37] Right.
[00:02:42] So we implement here a small little volume fade.
[00:02:47] And I do this by using this ramp signal going into another sign.
[00:02:53] What's the name?
[00:02:54] Window.
[00:02:55] This gives us more or less a positive and unipolar ramp or arc.
[00:03:08] Something like this.
[00:03:10] Instead of this ramp signal here.
[00:03:13] It changes the ramp signal into this half line.
[00:03:18] And then I want to make this a bit steeper.
[00:03:32] So I use a band.
[00:03:41] You can see here now the fade in and fade out is a bit steeper.
[00:03:46] And I use the signal here to modulate the volume.
[00:03:50] So use a multiply.
[00:03:52] Change the output volume of this.
[00:03:56] So now I have only volume here in the middle and at the end and at the beginning I have a fade in
[00:04:08] and a fade out.
[00:04:09] So you don't hear this click or crackling anymore.
[00:04:12] Let's see if we when we make this longer.
[00:04:24] So this is quarter note.
[00:04:26] Let's go for four quarter notes and switch this here to quarter note and then for.
[00:04:32] Okay, this is long.
[00:04:40] Let's go for eight.
[00:04:41] Yeah, that's cool.
[00:04:50] So if you're a nice little pitch, audio pitch,
[00:04:57] so we can play around here with some notes in here and then record basically into a long delay
[00:05:04] and then get the pitch down signal.
[00:05:07] Let's see all the sounds.
[00:05:08] So we need here at least an envelope and we need another long delay.
[00:05:23] I also use here eight quarter notes of audio.
[00:05:28] So and with this delayed signal, we can go back into the pitch signal.
[00:05:33] So we disrupt here with the audio output, the pitch input signal.
[00:05:39] And then we want to scale this a bit down to change the volume.
[00:05:44] Let's call this scale here.
[00:05:46] Scale.
[00:05:49] Okay.
[00:05:52] And we want to trigger here our envelope sounds like this.
[00:06:02] So we disrupt to the pitch signal with this audio output and for that,
[00:06:18] use a quantizer.
[00:06:19] We quantize the whole pitch signal here into a scale
[00:06:23] and the sample in holds.
[00:06:28] We can hold the pitch, the current pitch here of this disrupted signal when a trigger occurs.
[00:06:34] So at least we get the melody inside of a scale now.
[00:06:44] So quarter notes are a bit too boring.
[00:06:54] So I use, let's actually duplicate this here.
[00:06:58] Let's use three here and maybe I don't know five here and combine this with a store.
[00:07:11] Source only one input should be true to get a trigger out, but we have here five three, right?
[00:07:18] So sometimes they overlap and they when they trigger both at the same time,
[00:07:22] we don't get a trigger here.
[00:07:24] So can hear we have a kind of a rhythm now.
[00:07:27] And we quantize this to another trigger.
[00:07:36] Say 16.
[00:07:49] And it's too fast.
[00:08:13] Let's bring this down.
[00:08:16] Five again.
[00:08:23] And go for something that sounds like reverb.
[00:08:29] What's the name?
[00:08:36] Split stereo split.
[00:08:42] So left goes in that.
[00:08:45] Right goes in that slightly different values.
[00:08:48] Then emerge.
[00:08:58] Maybe I do this, make this a bit longer later on.
[00:09:01] Left goes there, right goes there.
[00:09:15] So we blend this together.
[00:09:16] One goes there.
[00:09:28] Maybe a long delay.
[00:09:42] A bit of feedback.
[00:09:50] This is then a pitch up here, I guess.
[00:09:58] And now I want to add a little bit of a
[00:10:00] bit of a bit of a delay.
[00:11:43] Maybe chorus could be nice.
[00:11:49] Maybe in the beginning here.
[00:11:58] And the filter I guess.
[00:12:15] And I want to scale here the volume a bit.
[00:12:34] We could also use the audio output here for the face input.
[00:12:48] And because this is here delayed by 8 quarter notes,
[00:12:51] it comes always late to modulate.
[00:13:18] So let's see.
[00:13:22] Did you tune this a bit here?
[00:13:30] There's too many overtones, so I use the filter.
[00:13:36] You can use just a low pass here maybe.
[00:13:44] You also change the filter cutoff.
[00:14:25] It could be a nice idea to actually do this twice in the patch here.
[00:14:35] Or in here.
[00:14:36] And then do pitch down here.
[00:14:47] And then bring this back.
[00:14:56] We have a pitch up here, then we combine the tricycle,
[00:14:59] the pitch up signal, and then go in here,
[00:15:02] pitch it down and combine it.
[00:15:04] Maybe we also get the signal a bit with another
[00:15:11] phaser maybe.
[00:15:22] And an all-pass delay.
[00:15:51] Now I try to tweak everything a bit so it sounds cool.
[00:15:59] A convolution reverb at the end.
[00:16:22] Can we do something else to make the sound nice?
[00:16:32] Maybe I use another sign.
[00:16:55] Go in here.
[00:16:59] Then we use more straight triggers, let's say eight.
[00:17:15] Actually, I also need to duplicate this.
[00:17:34] And then I mix everything together.
[00:17:59] I also want to have a mix.
[00:18:32] And we can take the audio signal from here.
[00:18:45] Dice this and use a modulator to change the phase modulation amount here.
[00:19:19] So we have here the first signal.
[00:19:24] Then we have here the second signal.
[00:19:27] This goes to another mixer and we mix in here the pitched up version.
[00:19:37] And this reverb version and then we go into a second pitch down.
[00:19:45] And then we bring it back here.
[00:19:48] It's a bit complicated, but that's okay.
[00:20:25] Or we can use for pitch signal here the output of this.
[00:20:38] That's better.
[00:21:05] The funny thing is because this is an audio signal here and this is stereo,
[00:21:10] it probably gives us different pitches for the left and the right channel.
[00:21:32] Oh, there's this one here. Okay.
[00:22:46] Oops.
[00:23:09] There are some dissonance sounds in there for some reason.
[00:23:58] It's a bit busy, huh?
[00:24:00] Maybe bring this a bit more down.
[00:24:18] And this one here plays too much the same note for some reason, so...
[00:24:26] bringing a bit of noise here.
[00:25:01] And this I bring one octave down and this is one octave higher.
[00:25:32] That's better.
[00:25:37] That's too much phase modulation here. It gives me too much distortion.
[00:25:53] And I want to have a bit of pitch wobble, so I'm going to use an LFO.
[00:26:00] Starts pretty slow.
[00:26:04] And then I modulate here the...
[00:26:10] just by 20...
[00:26:12] point 20 semitones.
[00:26:22] That's okay.
[00:26:25] And maybe you can also put this into the reverb here.
[00:26:45] That's too much.
[00:27:07] And it's better.
[00:27:18] Probably needs a bit of EQ-ing.
[00:28:21] And now it runs forever and ever.
[00:28:26] Never really repeats probably.
[00:28:29] Nah, probably not, but...
[00:28:32] it's quite complex enough.
[00:28:50] We put this in here.
[00:29:48] Not sure.
[00:30:00] I think there's been a...
[00:30:42] Hmm.
[00:30:45] Can I do some more?
[00:30:47] I mean it's already pretty complex and it sounds nice.
[00:31:08] I think that's it.
[00:31:10] Probably rearranges some of the things a bit more
[00:31:14] so it looks more compact.
[00:31:50] That's it.
[00:31:54] Yeah, that's the Generative Patch for the day.
[00:31:57] I put this preset in the description below so you can download it.
[00:32:02] Now probably do another video on my music channel where I let this run here for, I don't know, 10 minutes, 20 minutes.
[00:32:09] Maybe add some piano stuff on top, but yeah.
[00:32:14] So yeah, like I said, in the description below you can download it for Bitwig, what's this here?
[00:32:21] 5.2 Beta 13 already, okay.
[00:32:27] That's it, leave a like, leave a subscription, thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.