Pitch Shift in Bitwig 5.3

Tutorial | Dec 04, 2024

In this video, I explore the pitch shifter feature in Bitwig Studio 5.3, highlighting its potential beyond simple pitch shifting to create unique and experimental sound design. I demonstrate various techniques, such as modulating the grain rate and using phase modulation, which can produce interesting effects akin to physical modeling and FM synthesis. While not ideal for high-quality pitch correction, this tool shines in creative sound manipulation and offers endless possibilities for experimentation.

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Summary #

Maybe you don't watch the video, here are some important takeaways:

In this video, I delve into the pitch shifter feature of Bitwig Studio 5.3 within the Grid, expanding on my initial livestream discussion about this version. At first glance, the pitch shifter might seem like a straightforward tool for altering audio pitch, but it's much more versatile than it appears.

The core of the device is a large knob that controls pitch shifting by semitones, with a range of up to 48 semitones. However, I argue that the true beauty of the pitch shifter lies not in simple pitch changes—like shifting vocals up by 12 semitones—but in the creative potential it offers through the artifacts it can create.

The device includes several inputs and controls: a gain knob to adjust incoming audio volume, a phase modulation input for modulating the device's internal sine oscillator, and a pitch input for dynamic pitch shifting. Additionally, there's key tracking that can use an external keyboard to modify pitch shifting, though this is more complex than it initially seems.

A noteworthy feature is the mix knob, which blends the dry and wet signals, making it a valuable tool for balancing effects. I also discuss the grain rate control, which appears to slice audio into buffer chunks, somewhat like a sampler, and this can turn into a pitch at very small sizes.

Interestingly, you can input note names as well as frequencies for the grain rate, allowing for creative experimentation—especially within a certain musical scale. You can drive this input with an LFO or other modulation sources, effectively turning the pitch shifter into something akin to a physical modeling synth or even a grain delay.

Moreover, I showcase how multiple pitch shifters can be used in series for complex effects. For instance, combining different pitch shifts can yield unexpected results, creating sounds that range from slightly off-tune to entirely new textures and tones.

One fascinating application is using the phase modulation input with other oscillators, which can introduce FM synth-like characteristics or even transform the device into a tool for detailed sound design.

I also explore a way to maintain coherent pitch through key tracking. Essentially, the idea is to play a steady C3 note on a synthesizer and use the pitch shifter to transpose it based on the actual note played on your MIDI keyboard, ensuring the final output is harmonically correct.

Towards the end, I demonstrate a preset I developed, Auto-Tune, which utilizes the pitch shifter for rudimentary vocal correction. Using harmonic and transient splits, it tracks the pitch of vocals and attempts correction to a specific note. Although it's not as precise as dedicated auto-tuning software, it offers an interesting approach for creative effects.

To sum up, the pitch shifter in Bitwig Studio 5.3, while initially seeming like a basic tool, is a powerful device for creative sound design. From manipulating grain rates to exploring phase modulation and FM synthesis, it's packed with potential. Throughout the video, I invite viewers to share their thoughts, especially if they discover anything new or if they feel I've misrepresented any feature. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you in the next video!

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] Yo folks, welcome back to another video and today I want to talk about the pitch shift of Bitwig
[00:00:05] Studio 5.3 inside of the grid and I already talked about this in my initial live stream about Bitwig
[00:00:10] Studio 5.3. What I want to show you is some ideas around this pitch shifter which seems to be a very
[00:00:16] simple device but you can actually do a lot of different stuff with it and I would even say pitch
[00:00:22] shifting is not the biggest and the best feature of this pitch shifter. It's more like everything
[00:00:27] around it, right? So it's not like you want to take some vocals, pitch it up by 12 semitones and then
[00:00:34] expect you get the best quality out of it. You have a lot of artifacts then but for me that's the best
[00:00:42] outcome. You want to have artifacts, you want to have some creative results from devices and I really
[00:00:50] like this device here but I want to show you some ideas around it. So this device in itself is pretty
[00:00:56] simple. We have here a big knob in the middle which allows you to pitch shift audio signals by a
[00:01:02] certain amount of semitones. Let's say 12 semitones up, 12 semitones down or something like this. Maximum
[00:01:08] range is your 48 semitones and it tries to do this by using some kind of frequency shifting
[00:01:19] type of algorithm inside of this device here. I mean I just I can only guess. I haven't built it. I can only guess how it works.
[00:01:31] But I showed you some ideas around this in my dome filter video where I try to recreate a pitch shifter and the
[00:01:38] frequency shifter and the grid with just with the dome filter. Anyway, this is the pitch shifter here and we have here a
[00:01:44] gain knob that changes the volume going into the device. We have here a phase modulation input. We can
[00:01:50] phase modulate the internal sine oscillator of this device and you know like I said the last video about the dome filter I showed you how this kind of works or could kind of work inside of this device.
[00:02:02] Then we have here a pitch input so we can change the pitch shifting amount here with the signal going in.
[00:02:09] Maybe key tracking or maybe we use here a quantizer and some node sequences from inside of the grid and change this here on the fly.
[00:02:19] Then we have also key tracking here. We can enable so we can use an external keyboard to change actually the pitch shifting amount but it's a bit more complicated than that.
[00:02:29] But I'll show you this in a minute. Then we have a mix knob here so we can mix the dry and the wet signal. Pretty important. I think it's also
[00:02:36] the first device that has this kind of mix knob inside of the grid.
[00:02:40] But that's something you want to do all the time. Mix the dry and the wet signal. So pretty handy.
[00:02:46] Then we have here a grain rate and the grain rate is more or less I would guess that's also my guess that it chunks up the audio into multiple small parts like a sampler.
[00:02:58] So let's imagine like a sampler and there's a sample in there which is the buffer and then you change the looping length to a certain size in milliseconds.
[00:03:07] And if you make the smaller section then it loops faster than actually the size of a wavelength of a pitch.
[00:03:17] And you can see here the maximum frequency or grain rate is 100 hertz from 2 hertz up to 100 hertz.
[00:03:25] So they're already used to the unit of hertz instead of milliseconds.
[00:03:29] So we can dial in here a frequency.
[00:03:32] And let's say you pitch up here a signal by 12 semitones.
[00:03:36] And you dial in or you use here a polymer synthesizer.
[00:03:43] And we play a pitch of C3.
[00:03:45] You can see this here what I'm using on the keyboard.
[00:03:47] So we play the pitch of C3.
[00:03:50] Then we pitch it up by 12 semitones.
[00:03:53] Sounds like this.
[00:03:55] So we end up on C4 actually with the pitch because we shift up by 12 semitones.
[00:04:00] That's normal, right?
[00:04:01] But then you have this grain rate here.
[00:04:04] And we dial in the grain rate of something random.
[00:04:09] You can hear when the dial is down you can almost hear like the loop length, right?
[00:04:17] You can hear it.
[00:04:20] And this is the internal buffer.
[00:04:22] That's my guess.
[00:04:23] And you can change the size of this buffer by changing here the frequency or the rate.
[00:04:28] And then the rate or this buffer size becomes so small that it's a pitch in itself.
[00:04:40] Because the loop length is so small like a wavelength of a pitch.
[00:04:44] And then it almost sounds like a frequency shifter.
[00:04:54] And then the question is obviously what's the right frequency for this pitch shift, right?
[00:05:00] So you have to double click this and it snaps to 5.5 hertz for some reason.
[00:05:04] And then you enable here the adaptive grain rate and it changes it to the right size.
[00:05:11] That's my guess, right?
[00:05:13] But you can also disable this.
[00:05:17] And by the way, when this is enabled, you can still dial in the offset from this.
[00:05:22] But double click, I think that's the right grain size for this pitch shift.
[00:05:27] That's my guess.
[00:05:28] But you can also offset from this and then it shifts with it with this offset.
[00:05:33] Okay, so then we disable this here.
[00:05:37] And what we can do here is we can not only type in hertz, we can also type in node names.
[00:05:43] But the maximum grain rate is 100 hertz.
[00:05:46] We can only dial in or type in nodes that are below 100 hertz.
[00:05:51] For instance, here, C1.
[00:05:53] C1 has a frequency of 65.4 hertz.
[00:05:57] Or let's say C minus 1, something like this, right?
[00:06:02] So we can define a fixed grain rate frequency.
[00:06:07] And it makes sense if you play in one scale.
[00:06:10] Let's say you play in C major or C minor.
[00:06:13] Then the root or the fundamentals always C.
[00:06:16] And all these nodes you play in a Diatonic scale
[00:06:19] matches or kind of are compatible with C in general.
[00:06:26] So we can dial in here a very low C, which is just a subdivision.
[00:06:31] And equally, I mean, it's C3 by 5 divided by 5 or 6 or something like this.
[00:06:39] So it's compatible with all the Cs on top.
[00:06:44] It's just a multiple of that.
[00:06:46] So we can type in here C minus 1 for instance, or C minus 2.
[00:06:50] Wait a minute, C minus 2.
[00:06:56] And then we have a grain size that is compatible with the fundamental of your scale.
[00:07:09] It's not perfect, but it kind of works.
[00:07:10] We can also drive this here with a signal input.
[00:07:15] Of course, we can take for instance here an LFO
[00:07:19] and modulate this here.
[00:07:22] And then when we use the input jack, you can see it switches to a different unit.
[00:07:26] Now we have here divisions for that.
[00:07:33] So 1:1 is basically, I guess, input signal is then exactly what you are using internally.
[00:07:41] And then you can make subdivisions from that.
[00:07:44] Something like this.
[00:07:46] Let's use this one here, and it hurts.
[00:07:57] And now it's not a pitch shift anymore, right?
[00:08:06] It sounds like physical modeling already just by modulating this here.
[00:08:12] It's kind of weird.
[00:08:13] This is the original signal.
[00:08:26] So like I said, it's not just a pitch shifter.
[00:08:30] It's actually a sound design tool, in my opinion.
[00:08:33] Very great.
[00:08:34] Let's dial in here a different ratio.
[00:08:37] And now it sounds like a grain delay.
[00:08:55] You can imagine if you combine this here with multiple pitch shifters.
[00:08:59] So let's say you put this in a serial here.
[00:09:02] And then do the same thing.
[00:09:04] So here we pitch by 12 semitones.
[00:09:06] Also here.
[00:09:06] It pitches even more up.
[00:09:11] Let's do another one.
[00:09:12] Yeah.
[00:09:19] Let's say we pitch this down by 12 semitones.
[00:09:24] Mix.
[00:09:24] One percent.
[00:09:25] Let's see how this sounds.
[00:09:26] Here we go.
[00:09:27] Also 12 down.
[00:09:28] That's too much.
[00:09:37] And then we mix this here back together with the original signal.
[00:09:40] Actually you can use here this mixer.
[00:09:42] Let me put on this convolution reverb.
[00:09:55] And then maybe here delay too.
[00:10:12] We can do here.
[00:10:17] The first one is doing this physical modeling thing we did before.
[00:10:21] And it comes.
[00:10:29] Kind of dissonant but also interesting.
[00:10:43] Anyway.
[00:10:43] I'm drifting away.
[00:10:44] So yeah.
[00:10:48] That's the.
[00:10:48] That's the thing you can do here with the grain rate.
[00:10:51] So try this out.
[00:10:53] Give it a try.
[00:10:53] Modulate this here with all kinds of input signals.
[00:10:59] Also of course.
[00:11:00] Audio signals.
[00:11:01] So we can take here the audio signal.
[00:11:04] Input not only for the pitch shifter itself.
[00:11:06] But you can also drive here the grain rate with this.
[00:11:08] It gives you another great sound or idea.
[00:11:19] Also play around here with the pitch shifting.
[00:11:20] Just by one small amount.
[00:11:25] Or maybe big amounts in the negative range.
[00:11:28] The pitch.
[00:11:29] That's a nice bass in there.
[00:11:44] Okay.
[00:11:46] So this is also possible.
[00:11:48] We can also use here a sine oscillator.
[00:11:50] Uh.
[00:11:53] Pitch.
[00:11:53] Key tracking is on.
[00:11:54] Right.
[00:11:55] Use this here.
[00:11:57] Maybe not too much.
[00:12:07] Maybe let's go for 24.
[00:12:09] And then you can use here on the sine oscillator.
[00:12:21] Also subdivisions.
[00:12:22] Okay.
[00:12:30] So.
[00:12:31] Let's leave this here for a moment.
[00:12:33] So this is the grain rate.
[00:12:34] With the grain rate.
[00:12:35] You can do a lot of interesting effects.
[00:12:37] Like I said.
[00:12:37] You change the buffer size on the fly.
[00:12:40] You can make it exactly match the frequency of your fundamental.
[00:12:43] You can make it match the pitch shifting target here.
[00:12:48] Pretty dope actually.
[00:12:49] And then when you play around here.
[00:12:52] With the pitch shifting.
[00:12:53] Then you get different results.
[00:12:55] Different overtones.
[00:12:56] Different artifacts.
[00:12:57] It almost sounds like physical modeling at some point.
[00:13:02] Um.
[00:13:02] Yeah.
[00:13:03] That's it.
[00:13:03] Then there's something here.
[00:13:05] Like the face modulation input.
[00:13:08] And like I said in the beginning.
[00:13:09] There's a sine oscillator here.
[00:13:11] Involved with the pitch shifting.
[00:13:12] You audio modulate it with the original signal.
[00:13:15] With the dump filter output.
[00:13:16] And then you eliminate the um the side bands.
[00:13:20] And then you are left with the pitch shifting signal.
[00:13:24] And so on.
[00:13:25] So this this is roughly how it works.
[00:13:27] But you can um phase modulate here.
[00:13:30] The um sine oscillator.
[00:13:32] Yeah.
[00:13:32] Let's say with another sine oscillator.
[00:13:48] And here we haven't even dialed in a pitch yet.
[00:13:51] But you can still um phase modulate the original audio signal.
[00:13:55] Let's go for 12.
[00:14:10] Um.
[00:14:19] For me that's probably interesting to create some nice bass sounds.
[00:14:27] Go a bit deeper here.
[00:14:37] So then it becomes like an FM synthesizer kind of type sound.
[00:14:41] Um.
[00:14:41] These brassy sounds you can create with this.
[00:14:44] Then you can exchange this here probably for wavetable.
[00:14:57] Uh.
[00:14:58] And remember um we use here an audio signal input.
[00:15:12] So here I'm just using a polymer synthesizer with a simple uh wave form as an output.
[00:15:19] But you can use songs um samples or whatever and then phase modulate or FM modulate these signals
[00:15:27] on the fly here with the pitch shifter.
[00:15:28] Pretty dope and pretty easy to do.
[00:15:30] Um.
[00:15:31] So that's that.
[00:15:33] I want to also give you here an idea about this shifting thing here.
[00:15:38] Pitch uh or key tracking.
[00:15:39] That's that's how it's how it's called.
[00:15:41] Um.
[00:15:42] So with this it's a bit complicated.
[00:15:44] Because it looks like you actually end up on the frequency you are using on the keyboard.
[00:15:51] So let's say.
[00:15:52] I'm playing uh.
[00:15:54] What do I play?
[00:15:55] A.
[00:15:56] I'm playing A.
[00:15:57] Uh.
[00:15:59] Put this all back.
[00:16:00] Let's go here to this frequency.
[00:16:07] So I'm playing A on my keyboard right?
[00:16:10] So what do you guess where do I end up with this pitch shifter here?
[00:16:15] Because the key tracking is on.
[00:16:17] It's not A.
[00:16:21] This is the original input frequency.
[00:16:23] This is where we end up.
[00:16:29] So.
[00:16:29] It's always relative.
[00:16:32] This kind of uh thing here.
[00:16:34] So we play.
[00:16:35] A on the keyboard.
[00:16:38] So we play A on this polymer synthesizer.
[00:16:40] And then we go into the fx grid here.
[00:16:43] This A.
[00:16:44] Pitched signal goes in the pitch shifter.
[00:16:47] And here we have key tracking on.
[00:16:49] So because we are playing A.
[00:16:51] And this one here is expecting no pitch shift at C3.
[00:16:57] because this is zero.
[00:16:58] But we are playing A.
[00:17:00] Which is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine semitones higher than C3.
[00:17:08] Which means our A signal that we are playing on this polymer is um.
[00:17:14] Yeah.
[00:17:15] What was it?
[00:17:17] One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
[00:17:21] Nine semitones higher.
[00:17:23] Or pitched up by this amount.
[00:17:26] Right.
[00:17:26] So we end up on one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
[00:17:32] So we end up here on F sharp.
[00:17:34] So this is where we end up.
[00:17:37] So it's always relative to C3 more or less.
[00:17:40] And that's because of how the grid works.
[00:17:44] And C3 is actually a value of zero inside of the grid.
[00:17:47] I can show you this here.
[00:17:48] Put the pitch in and read out.
[00:17:53] It may be an oscilloscope so you can see a graphic.
[00:18:00] Okay.
[00:18:01] So I use your C3.
[00:18:02] C3 is zero.
[00:18:04] It's also a middle line.
[00:18:05] If I go up here and pitch.
[00:18:09] Right.
[00:18:10] The value goes up and also here, you can see this, that the signal goes up.
[00:18:14] And the more the signal goes up, the more you pitch then here, because this is what it uses internally.
[00:18:19] Or you can also use here, this input.
[00:18:21] Do it this way.
[00:18:23] It's basically the same thing.
[00:18:29] And yeah, the higher you have a difference between C3 and the key you are pressing, the more shifting you do in terms of semitones.
[00:18:41] Right.
[00:18:41] And yeah, this, this is how it works.
[00:18:45] And to make actually sense of this or make something useful with this, but this is that you actually
[00:18:52] leave the polymer playing on the same note of C3.
[00:18:56] Okay.
[00:18:56] So we can do this by, let's disable the FxGrid for a month.
[00:19:00] We can switch off here to key tracking of this polymer synthesizer.
[00:19:04] So now we can play any note on the keyboard, but it's always C3.
[00:19:09] Right.
[00:19:11] So if I have this on.
[00:19:12] Right.
[00:19:14] Key track.
[00:19:15] But now it's always C3.
[00:19:18] So the pitch shifter always gets C3 as an input.
[00:19:21] And when we enable here the key tracking, we always pitch from the same basic pitch or from the same
[00:19:29] fundamental pitch, which is C3.
[00:19:31] So now it makes sense.
[00:19:34] So let's dial this in here.
[00:19:35] Also disable here this for a moment.
[00:19:44] Okay.
[00:19:44] We have to use the adaptive grain rate probably.
[00:19:46] So every pitch I play now is referencing from C3 relative to C3.
[00:20:00] But because we don't pitch the polymer here, this always outputs C3.
[00:20:04] So it's correct.
[00:20:05] So if you put this off here or switch this off.
[00:20:09] Right.
[00:20:10] It's always the same pitch.
[00:20:11] So instead of changing the wavetable oscillator here in terms of pitch,
[00:20:17] we leave it on the same pitch and then we use the pitch shifter to actually shift it to a different
[00:20:23] note to the correct note or to the note we are playing on the keyboard.
[00:20:27] So you have already a different kind of synthesis or synthesizer type of thing.
[00:20:42] And then you leave this here at an adaptive grain rate and it changes with the pitch.
[00:20:51] And here you can dial in an offset.
[00:20:53] And if it's all the way up here, right?
[00:21:00] It's almost doesn't matter what kind of pitch you play.
[00:21:03] Because it's always audio rate.
[00:21:09] It becomes more like an passive synthesizer.
[00:21:15] And if you pull this down, then of course you have more like correct pitches.
[00:21:19] So then you can hear, of course, the grain rate here at the pitches.
[00:21:31] Right.
[00:21:33] You can click this pitch shift device on the left side here.
[00:21:35] You have grain fade.
[00:21:37] So you can fade between these buffers and you can also hear this.
[00:21:48] So, like I said, so many possibilities to shape the sound here.
[00:22:10] It's just five devices or 10 devices in one.
[00:22:15] I can't stress this enough.
[00:22:19] Then we have here also use linear frequency modulation.
[00:22:25] When enabled, does linear frequency modulation instead of phase modulation with the second import.
[00:22:30] Note that FM is only possible when pitch shifting is occurring.
[00:22:36] which means here you have to dial in a pitch shift at some point, right?
[00:22:40] So with this linear FM, you get some very dissonant sounds, I would guess.
[00:22:47] Let's use a sine input here.
[00:22:50] and switch this on.
[00:23:03] I mean, this also sounds like, yeah, a great way of creating percussion sounds and these type of metallic sounds.
[00:23:27] Yeah, linear FM also possible with this device.
[00:23:32] Like I said in the beginning, this is everything but a pitch shifter.
[00:23:36] I probably use this for all kinds of interesting sounds, but not for pitch shifting.
[00:23:44] I probably also too, but you know, you know what I mean.
[00:23:46] It's kind of crazy.
[00:23:49] Then we can also do something
[00:23:53] interesting with this.
[00:23:56] And someone brought this up, I think in the Bitwig Discord, but I made a preset for it.
[00:24:03] I can't remember the name, but it was someone in the Discord.
[00:24:07] Let me use here my microphone input.
[00:24:10] Microphone one.
[00:24:14] Mute this here for a moment.
[00:24:16] And then let's use here recording.
[00:24:24] We have here a very nice vocal that I just sung into the microphone.
[00:24:29] Let's repeat this.
[00:24:30] Yeah, that's perfect.
[00:24:34] So we can use here a preset called Auto-Tune.
[00:24:39] And it looks like this here.
[00:24:41] It uses more or less here also the transient split.
[00:24:45] So the transient split splits spectrally the sound into attack and tones.
[00:24:51] And I'm also only using tones.
[00:24:53] And then also a harmonic split to track the fundamental of my voice.
[00:24:59] And then I feed this into here the zero crossings module
[00:25:06] to track actually the pitch of that and extract to the notes.
[00:25:10] And then I'm going into a pitch quantizer.
[00:25:13] And I only want to pitch everything that goes into that to see, right?
[00:25:19] We want to only get one pitch.
[00:25:21] And then we use the average.
[00:25:24] And then we just subtract the pitch that I'm singing from the pitch I want to have.
[00:25:30] And then I use the difference for the pitch shifter input here.
[00:25:35] And then we can kind of make this even.
[00:25:43] Oh, great. Wonderful.
[00:25:44] Right, so you can make an Auto-Tune with this.
[00:25:54] But like I said, the pitch shifter is not like a perfect tool to do that.
[00:26:01] The focus on Auto-Tune is completely different.
[00:26:04] It's on quality.
[00:26:05] It's only on vocals.
[00:26:07] And this device here, it's more like a creative effect that you can use in all kinds of directions.
[00:26:13] But it also does rudimentary pitch shifting.
[00:26:20] This one here is also free.
[00:26:25] I have this on my GitHub for some weeks.
[00:26:30] But I'll put you the link in the description below if you want to try this out.
[00:26:35] But yeah, this was kind of my overview of the pitch shifter.
[00:26:41] And I'm pretty sure there are more things coming out of this.
[00:26:45] More videos for this the more I use it.
[00:26:48] For me, like I said, perfect device for sound designing and creating interesting sounds
[00:26:56] just with these parameters here and using these input signals creatively.
[00:27:02] Okay, if you have some questions, please let me know in the comments down below.
[00:27:06] If you have found something out.
[00:27:09] If I did something wrong.
[00:27:10] If I did explain something wrong.
[00:27:12] And I'm pretty sure I did explain something wrong.
[00:27:15] Then let me know.
[00:27:19] Okay.
[00:27:20] Thanks for watching.
[00:27:21] See you in the next video and goodbye.