Tags: posts polarity-music Bitwig Bitwig-5.2.2 Filters FX-Grid Tutorial Drum-and-Bass

Custom Filters in Bitwig

Tutorial | Aug 26, 2024

In this video, I demonstrate how to create unique and interesting filter shapes using Bitwig Studio's Grid and all-pass modules. By combining a dry signal with various all-pass filters and using invert and blend modules, it is possible to create custom filter types with different peaking frequencies and characteristics. These filters can be manipulated and modulated to create dynamic and evolving sounds in Bitwig Studio.

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In this video, I dive into creating unique basslines and custom filter shapes in Bitwig Studio using the Polymer synth and FX Grid. I walk you through how I crafted a classic Drum and Bass reese bassline by combining sawtooth waves, adjusting filters, and experimenting with all-pass filters in the FX Grid to design my own filter shapes. The inspiration came from the versatile filters found in synths like Serum.

Key Points:

Questions & Answers

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

What is the video about?

The video is about creating interesting filter shapes using the Bitwig Studio's grid and all-pass modules. The presenter demonstrates how to combine different filters, use macros to modulate frequencies, and create unique filter types.

Why is it important to use filters in music production?

Filters are essential in music production as they help shape the sound and add character to the music. They allow for the removal of unwanted frequencies, create movement and modulation effects, and can enhance the overall impact and expression of the music.

How can viewers create their own filter shapes in Bitwig Studio?

Viewers can create their own filter shapes in Bitwig Studio by using the grid and all-pass modules. By combining dry and wet signals, applying different filter configurations, and experimenting with modulation, viewers can create custom filter shapes that add complexity and uniqueness to their music.

What can viewers expect to learn from watching this video?

Viewers can expect to learn how to use the grid and all-pass modules in Bitwig Studio to create their own filter shapes. The video provides examples of different filter configurations and demonstrates how to modulate frequencies and combine multiple all-pass filters to achieve desired effects.

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.
[00:00:02] And I want to show you something I did in recent times in Bitwig Studio
[00:00:06] and I had a lot of fun with it.
[00:00:07] So I want to share it with you, of course.
[00:00:09] So let's imagine you want to do some kind of baseline here and we use here.
[00:00:15] Polymer.
[00:00:18] Synth, right?
[00:00:21] And we want to use the saw wave or we can actually use your different oscillator
[00:00:25] type. So let's use saw tooth here.
[00:00:28] And then we want to dial in a bit of sustain, a bit of attack.
[00:00:32] We want to open up the filter here and we want to make it monophonic on the
[00:00:36] left side, so zero voices or actually one voice only.
[00:00:39] So we get the saw wave.
[00:00:42] Then we use here two, two different oscillators for the left and the right side.
[00:00:47] And then we want to use a tool device to make this monophonic.
[00:00:56] Then we get this beating of these frequencies.
[00:00:58] Right. And then maybe a glide.
[00:01:05] So you get these typical drum bass bass lines with this.
[00:01:17] And what you normally do with this is you put some filters on top because
[00:01:24] these saw tooth oscillators give you a lot of overtones or harmonics.
[00:01:28] So this is perfect for subtractive synthesis, right?
[00:01:32] So you usually just use a filter here
[00:01:34] and cut all these overtones away and maybe move the filter rhythmically.
[00:01:41] So you get an interesting baseline.
[00:01:43] Or maybe a notch filter.
[00:01:53] So let's switch here to the XP and use notch.
[00:01:58] So this one cuts out a certain frequency.
[00:02:00] So it's not a low pass.
[00:02:05] It's basically just a notch filter.
[00:02:07] You can see here, this is the filter position.
[00:02:13] Yeah, I could do this all day.
[00:02:26] I love these kind of reese old school reese bass lines from Drum and Bass.
[00:02:31] And yeah, that's kind of it.
[00:02:33] Thanks for watching. Leave a like. No, that's not it.
[00:02:35] Stay with me. OK, it's not it.
[00:02:38] That's not the video.
[00:02:40] So you usually have a lot of filters you can choose from,
[00:02:44] let's say, this inside here of polymer.
[00:02:46] And these kind of filters give you kind of an interesting characteristic.
[00:03:01] Some different, let's say,
[00:03:04] yeah, peaking frequencies.
[00:03:07] So let's use an EQ analyzer.
[00:03:10] EQ curve analyzer.
[00:03:12] Choose the second one.
[00:03:14] And make this one here a generator.
[00:03:18] And in here is a filter plus.
[00:03:20] And it's disabled this and use here may Fizz open this up.
[00:03:28] And see, this is like the filter type here of Fizz, right?
[00:03:33] And you can influence all these peaking frequencies.
[00:03:38] And you can play around with this, or maybe switch here to rasp.
[00:03:41] So this one looks like this.
[00:03:45] So it gives you interesting peaking frequencies and, yeah,
[00:03:51] especially a different sound because we amplify different overtones,
[00:03:56] different harmonics here from the sawtooth.
[00:03:58] So for most of you, this is probably enough, right?
[00:04:03] You can choose different filters and then you have fun with it.
[00:04:06] But for me, of course, I want to.
[00:04:09] Push or want to push sometimes a bit further.
[00:04:13] So I'm going for an FX grid.
[00:04:15] And let's open up the FX grid here and also.
[00:04:21] Let's leave here this one open so we can see what we do inside of the grid here.
[00:04:28] So we can use.
[00:04:31] A blend and the blend just blends together to audio signals, right?
[00:04:36] In the moment here, we have just the dry signal.
[00:04:38] But then we also want to use a second signal here.
[00:04:42] And then for this signal, we want to use an all-pass filter.
[00:04:46] And I think I made a video about this that you can combine here,
[00:04:50] a dry signal and then a second signal path with an all-pass on it.
[00:04:55] And you create some kind of low pass filter.
[00:04:57] So feel like this.
[00:05:01] And then you can also use the new invert module, which just face,
[00:05:08] in words, everything or face flips or polarity flips it.
[00:05:12] And you can see now we have an high pass filter.
[00:05:14] So this is kind of fun, but we can also switch this here to two P.
[00:05:21] And now we get a band pass filter with this,
[00:05:24] which kind of also sounds nice.
[00:05:27] We can disable here for a moment is a key thing.
[00:05:30] Oh, let's disable it.
[00:05:36] This first.
[00:05:36] So it's kind of the same as before.
[00:05:50] We just we just have a band pass and a notch filter with this.
[00:05:55] So this is band pass.
[00:05:57] This is not.
[00:05:59] But we can also do more of these all-pass filters here in there.
[00:06:05] And we can combine it.
[00:06:07] So let's say we want to make this notch filter a bit stronger.
[00:06:11] We have to actually clone that whole thing here.
[00:06:16] Go in there, in there, and this one goes out.
[00:06:20] So we have to put this in serious, right?
[00:06:22] So now you can see we can already create interesting filter shapes.
[00:06:28] And we can also influence influence here the band pass steepness.
[00:06:38] With this, we can also do something like, oh, let's actually try this out here.
[00:06:46] And.
[00:06:46] You smooth both these.
[00:06:49] So it's even steeper, right?
[00:06:52] Get steeper and steeper.
[00:06:54] And then put here maybe a macro on that.
[00:07:04] And then a modulator, all these frequencies.
[00:07:09] By the same amount, of course.
[00:07:16] Let's go for 60.
[00:07:21] 60 and here.
[00:07:26] OK, let's let's see all the sounds.
[00:07:29] Disable here the EQ analyzer.
[00:07:32] So we just created the very, very steep band pass filter with this, with this set up here.
[00:07:50] But that's that's a bit boring.
[00:07:53] So we can do something else here.
[00:07:55] We can say we want to use, let's say a mixer.
[00:07:59] Oh, that's not a mixer.
[00:08:00] This one here.
[00:08:02] So we bring this in and do the same thing.
[00:08:06] So we get the band pass, then we increase here, maybe do three P.
[00:08:10] So now we have a low pass and the notch filter here.
[00:08:13] And we can change the frequency on this.
[00:08:17] We can also increase this here to four P or six P.
[00:08:21] And then we get something like this and maybe use another one here.
[00:08:26] Go in there and we have to lower here with the amplitude.
[00:08:34] Like this.
[00:08:39] And then we can use a different frequency here for this all past then for this all past.
[00:08:43] Right.
[00:08:43] And you can see here now the filter becomes more interesting.
[00:08:46] We have different not just at different positions.
[00:08:48] It almost looks like we are mirroring here.
[00:08:51] The whole filter.
[00:08:54] So it's kind of a mirror filter or we can call it this way.
[00:08:57] Or maybe change it to P.
[00:09:04] Something like this.
[00:09:06] You can also disable in words.
[00:09:09] We get this kind of filter.
[00:09:11] So what I want to tell you is that
[00:09:14] is that you can create interesting filter shapes here with the grid and these all past
[00:09:25] combinations and then use a macro here and just fake or use it as a cutoff frequency and create
[00:09:35] kind of your own filter shapes.
[00:09:37] And this becomes more and more interesting because you can use a lot of different all past modules
[00:09:42] here in different different configurations can invert this here.
[00:09:47] I maybe use two P here or three P here.
[00:09:51] Then you can say we add here another all past at the end.
[00:09:58] We blend this together here.
[00:10:06] Maybe invert this one here.
[00:10:10] Something like this.
[00:10:11] And yeah, you get interesting filter shapes that you can then move across the frequency spectrum.
[00:10:22] Let's use this one here.
[00:10:39] Another idea is instead of just using a cutoff knob here, you can also define some kind of
[00:10:45] morph knob.
[00:10:47] And then say I want to change here some of the configurations.
[00:10:53] Let's put this all the way up to 100% and then pull this down.
[00:10:57] Pull this down.
[00:10:59] Maybe do something like this here.
[00:11:04] Move this up.
[00:11:06] Just some minor modulations here.
[00:11:11] Right.
[00:11:12] And then we can try this out how this sounds.
[00:11:35] So this is the way of creating your own filter types inside of the grid.
[00:11:42] And you can see it's actually not very complicated.
[00:11:46] All you need to do is combine a dry signal with a bunch of all past modules inside of the grid.
[00:11:53] Maybe use invert here, a phase polarity invert the signal and then combine it back together.
[00:11:58] You can also maybe use a low pass in front of all of that here.
[00:12:04] So you just influence some upper frequencies and just leave the base alone.
[00:12:11] If you want to do that, you can also do some funny things like
[00:12:16] panning this to the left or to the right.
[00:12:17] So if you have some upper frequencies here filtered, you can say this is only filtered on
[00:12:23] the left side and this is only filtered on the right side.
[00:12:26] And you can see here you get some differences in the left and the right channel.
[00:12:30] So you can actually bring some whiteness to the sound in a very special way.
[00:12:35] Let's see how this sounds.
[00:12:58] Yeah, this is sometimes what I do.
[00:13:02] It's very fun to do and the idea of for this came actually from people asking and me using
[00:13:12] like here the powerhouse, the wavetable powerhouse serum.
[00:13:18] Because in serum you have some a lot of filter types in here, right?
[00:13:28] German low pass, I don't know what this is.
[00:13:30] It looks like this.
[00:13:32] So you have a lot of different filter types here with some different configuration.
[00:13:37] This is a comp filter here.
[00:13:38] And yeah, these filter types bring actually a lot of harmonics to the sound,
[00:13:47] to this wavetable synthesizer.
[00:13:49] I would say the wavetable synthesizer itself is actually not that interesting.
[00:13:54] You have a bunch of wavetables in here, but what I see most of the times people just use
[00:14:00] basic shapes like sine and saw, maybe something special here and there.
[00:14:05] But most of the times you want to stick with the regular wave shapes.
[00:14:09] And then they use very interesting filter shapes here.
[00:14:15] Maybe I find here the reverb filter.
[00:14:23] It's probably, yeah, it's the reverb filter.
[00:14:25] You get a lot of different harmonics with this one.
[00:14:27] It's probably feedback based.
[00:14:32] So yeah, if you put this then on a sound, right, you get
[00:14:37] interesting harmonics out of this instead of just having a saw.
[00:14:51] And then of course using a lot of FX here at the end, this distortion compression and so on.
[00:14:58] So yeah, this is where the idea came from.
[00:15:01] So I'll probably share in the next days some filters here I made inside of the grid.
[00:15:08] It's some interesting peaks here and there.
[00:15:12] Sadly, we can't still create interfaces for these filters.
[00:15:19] So it would be nice to have here some kind of neat interface here or maybe visualize
[00:15:25] how these filters look like in the frequency domain, maybe in the future.
[00:15:31] But you can do it.
[00:15:33] You can do it in the grid pretty easily with these all-pass modules here.
[00:15:37] This is what I want to show you.
[00:15:38] It's very neat to experiment with this.
[00:15:42] Because like I said, it's just a bunch of modules combined,
[00:15:45] try signal and the wet signal here and then you get these wild peaking frequencies.
[00:15:51] Okay, I think that's it for this video.
[00:15:54] I want to show you this.
[00:15:55] Let me know what you think.
[00:15:57] Leave a like, please and also subscribe to the channel.
[00:16:00] Thanks for watching and see you next video.
[00:16:03] Bye.