Bitwig Note Grid Tips and Tricks

Tutorial | Jan 02, 2025

In this video, I demonstrate advanced techniques for creating chord progressions and melodies in Bitwig Studio using the note grid, focusing on inversion, multiplication, and probability-based note selection. By employing modules like transposers, amplifiers, and sample-hold functions, I explore unique musical possibilities that go beyond traditional scale and harmony theories. If you have questions or want more tips, don't hesitate to reach out, and I look forward to sharing more creative ideas in future videos.

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Summary #

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

In this video, I welcome everyone to the year 2025 and express my desire to continue helping Bitwig Studio users explore creative musical possibilities. Building on the previous tutorial, where I demonstrated how to create simple chord progressions within Bitwig's Note Grid, I aim to provide further insights and techniques for expanding musical creativity using this powerful tool.

I start by detailing my setup, which involves a virtual keyboard positioned before the Note Grid. This setup allows viewers to see the keys I'm pressing on my MIDI keyboard and observe both the raw input and the altered output from the Note Grid. The goal is to show how these changes can inspire new musical ideas by breaking habitual patterns and fostering creativity.

The first technique I explore is inversion. By using an inversion module on pitch, the keyboard's output is reversed around a chosen axis, like C3. This means pressing keys upwards results in downward-sounding notes, and vice versa. This inversion can be a fantastic way to break free from muscle memory and discover new ideas or counter-melodies.

I then demonstrate how to shift the inversion axis to a different key using transpose modules before and after the inversion. This allows for experimenting with different tonal centers or combining the inverted output with the original pitch to achieve unique harmonic outcomes.

Another intriguing technique involves multiplication using the amplifier module. By multiplying pitch values, I can create intervallic relationships like stacking fifths, which are a fundamental aspect of harmony. I discuss the challenges of working within limited octaves and demonstrate a method to "wrap" pitches within a specified range using the phase wrapper module.

Furthermore, I delve into using ratios to achieve multiples or divisions of the input pitch. This manipulation allows for creating interesting harmonic content without adhering to traditional scales. I achieve dynamic note generation by moving the ratio and sending out gates every time the pitch changes, creating rhythmic interest from a single input note.

To further explore these ideas, I illustrate how to use the Bitwig Step Modulator to influence pitch and rhythm, experimenting with complex layering to achieve rich melodic textures. This approach offers a departure from conventional music theory, focusing instead on improvisational and exploratory musical creation.

Toward the end, I explore probability-based note selection using a merge module and probability modules. This allows for setting up scales and building melodies based on the likelihood of each note being selected, yielding dynamic and evolving musical patterns.

These techniques highlight the flexibility and depth of the Note Grid in Bitwig Studio, offering creative explorations beyond standard scale and chord functionalities. I encourage viewers to use these ideas to transcend beyond the piano roll, expanding their musical vocabulary with a hands-on and intuitive approach. As I wrap up the video, I express hope that these insights will spark inspiration for viewers, inviting them to share feedback, subscribe, and stay tuned for more content.

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 and also welcome to 2025 and a happy new year to everyone.
[00:00:06] And in the last video, I showed you how to create simple chord progressions inside of the note grid with a few simple ideas.
[00:00:14] And I thought maybe it's a good idea to show you some more because also I saw a lot of people recently bought Bitwig Studio, so it's maybe a good idea.
[00:00:24] So here we have the note grid in place and in front of the note grid, I'm using a virtual keyboard, this one here.
[00:00:30] So you can see what I'm typing or what I'm pressing on the MIDI keyboard so you can see the raw input.
[00:00:36] Right, and you can also see here the output after the note grid so you can see what's different, what's changed.
[00:00:45] Right.
[00:00:49] Okay, so that's the setup. So the easiest thing you can do in the note grid is, of course, to invert the keyboard.
[00:00:58] So we can just take an inversion module or invert module and use it on the pitch.
[00:01:04] So now the input signal is not the output signal anymore.
[00:01:10] So we can press your C3 and C3 is our axis, the mirror axis.
[00:01:15] So now when we go up one semitone here on this keyboard to C sharp, we end up on B.
[00:01:22] We go here to D, we end up on A sharp, right.
[00:01:27] So when we go up on the keyboard, we actually go down.
[00:01:39] We go down, we go up, so it's inversion, right.
[00:01:42] So the idea behind this is that it brings you out of your comfort zone.
[00:01:47] So sometimes you have muscle memory, you press the same notes, the same chords again on the keyboard all the time.
[00:01:54] And you want to break out of this, right, or maybe you have a melody and you want to find the counter melody.
[00:02:00] This is a very easy way of doing this. You just invert the keyboard.
[00:02:05] So the same notes on the keyboard, different outcome brings you out, gives you some new ideas, maybe.
[00:02:17] So that's an easy way of using the note grid, just as inversion module.
[00:02:22] And the next question probably is, how can I offset this axis to a different key?
[00:02:29] You can do this easily by using a transpose here in front of the invert and after the invert.
[00:02:35] So we go down here, two semitones, and here two semitones up, right.
[00:02:41] So this gives us the axis of D.
[00:02:44] So when we press D now, D is D, but then we go up, we go here down.
[00:02:49] Sometimes interesting, it's also here that D is the visual center of the keyboard, so it's maybe interesting.
[00:03:05] You can also combine this here with the original output or input, so the original note.
[00:03:13] [music]
[00:03:23] So if you like negative harmony or these kind of visual, centric ideas, that's something for you.
[00:03:33] So you can create also chords with this. We can also use here a third output.
[00:03:40] So here we just take D, which is the center, so we output this here at any time.
[00:03:45] [music]
[00:03:56] So maybe it's interesting here and there, you can also disable the note grid at any time.
[00:04:01] [music]
[00:04:04] Right, you just don't want to have it every time on maybe your melody or chord progression.
[00:04:12] You can just switch this on at certain times with the step mod or, you know, with the note FX selector or anything like this.
[00:04:20] So it's maybe interesting. Okay, so that's that.
[00:04:24] We can also do something like multiplication.
[00:04:30] So the easiest way of multiply something is to use the amplifier here.
[00:04:34] You can see down here in the corner, there's a small little multiplication symbol.
[00:04:39] So we can multiply this here by the maximum amount, which is 800%.
[00:04:44] And when we play now C3, we get C3, because C3 is in the grid always zero, right?
[00:04:52] That's the important takeaway also here.
[00:04:55] So now we go up one semitone to C#, right, to this note here.
[00:05:00] [music]
[00:05:04] You can see we land here on a different note.
[00:05:07] [music]
[00:05:09] We go up actually one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight semitones.
[00:05:15] So 800%, eight semitones. You can remember this, right?
[00:05:19] So we can type in here 700%, so now we end up on G.
[00:05:24] [music]
[00:05:34] So one semitone up always gives you seven semitones up.
[00:05:38] So we go up in fifths. So we can stack fifths easily.
[00:05:42] Maybe I should use here a polyphony, because at the moment it's in monophonic mode.
[00:05:47] So we can play multiple notes. Let's go 12 here.
[00:05:50] [music]
[00:05:55] Right, you can see I'm pressing here just three notes, just a semitone apart.
[00:06:02] But we get here the spread out chord.
[00:06:04] So this is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
[00:06:09] One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, right?
[00:06:12] So it's just stacking sevenths, fifths, sorry.
[00:06:16] [music]
[00:06:26] So we can experiment with this, because fifths are actually everything,
[00:06:31] yeah, all the harmony theory or functional harmony or the whole keyboard is built
[00:06:37] from the theory of fifths. So it's super interesting actually to play around with this.
[00:06:45] So one problem of this is of course that we are going out of the octaves pretty fast, right?
[00:06:53] So we go... [music]
[00:06:57] Right, and then we are out of octaves and we are, yeah, it's not audible anymore.
[00:07:02] So the idea here is of course to build the wrapper.
[00:07:05] And I made some videos about this already.
[00:07:08] You can use here the face wrapper for this.
[00:07:11] The wrapper wraps between zero and one.
[00:07:13] [music]
[00:07:16] But the pitch signal here is the maximum number is actually one.
[00:07:20] So we need to go past one to actually make use of the wrapper.
[00:07:23] So I'm multiplying this here and then using also division here after that.
[00:07:30] And I use a constant of 10, because 10 is the maximum number of octaves in Bitwig Studio, right?
[00:07:43] So then we go with the pitch signal in here
[00:07:46] and we wrap basically now everything between C3 and C4.
[00:07:51] So now it sounds like this.
[00:07:52] [music]
[00:07:59] So you can see when we go up here the keyboard, we don't end up here in these higher octaves.
[00:08:04] We stay between C3 and C4.
[00:08:07] [music]
[00:08:12] And one question I get all the time is how can I wrap not between C3 and C4.
[00:08:18] I want to wrap between C3 and C5.
[00:08:21] So you can go down to five here.
[00:08:23] And now everything is between.
[00:08:26] Let's move it here.
[00:08:28] C3 and C5.
[00:08:29] [music]
[00:08:39] So the notes are the same, but you are in the same octave all the time.
[00:08:43] So you don't, you know, go too high in pitch.
[00:08:46] So that's the idea.
[00:08:47] So just five here or 10 for one octave.
[00:08:51] We can also offset this of course again here.
[00:08:53] This is pretty easy with an octave over here.
[00:08:55] So here we wrap between C3 and C4.
[00:08:59] [music]
[00:09:02] But you can also move this down.
[00:09:03] [music]
[00:09:07] Here to C2 to C3.
[00:09:09] [music]
[00:09:17] Or one octifier.
[00:09:18] [music]
[00:09:19] Right.
[00:09:19] [music]
[00:09:21] So we can choose here with the octaver in which kind of octave you want to end up with this
[00:09:27] wrapping idea.
[00:09:29] [music]
[00:09:30] So yeah, a lot of possibilities already with this one in my opinion.
[00:09:33] [music]
[00:09:34] So here again, the center frequency is basically C3 again, right?
[00:09:39] So C3 is C4 here because we have plus one.
[00:09:44] So C3 is C3.
[00:09:45] [music]
[00:09:48] And when we go up one semitone, we end up on here on the next fifth above.
[00:09:53] But let's say you want to center it around another key, right?
[00:09:57] You can do this here also with the transpose.
[00:09:59] [music]
[00:10:02] And I'm kind of loving D-sharp minor.
[00:10:07] [music]
[00:10:11] So here I'm using a transpose.
[00:10:13] [music]
[00:10:14] So now I want to center this around D-sharp, right?
[00:10:18] So I'm pressing D-sharp and I get D-sharp here.
[00:10:20] [music]
[00:10:21] So one note higher is the fifth.
[00:10:25] [music]
[00:10:34] And then maybe try and combine this here with the original pitch.
[00:10:39] [music]
[00:10:51] It can be interesting.
[00:10:52] It's a bit too dissonant in my opinion here.
[00:10:54] But you can do it.
[00:10:56] So this is in a way to offset here also this amplifier idea.
[00:11:02] So it works exactly the same.
[00:11:03] You have to pull it down and then you have to push it up by the same amount here.
[00:11:07] And in this case here is three because we are going from C to D-sharp,
[00:11:12] which is one, two, three, right?
[00:11:14] So that's the idea behind it.
[00:11:15] Another crazy idea.
[00:11:17] It's not super crazy.
[00:11:20] But we can use here the ratio on the pitch signal, right?
[00:11:25] And the ratio gives you multiples of the input pitch here.
[00:11:29] And we just exchange a piano for, let's say, a Bitwig instrument
[00:11:38] because this supports MPE and micro-pitch and so on.
[00:11:44] So we can just use this.
[00:11:48] So what I want to do is hold a note here and we get the same note here.
[00:11:53] But we can also change the ratio.
[00:11:55] So this is now one octifier because it's twice the frequency.
[00:12:04] And this is three times the frequency, which is here a fifth and an octifier.
[00:12:10] We can also do the same here with the division.
[00:12:17] So we can divide and multiply the initial frequency.
[00:12:21] So my idea here was to maybe, let's say, we create a new audio clip
[00:12:31] or a note clip and then we bring in here a note.
[00:12:35] Maybe we make this a bit longer.
[00:12:39] Then we play this.
[00:12:45] Actually, something is playing here.
[00:12:47] Okay, so we have this and we want to change the ratio.
[00:12:56] But then again, we also want to play every time we change the ratio,
[00:13:01] we want to send out the gate.
[00:13:03] At the moment here, we send only a gate when the note starts right here at the beginning.
[00:13:08] So that's a bit boring.
[00:13:10] So we disconnect this here and we make a comparison.
[00:13:14] We use a math module here or maybe a logic module is maybe better.
[00:13:17] So is in equal and also a delay.
[00:13:21] So that's a very simple comparison here.
[00:13:27] And maybe make this a bit shorter.
[00:13:30] So this means when the pitch changes, when the pitch output changes here,
[00:13:38] to 0.1 to milliseconds earlier or later, send out the gate.
[00:13:45] So this looks like this.
[00:13:47] And also maybe can we change actually the output?
[00:14:06] Let's delete this here for what?
[00:14:16] I don't know why we still hear a sound.
[00:14:20] It shouldn't play anything.
[00:14:25] But we can now add here a step mode
[00:14:31] and say half note, maybe five steps here, randomize this.
[00:14:37] Then change here the ratio, maybe by four.
[00:14:40] I think this is enough.
[00:14:53] Maybe it's a bit too fast, so maybe make this a bit slower.
[00:15:01] And duplicate this here and say this plays seven steps, maybe a bit slower.
[00:15:07] Maybe randomize this too.
[00:15:10] And then we change here the division also by three.
[00:15:12] So it's all sent out around this main input note here, which is D.
[00:15:30] I hope this makes sense.
[00:15:43] So we use just two step modulators to change here the ratio here and here.
[00:15:48] And this one compares the output of this to the same output a few milliseconds earlier.
[00:15:54] And when the output is different, unequal, then send out the gate.
[00:15:59] So every time we change the pitch here with the step mods, we send also out the gate.
[00:16:03] So we create a note with this.
[00:16:05] And this is a very easy way of kind of creating interesting notes
[00:16:10] by just using the ratio here, multiples of the input note, which is this one here.
[00:16:16] We can also change this to a different note, so we can say we want to play here maybe a fifth lower.
[00:16:31] So we can say we want to play here maybe a fifth lower.
[00:16:39] And this sounds or this note here is very short,
[00:17:09] because we just sent out short bursts here.
[00:17:12] We can make this longer.
[00:17:13] I can show you this in our oscilloscope.
[00:17:22] But very short.
[00:17:25] And if you want to keep the sustain here, we just use this length trick.
[00:17:33] So we make this very short and then we use a knot.
[00:17:50] So that's the idea behind it.
[00:18:16] I haven't tried this yet, but maybe we can put this here into a note of X layer,
[00:18:20] duplicate this and use different steps.
[00:18:23] And then use a transposer here and push this maybe one of the floor.
[00:18:39] Maybe change the playback speed here or maybe an octa fire.
[00:18:55] So this is how we can create nice little melodies without using any scale.
[00:19:07] The only thing we are using here is multiples of the D sharp 3 frequency,
[00:19:14] just by pushing this up or down here by a maximum of three.
[00:19:17] Right, we go this or this and that's it.
[00:19:29] Yeah, and this is a very easy way of using the note grid, combining multiple things and then
[00:19:36] stacking stuff on top of each other and creating very complex rhythms and soundscapes without
[00:19:43] using any scale at all or using any piano roll at all.
[00:19:47] Right, because I see a lot of people complain about the piano roll.
[00:19:51] And when I ask what the problem is, they usually say, oh, we need some, you know,
[00:19:56] some chord generators in here or some chord functions and so on.
[00:20:02] And I agree it would be nice to have your some visual representations
[00:20:07] of what you do inside of the note grid.
[00:20:09] But you usually can do a lot of complex things with the note grid and also apply it to live input,
[00:20:17] which is, which I think it's very important in Cubase.
[00:20:21] You have this chord track, right?
[00:20:23] And you have to go through all these different chord functions.
[00:20:26] And then you select chords here and there, but it's not really live.
[00:20:30] It's not like you improvise on the fly.
[00:20:32] So here you can play around and see how it looks like when you add multiples of the same frequency
[00:20:38] or if you go up and down in fifths and combine different stack of fifths here and there or use
[00:20:43] negative harmony and stuff like this.
[00:20:47] So it's very fluid and very live and very hands-on.
[00:20:51] The only thing that is missing, in my opinion, is the visual representation here inside of the
[00:20:56] piano roll. So maybe they can come up with something to show you actually inside the
[00:21:01] note grid what you are doing on the note grid or on the piano roll.
[00:21:05] But in my opinion, the piano roll itself is pretty basic, pretty simple.
[00:21:10] And it does what it should do.
[00:21:15] It's pretty okay, in my opinion.
[00:21:18] But what people ask most of the times, it's actually some advanced stuff on top, right?
[00:21:24] Chord generators and chord stamps and inversion of the notes.
[00:21:30] I mean, you have here basic things like reverse that's in there, but more stuff like this, right?
[00:21:36] Yeah, that's the note grid. Maybe you have some more ideas.
[00:21:42] So another stupid idea is we have here a simple note grid input is equal to the output, right?
[00:21:50] But let's say instead of having all the notes from the keyboard, we want to select only a
[00:22:01] bunch of notes. So we can take here a merge and use some predefined pitches, right?
[00:22:10] So I can use a D sharp. Then I use here F, which is the scale of D sharp minor.
[00:22:19] Let's use F sharp, D sharp, A sharp, and maybe here C sharp.
[00:22:29] And we put this here to the nearest interpolation, of course.
[00:22:33] And we want to select these notes based on probabilities, right?
[00:22:38] So we can take here, let's say a clock, and we need a clock to scan.
[00:22:44] We go to 32 hertz here and use a probabilities module here.
[00:22:50] And disable here the phase input. So we scan through this whole probabilities thing, right?
[00:22:58] And we also scan here through this merge module with the same,
[00:23:04] yeah, with the same cable. You can see this here, right?
[00:23:09] And then we go into, let's say a sample and hold here, and we sample here the value of that
[00:23:17] with this probability thing. And we have to dial in here the same numbers. We have here six,
[00:23:23] so we go to six here, so we have six bars, right?
[00:23:27] So now you can say which kind of these notes you want to have or you want to select based
[00:23:33] on probability. So the probability for the root note here is probably pretty high, right?
[00:23:38] And then we want to select maybe F, maybe F sharp, maybe G, A sharp, which is the dominant.
[00:23:45] So the probability is probably high, and maybe this one, right?
[00:23:51] So you can decide and sample and hold based on probability here which kind of note is selected.
[00:23:57] And then we go here to the output, to the pitch output,
[00:24:00] and also use here sample and hold, and also use this one here.
[00:24:05] And then we can select or just play one note on the keyboard.
[00:24:08] And we select here a note, maybe use this here so we can see it.
[00:24:16] So it's A sharp at the moment. So D sharp.
[00:24:33] So now we have only D sharp because that's Diaz probability here.
[00:24:36] Or we want to select here the dominant all the time, right?
[00:24:41] So now it's 50/50 more or less.
[00:24:45] So it's a pretty simple note selector or pitch selector based on probability just built here
[00:24:54] inside of the grid. All you need to do is just press one note on the keyboard,
[00:25:00] and you can create melodies with that.
[00:25:02] And of course you can just resample this here, create a new channel,
[00:25:10] and then record everything from the note grid here.
[00:25:24] And yeah, you can put this here into a note clip and create some random sequences from that.
[00:25:39] So it's a very easy way of using a scale and then creating melodies
[00:25:46] from this scale here based on probabilities.
[00:25:49] In my opinion, super dope that you can do this in the grid.
[00:25:52] And you can see it's just a bunch of modules.
[00:25:55] It's not that complicated, right?
[00:25:58] So these are a bunch of tips.
[00:26:00] I probably have more coming up in the next weeks or so.
[00:26:05] But I think that's enough for just one video.
[00:26:09] It's almost 30 minutes.
[00:26:11] Yeah, if you have some questions, let me know.
[00:26:14] Leave me a thumbs up if you like the video.
[00:26:16] Also a subscription, of course.
[00:26:18] And I'll see you in the next video.
[00:26:20] Bye.
[00:26:21] [BLANK_AUDIO]