Long Endless Looper in Bitwig

Tutorial | Feb 10, 2025

In this video, I explored Bitwig Studio by using the Delay 1 device to create extended looping effects without relying on a VST. By chaining multiple delay units and incorporating quantization, I achieved synchronized, polyrhythmic loops that can be layered to produce ambient tracks effortlessly. I shared this technique as a straightforward yet powerful way to innovate within Bitwig Studio, inviting viewers to try it themselves and share their experiences.

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Summary #

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

In this video, I shared an interesting technique I discovered in Bitwig Studio, which I think will be valuable for those exploring creative sound design. After my last video on OpenDAR, which was well-received, I wanted to emphasize that while I'll continue covering OpenDAR, I'll also be producing content on Bitwig Studio, as I haven't switched my digital audio workstation (DAW) allegiance.

Today, I'll show you something I recently experimented with. It’s a straightforward technique, yet I have never showcased it on this channel. You'll also get a second view of my keyboard in this video, allowing you to see exactly what I'm playing, as that's quite crucial here. I started with a sound source in Bitwig using Piano Tech to ensure it sounds right.

My testing led me to create loops without using a virtual studio technology (VST) plugin. I experimented with Bitwig's Delay 1 device, which has been around since early versions of the software. You can set it by seconds, milliseconds, or time-based settings. For instance, setting it to 3/16th notes makes the delay dependent on your BPM, providing a relatively short echo.

To extend this delay, I chained multiple Delay 1 devices together. Each additional Delay 1 added another bar, thus lengthening the loop. By increasing the feedback volume, I enabled the loop to repeat endlessly. Initial trials were without a metronome, leading to off-grid loops. So, I utilized a quantizer to align everything perfectly on a grid, thus creating rhythmic loops in real time without manual adjustments.

Subsequently, I demonstrated combining these delays into an effects chain, using varied delay lengths to create polyrhythmic loops. For instance, I set up three bars of delay and experimented with adding more for variation—up to six bars. By feeding different audio inputs into each layer and using front-end tool devices, I crafted evolving loops.

Further, I experimented by switching the sound source from piano to synths, using additional effects like reverb and LFO for evolving textures. Each delay chain can be augmented with effects like noise or filters to alter the sound with each feedback iteration, creating complex soundscapes.

Finally, I suggested recording these sessions via the master record feature in Bitwig Studio, allowing for sampling or further project integration. This multi-delay technique is a simple yet powerful trick for creating ambient tracks quickly and offers many creative possibilities.

I wrapped up by encouraging viewers to let me know if they've tried similar techniques and to share their thoughts on this approach. I appreciated their support, asked for likes and subscriptions, and promised to continue sharing such insights in the future.

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] So the last video about OpenDAR was pretty successful.
[00:00:05] It was going like this.
[00:00:07] So a lot of people are interested in an open source
[00:00:10] door or OpenDAR.
[00:00:12] And I will continue to make videos about OpenDAR, of course,
[00:00:15] in the future, when there are some updates,
[00:00:17] keep you up to date.
[00:00:19] But I also make, of course, Bitwig Studio videos.
[00:00:22] So this will continue.
[00:00:24] It's not like that I'm switching doors or anything
[00:00:26] like this, right?
[00:00:27] So today, I show you something in Bitwig Studio.
[00:00:30] Because yesterday, I tried something.
[00:00:32] And it's pretty interesting.
[00:00:33] It's pretty simple, straightforward.
[00:00:36] And I have probably never shown this on this channel.
[00:00:39] So I also give you here a second view to my keyboard
[00:00:44] so you can see what I'm playing, because that's
[00:00:47] very important, actually.
[00:00:50] Let me switch here to this one.
[00:00:51] OK.
[00:00:52] So here in Bitwig, we want to use, first, a sound source.
[00:00:58] So I use a piano tech.
[00:00:59] Let's use this one.
[00:01:03] Let's see how it sounds.
[00:01:07] So it kind of works.
[00:01:14] OK.
[00:01:15] So yesterday, I want to create some kind of loopings or loops.
[00:01:20] And I didn't want to use a VST.
[00:01:25] So I thought about, let's try out the delay one.
[00:01:29] So this delay is pretty old.
[00:01:31] It's around since the beginning of Bitwig Studio.
[00:01:35] And we can choose between here seconds or milliseconds.
[00:01:41] But we can also use a time-based setting here.
[00:01:44] So we can choose three 16 nodes of delay,
[00:01:49] which means this is dependent on the BPM.
[00:01:53] So three 16 nodes of delay are pretty short.
[00:01:56] So let's mix any other dry signal.
[00:01:57] You can hear it.
[00:01:58] It's a pretty short delay.
[00:02:03] But we can also choose 16 16 nodes, which is actually one bar.
[00:02:08] And when we have here this filter completely open,
[00:02:19] and we pull up this feedback volume to 0 dB
[00:02:25] and play something into the buffer,
[00:02:31] we can hear it plays endlessly without me playing on the keyboard.
[00:02:37] But one bar is pretty short.
[00:02:46] It's basically nothing.
[00:02:48] It's very short.
[00:02:49] So my idea was, how can I make this buffer actually longer?
[00:02:53] And you can do by just putting here another delay one
[00:02:57] into the FBFX into the feedback chain.
[00:03:03] So in here, we also choose 16 16 nodes, which is one bar.
[00:03:07] Mix all the way up, feedbacks all the way down,
[00:03:09] and filters all completely open.
[00:03:12] So now we have here a delay of one bar and another bar.
[00:03:16] So two bars.
[00:03:18] And let me play something here.
[00:03:19] One bar delay, two bars delay.
[00:03:26] You can also choose three.
[00:03:28] You can add as many as you want, of course.
[00:03:32] So now we have one, two, three bars of delay.
[00:03:43] So three full bars of delay, which is very long.
[00:03:49] And we can do now the same thing as before.
[00:03:51] We can say feedback up, maybe 0 dB,
[00:03:55] or maybe let's say on each iteration of the delay,
[00:03:59] we go 0.3 dB down in volume.
[00:04:03] So let's play something here.
[00:04:04] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:04:17] And you can hear it's basically not looping very well,
[00:04:21] because I don't know the timing.
[00:04:24] There's no metronome to play to.
[00:04:28] So it's pretty out of the grid.
[00:04:33] So my idea yesterday was to actually play something
[00:04:36] without using the metronome.
[00:04:38] I'm using a quantizer, and say quantize everything,
[00:04:44] every incoming node to an eight-node grid.
[00:04:47] So now I can't play out of the beat grid with my keyboard,
[00:04:51] because everything is quantized on the fly.
[00:04:55] So I can now do the same thing here.
[00:04:56] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:05:07] You can hear, I don't play anything, you can see it.
[00:05:12] Plays perfectly in time, so the loop is tight, it's synced.
[00:05:18] You can even switch on here the metronome.
[00:05:29] So it's perfectly aligned.
[00:05:31] Just using this quantizer here in front of the piano.
[00:05:34] And this loops kind of endlessly.
[00:05:37] Maybe we go down here to the volume over time.
[00:05:42] And now you can feed some more audio
[00:05:47] into this three-bar long loop, or maybe an octave lower.
[00:06:03] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:06:29] Right?
[00:06:30] We can also change the sound source here
[00:06:33] to something different, or maybe use re-burp, push this up,
[00:06:43] and then feature this piano into this re-burp,
[00:06:46] and then into the delay buffer, the other sounds.
[00:06:52] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:07:19] Sounds fantastic.
[00:07:20] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:07:28] OK, let's switch this off.
[00:07:30] Actually, you can't delete the buffer.
[00:07:33] You have to pull the feedback down.
[00:07:37] So what we can do now is we can put this into an FX layer.
[00:07:42] Use Control-NG.
[00:07:49] And here we have three bars of delay.
[00:07:52] Let's actually remove this.
[00:07:54] So here we have three bars of delay.
[00:07:57] So we duplicate this here, let's say three bars here.
[00:08:01] So here we do three bars and half a bar of delay.
[00:08:12] So a different length.
[00:08:14] We have them polyrhythms at the end.
[00:08:16] So that's the idea.
[00:08:18] And here maybe we do something a bit shorter.
[00:08:28] We do maybe two, or maybe one bar and a half, or three quarters.
[00:08:38] So yeah, let's try this one.
[00:08:40] Then we can use a tool device in front,
[00:08:43] and we don't want to feed anything into this layer here.
[00:08:48] And maybe nothing in this layer, only in this layer.
[00:08:52] We also push up here the mix and use this mix instead.
[00:08:57] We also need this here.
[00:09:02] OK, so now we want to record first
[00:09:12] into the three bars layer here.
[00:09:15] So we push up the volume, so we feed something into the delay.
[00:09:19] And we push up here the feedback to maybe minus 0.1.
[00:09:26] And we can place something into the loop.
[00:09:28] OK, pull this down, then we place something in this loop.
[00:09:47] That's the idea.
[00:09:50] And maybe without the reverb this time.
[00:09:53] And one octave lower.
[00:09:57] Yeah.
[00:10:15] And then we place something here into this,
[00:10:18] which is actually three bars.
[00:10:20] It's one bar, one bar, and one fourth, or three fourths.
[00:10:30] Feedback up, and this up.
[00:10:40] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:11:05] OK, so let's try another one.
[00:11:09] Delay one, and make this one here a bit longer.
[00:11:14] And this is OK.
[00:11:24] Duplicate four, five, six.
[00:11:31] Yeah, let's stick with six.
[00:11:33] Don't make it too long.
[00:11:36] This goes up, feedback up.
[00:11:41] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:12:11] And then you create layers upon layers
[00:12:15] with different loop lengths, and you
[00:12:17] have this kind of what's it called, audio overdub.
[00:12:25] That you can use.
[00:12:26] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:12:45] OK, feedback goes up.
[00:12:50] This is all down.
[00:12:52] OK.
[00:12:53] Now we can, instead of piano, we can maybe use a synth,
[00:13:15] and reverb, or maybe use a union, this one,
[00:13:30] and a bit of delay, or LFO.
[00:13:33] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:13:47] This should be fine.
[00:13:48] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:14:18] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:14:42] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:15:00] Oh, it's a bit too loud.
[00:15:01] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:15:06] Yeah, of course, you can use inside of these chains
[00:15:09] some more audio effects to degrade on every iteration
[00:15:14] of the feedback loop.
[00:15:16] Maybe put noise on it slightly, and then it
[00:15:20] gets noisier with each iteration,
[00:15:25] or maybe use the filters here.
[00:15:26] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:15:56] Yeah, and it's basically synchronized here still.
[00:16:02] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:16:11] So you can record this here with the master record feature.
[00:16:13] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:16:25] And then use it as a sample for an extract project or whatever.
[00:16:30] So this is what I did yesterday, and I think it's really nice
[00:16:33] just to use multiple delay ones and chain them together here,
[00:16:39] stack them, nest them, and you get a nice, big, long,
[00:16:45] polyrhythmic looping device just with this.
[00:16:52] It's very nice to use.
[00:16:54] It's very fun to use.
[00:16:55] You can hear, you can create ambient tracks
[00:16:58] with this in no time.
[00:16:59] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:17:24] OK, so yeah, that's it.
[00:17:25] This is what I want to show you.
[00:17:27] This is what I wanted to share with you.
[00:17:29] Let me know what you think.
[00:17:30] If you already do this, let me know.
[00:17:33] I think it's a great trick.
[00:17:35] It's very simple, straightforward,
[00:17:37] and it leads to a lot of interesting and cool results.
[00:17:44] Thanks for watching.
[00:17:46] Leave a like, leave subscriptions here next time.
[00:17:49] Bye.
[00:17:49] [MUSIC PLAYING]