Bitwig is the best DAW for Beginners & Experts

[00:00:00] Hey, welcome back.
[00:00:02] So I talked a lot of bad things about Bitwig Studio
[00:00:05] in the recent videos, or let's not say bad things,
[00:00:08] but I had some criticism for certain topics here and there,
[00:00:12] and I guess that's okay.
[00:00:13] But with this video, I want to focus on the good parts.
[00:00:15] I want to show you why I love Bitwig Studio,
[00:00:18] why I use it or still use it, why you should use it too,
[00:00:21] and why it's great for beginners.
[00:00:23] And the biggest feature for me still,
[00:00:27] no matter what they implement in terms of specific features,
[00:00:30] which I not really like most of the times
[00:00:33] because it's tailored to one specific workflow,
[00:00:36] which I don't use, which I don't need, and so on.
[00:00:39] So the biggest feature for me still is modularity,
[00:00:42] and I don't talk about this kind of normal modularity,
[00:00:46] I talk about hands-on modularity,
[00:00:49] which is something you can do on the fly, on the get go.
[00:00:52] You have, or you create a track, you create a song,
[00:00:55] you create a sound, and you need something unique.
[00:00:58] And in Bitwig, you can create an unique instrument,
[00:01:02] unique audio effect on the fly,
[00:01:04] without going into coding, scripting,
[00:01:08] or other visual languages like MaxDSP.
[00:01:12] You can do it on the fly with ease and with fun,
[00:01:17] and also at the same time, you learn how certain
[00:01:20] VST instruments work and how to replace them,
[00:01:24] and how to make them unique.
[00:01:27] That's very important in my opinion,
[00:01:28] that you have unique instruments,
[00:01:31] because most of the times people use the same VST instruments,
[00:01:34] or even the same presets, everything sounds the same,
[00:01:38] and also with AI, right, everything sounds the same,
[00:01:41] so it's boring.
[00:01:42] So why not create unique audio instruments,
[00:01:45] audio effects for yourself?
[00:01:47] And they don't need to be right, or correct.
[00:01:53] Sometimes it's very interesting
[00:01:54] when you have something going off the rails,
[00:01:58] and that's where it gets interesting.
[00:02:01] Anyway, so I want to give you some basic examples
[00:02:06] why you should use Bitwig Studio, how I use it,
[00:02:08] and why I think it's great.
[00:02:09] And it's probably more aimed at beginners,
[00:02:13] or people that are new to Bitwig Studio.
[00:02:16] So I want to give you here a rough example.
[00:02:18] So let's say you want to create a track,
[00:02:20] and you need, of course, some kind of sound source
[00:02:23] and synthesizer.
[00:02:24] Here we have a very basic one called Polymer,
[00:02:28] and that's a basic subtractive synthesizer.
[00:02:31] We have all the components for a subtractive synthesizer.
[00:02:33] We have an oscillator here,
[00:02:34] we have a filter, and we have an envelope.
[00:02:36] We also have an envelope here of the filter,
[00:02:39] so we can open up the filter over time.
[00:02:42] We have a sub-oscillator, we have a bit of noise,
[00:02:44] we have here a low-card, some output gain,
[00:02:47] and panning, and so on.
[00:02:49] And you can see already, it's very simple, very basic,
[00:02:54] but it's modular, and you can exchange all the things.
[00:02:57] So in front of the device, we have here
[00:03:01] so-called modulators, we can just remove them.
[00:03:04] Inside of the device itself, we have an oscillator here,
[00:03:08] which is a wavetable oscillator,
[00:03:10] and the wavetable oscillator in itself is very modular
[00:03:13] because we can change the index,
[00:03:14] we can change the wavetable, right,
[00:03:17] for a completely different sound.
[00:03:19] So we can exchange the wavetable,
[00:03:24] we can modify the wavetable here,
[00:03:27] remove DC offset, remove the fundamental,
[00:03:29] which is the lowest partial.
[00:03:31] Maybe I'll open up here a spectrum analyzer.
[00:03:34] Spectrum, this one here,
[00:03:41] and we can open up this in the bigger window, nice.
[00:03:44] So we can use here, remove fundamental, right?
[00:03:49] This is this partial here.
[00:03:51] Can just remove it, which is really nice to have.
[00:03:56] We have unison to utilize multiple voices,
[00:03:59] slightly detuned.
[00:04:00] Okay, so in itself, the oscillator,
[00:04:10] the wavetable oscillator is very modular,
[00:04:12] but we can also exchange the complete thing, right?
[00:04:16] The whole oscillator here for something else,
[00:04:18] like a sine oscillator, triangle oscillator,
[00:04:20] or we can use a scroll where we can draw
[00:04:22] in our own wave shapes here, something like this,
[00:04:26] and can play it on the fly.
[00:04:32] Very nice to have.
[00:04:33] So we can exchange the oscillator,
[00:04:35] we can also exchange the filter here.
[00:04:36] So if we don't like the silent key filter for some reason,
[00:04:39] and also the filter itself is kind of modular
[00:04:42] because we can exchange it the type,
[00:04:44] high pass, eight, low pass, whatever you want to use, right?
[00:04:48] You can exchange it here.
[00:04:50] Also the non-linearity you can change here.
[00:04:55] So in itself, the filter is modular,
[00:04:57] but we can also exchange the filter for something else,
[00:04:59] like a low pass LD, which is a ladder filter,
[00:05:03] SVF, which has a low pass,
[00:05:05] low pass, band pass, high pass, notch filter here.
[00:05:09] Also something like a comp filter with feedback,
[00:05:13] this rasp ribble, all the new filters,
[00:05:16] which also have here force feedback,
[00:05:18] and feedback and feed forward stuff included, right?
[00:05:23] So we can exchange here the filter.
[00:05:28] Let's go back here to something normal.
[00:05:31] We can also exchange the envelope here, right?
[00:05:34] So something that we can use to change over time.
[00:05:37] (gentle music)
[00:05:40] So this is an AD, which is attack decay,
[00:05:44] but we can exchange this for an ADSR,
[00:05:47] which is attack decay, sustain and release,
[00:05:50] or we can use segments here.
[00:05:53] So with segments, we can of course then start here
[00:05:55] to draw our own shapes if you want to use
[00:05:59] different timing settings here from hold to minutes,
[00:06:03] seconds, milliseconds, or timing based,
[00:06:05] which is then based on the BPM, of course.
[00:06:08] So all kinds of options, right?
[00:06:11] Already from the get go, just using polymer,
[00:06:14] but it's still a subtractive synthesizer.
[00:06:17] We also have options here with the FX boxes, right?
[00:06:20] Note FX, we can say all the notes going into
[00:06:23] into the synthesizer here are arpeggiated.
[00:06:29] (gentle music)
[00:06:32] And the idea of using this inside of the note FX box
[00:06:36] is now that it's part of the polymer synthesizer.
[00:06:40] And you can just save this as a preset here and say,
[00:06:43] I want to use this combination of devices next time
[00:06:47] when I create a track, right?
[00:06:48] So instead of having the arbitrator here in front,
[00:06:51] where it's not part of the synthesizer itself,
[00:06:55] just using this here inside of the note FX box,
[00:07:00] we can make it part of the synthesizer,
[00:07:03] so we can save it as a preset.
[00:07:05] Also post FX box here, so all the sounds going out,
[00:07:09] you can tweak here with the reverb,
[00:07:11] convolution reverb,
[00:07:15] or maybe a delay, delay plus, whatever.
[00:07:20] Also here, same thing, all the settings,
[00:07:23] everything that you change in here or you put in there
[00:07:26] is, if you want to, part of the polymer synthesizer
[00:07:30] and can be part of the preset,
[00:07:31] and you can just reload it every time you need it,
[00:07:34] and all the effects are in here.
[00:07:37] And of course, you can use also VST devices,
[00:07:41] so I usually use here the supermassive reverb,
[00:07:44] which is VST or clap plug-in,
[00:07:46] and it's part now of the polymer synthesizer,
[00:07:49] and you can save it as a preset,
[00:07:51] and it's there when you need it.
[00:07:52] (gentle music)
[00:07:56] Okay, so this is just the normal modularity
[00:07:59] that you have from the get-go
[00:08:02] when you use just a normal Bitwig instrument.
[00:08:05] But it's not the end, it's just the beginning, right?
[00:08:10] So it still is a subtractive synthesizer kind of,
[00:08:15] and recently I saw someone on Reddit and said,
[00:08:18] well, Bitwig needs actually an additive synthesizer,
[00:08:23] where you have multiple sine waves stacked
[00:08:26] on top of each other, and then you can change the volume.
[00:08:29] So we can do this too in Bitwig here
[00:08:32] with this polymer synthesizer.
[00:08:34] So now I have just one sine oscillator here,
[00:08:40] and it's pretty pure,
[00:08:42] because it's just one partial.
[00:08:45] And with the additive synthesizer,
[00:08:50] we need multiple sine waves stacked on top,
[00:08:54] and we can do this very easily in Bitwig
[00:08:56] by just selecting here the polymers synthesizer
[00:08:58] and use voice stacking.
[00:09:00] So we stack now multiple instances of this polymer
[00:09:04] on top of each other, but at the moment,
[00:09:07] all the sine partials play the same frequency.
[00:09:10] So it's just louder, nothing more, nothing less.
[00:09:14] What we can use now here is stack modulator,
[00:09:16] stack spread, and you can switch this to value.
[00:09:22] So you can see the values here on the left side,
[00:09:25] which voice gets what value, right?
[00:09:28] Voice one gets value zero.
[00:09:30] So what we can do now with this is we can modulate here
[00:09:34] the ratio setting of the sine oscillators.
[00:09:36] We can say plus one,
[00:09:37] which means voice one is partial one one,
[00:09:43] of course, no modulation applied.
[00:09:45] Voice two gets plus one.
[00:09:48] So this is one plus one is two.
[00:09:50] So we go basically up the harmonic series with this.
[00:09:55] So it looks like this now, right?
[00:09:58] Instead of this, we have on each voice
[00:10:03] a different ratio setting.
[00:10:04] Already with this, we have a modular,
[00:10:09] or yeah, a modular additive synthesizer.
[00:10:13] We can do, of course, other things.
[00:10:16] Instead of modulating here the ratio,
[00:10:18] which gives you very harmonic responses,
[00:10:21] we can just change here the pitch offset.
[00:10:25] (gentle music)
[00:10:27] Maybe I'll open up the filter a bit more.
[00:10:33] (gentle music)
[00:10:34] That's better.
[00:10:35] (gentle music)
[00:10:38] So you get also very disharmonic sounds if you want to.
[00:10:48] But we can also modulate here the ratio setting,
[00:10:51] not just by one, which is very harmonic.
[00:10:55] Let's go.
[00:10:56] (gentle music)
[00:10:57] We can also say, let's say modulate this by three.
[00:11:01] (gentle music)
[00:11:02] So we get some kind of bell sounds out of this.
[00:11:05] (gentle music)
[00:11:08] (gentle music)
[00:11:10] We can combine certain modulations
[00:11:20] to get certain sounds.
[00:11:22] But I want to stick here to the harmonic result.
[00:11:26] Let's use that.
[00:11:29] (gentle music)
[00:11:31] So it's still a subtractive synthesizer in a way
[00:11:34] because we have a filter here to subtract the overtones.
[00:11:36] (gentle music)
[00:11:39] So we can kind of bring down here
[00:11:47] yet harmonic content of this.
[00:11:51] Maybe I'll use the key tracking and then a steep filter.
[00:11:56] So we can still single out here the one partial
[00:12:00] to fundamental by using key tracking here,
[00:12:02] which is exactly the frequency I'm using on the keyboard.
[00:12:06] (gentle music)
[00:12:08] What is not very specific.
[00:12:12] What we want to do is we want to change
[00:12:15] each of these partial in a different way.
[00:12:18] So what we can do now is we can utilize a step sequencer.
[00:12:22] Okay, a step sequencer.
[00:12:24] So the step sequencer is usually not made for this.
[00:12:27] It's actually only there to change over time parameters, right?
[00:12:32] So when we hit play here,
[00:12:33] it steps through the pattern
[00:12:36] and then we can modulate for instance here, the filter.
[00:12:41] Like this.
[00:12:42] (gentle music)
[00:12:45] So not very interesting,
[00:12:47] but I want to give you an idea of what it does.
[00:12:51] But what we can do now here in Bitwig is we can say hold.
[00:12:55] Instead of progress through the pattern,
[00:12:58] hold it in the first position.
[00:13:00] And then we select here,
[00:13:02] this modulator and go to the left side into the inspector
[00:13:04] and say per voice.
[00:13:06] So now it's a polyphonic modulator,
[00:13:08] which means every voice,
[00:13:10] and we have 16 voices here of course,
[00:13:13] because we are using voice stacking.
[00:13:15] So every voice now gets its own version,
[00:13:19] its own instance of this modulator.
[00:13:22] So at the moment,
[00:13:23] every version is of course at zero,
[00:13:26] but we can change this by modulating here
[00:13:29] the face modulation thing, right?
[00:13:32] So with this,
[00:13:33] we can step through the pattern,
[00:13:38] we'll go back to zero,
[00:13:41] but we use here the stack spread for this.
[00:13:44] So we modulate this here by a certain amount.
[00:13:48] It's actually 6.5 probably.
[00:13:52] Yeah, you can see each voice now here is kind of wide.
[00:13:57] So this represents each voice.
[00:14:00] So instead of using them here,
[00:14:03] this output to change the volume,
[00:14:05] we use this output to change the volume
[00:14:08] and to go down here for the filter.
[00:14:09] It's actually the filter drive.
[00:14:10] It's not really the volume.
[00:14:12] We can change here the volume here if you want to.
[00:14:15] It doesn't really matter.
[00:14:16] So we can push this here and use this for instance.
[00:14:20] Let's modulate this by one.
[00:14:22] So the step modulator here,
[00:14:26] modulates the gain of each voice.
[00:14:29] Looks like this.
[00:14:31] So what we now have here is
[00:14:34] kind of an additive synthesizer
[00:14:38] because we can change now the volume
[00:14:40] of each partial independently and in very specific ways.
[00:14:45] Okay, we can also use here the randomize or dice button.
[00:14:54] (upbeat music)
[00:14:57] Very nice.
[00:15:03] And you also always have here this kind of option
[00:15:05] to bring in the fundamental to make it rooted in reality
[00:15:10] or whatever you want to call it.
[00:15:12] So this is changing here the volume.
[00:15:15] So we can give it the name and say volume, right?
[00:15:20] But why not change also different things?
[00:15:24] Why only change the volume, right?
[00:15:26] So we duplicate this here, this modulator
[00:15:29] and maybe change the decay setting.
[00:15:31] Decay.
[00:15:34] So here we modulate, yeah, the decay.
[00:15:41] Go back to, that's okay.
[00:15:46] Maybe something like this.
[00:15:47] So this now changes decay for each voice, right?
[00:15:51] We can say, oh, the fundamental has a long delay,
[00:15:54] long decay, and all the top harmonics here
[00:15:58] have very short decays.
[00:16:00] (upbeat music)
[00:16:03] You can hear it's, you can shape the sound
[00:16:13] in very specific ways.
[00:16:14] And you can add as many step modules as you want.
[00:16:20] So we can say this one changes maybe the detuning.
[00:16:25] So we can detunia this slightly, maybe go for hertz.
[00:16:29] And also say detune.
[00:16:35] (upbeat music)
[00:16:38] Doesn't do a big difference here.
[00:16:50] But you can do it if you want to.
[00:16:53] We can also say, let's use this here maybe for skew,
[00:16:59] I don't know, or we can use your face modulation.
[00:17:04] So we use the sub oscillator.
[00:17:06] (upbeat music)
[00:17:10] Yeah, this could be interesting.
[00:17:11] So this is PM FM.
[00:17:18] So we bring the root, this sub oscillator
[00:17:22] always plays the fundamental frequency
[00:17:25] to modulate then basically the overtones in certain ways.
[00:17:30] (upbeat music)
[00:17:33] (upbeat music)
[00:17:35] Yeah, so you can do it.
[00:17:52] It's possible, okay?
[00:17:53] So this is what I mean basically by this type of stuff.
[00:17:57] Of course, the interface is not dedicated, right?
[00:18:01] So when you buy, for instance, an additive synthesizer,
[00:18:04] you probably have a lot of nice graphical things
[00:18:07] to access all these overtones.
[00:18:10] But here you can make it work.
[00:18:12] You learn actually how it works
[00:18:14] and you can tweak it to your own liking
[00:18:18] and you can experiment.
[00:18:20] Maybe it's interesting to modify different things here
[00:18:25] and create different sounds out of it
[00:18:27] and then learn from it
[00:18:28] and then maybe code your own VST instrument.
[00:18:31] I heard some of the VST developers
[00:18:33] actually use Bitwig sometimes
[00:18:35] or the grid sometimes to test new ideas.
[00:18:39] (upbeat music)
[00:18:42] Actually, it doesn't sound too bad.
[00:18:46] So there's a reverb here.
[00:18:51] (upbeat music)
[00:19:01] Okay, so then we can bring in here
[00:19:03] an expression modulator.
[00:19:06] So we have velocity, of course,
[00:19:07] we press the keyboard in different amounts of strength.
[00:19:11] So you can use it at the velocity
[00:19:14] to change maybe the decay setting.
[00:19:17] So here decay changes this one, right?
[00:19:20] And then we can use the velocity here
[00:19:23] to change the modulation amount.
[00:19:26] I don't know how to say it,
[00:19:28] but we can also change this here.
[00:19:30] There's also the amount, right?
[00:19:33] So now when we press the keyboard very softly,
[00:19:36] the case settings here are basically all the way down.
[00:19:40] So the sound is very short.
[00:19:42] And then we press the keyboard very hard.
[00:19:45] (upbeat music)
[00:19:48] You can also make it the other way around, maybe.
[00:19:53] So the harder we press the shorter the sound gets,
[00:19:57] but it's not too short.
[00:19:59] (upbeat music)
[00:20:01] Maybe we open up here the attack time a bit more
[00:20:27] so it's more soft.
[00:20:30] Not too much, but the harder we press
[00:20:33] the shorter the attack time comes.
[00:20:35] (upbeat music)
[00:20:39] Maybe bring the filter down.
[00:20:52] (upbeat music)
[00:20:56] (upbeat music)
[00:20:59] So you can create an additive synthesizer
[00:21:13] just with a bunch of modulators here in front
[00:21:17] or in front of the device itself.
[00:21:20] And you can do this also with other synthesizers.
[00:21:22] You don't need to use the polymer synthesizer.
[00:21:25] You can also use the sampler if you want to, right?
[00:21:27] Also with the sampler,
[00:21:28] I want to show you something later on in the video.
[00:21:31] I'm just starting, okay?
[00:21:33] So this is an additive synthesizer
[00:21:36] just built from a subtractive synthesizer very easily.
[00:21:40] So this is voice stacking,
[00:21:44] but we can also do something else.
[00:21:45] I showed you this in another video.
[00:21:47] We can use the wave table synthesizer,
[00:21:50] a wave table oscillator here.
[00:21:52] And instead of using here a normal wave table,
[00:21:56] I use my DC offset wave table,
[00:21:59] which is basically just zero minus one,
[00:22:04] then the value is zero and then plus one.
[00:22:07] So it's basically a DC offset.
[00:22:09] So if you don't know what DC offset means,
[00:22:12] I show you this here very quickly.
[00:22:14] Just this, maybe I'll just remove it for now.
[00:22:18] We have a DC offset device here in Bitwig.
[00:22:20] It looks like this.
[00:22:21] And all it does is when you send it out
[00:22:24] to an audio interface and you move the slider up
[00:22:28] or the slider down is to change the voltage
[00:22:31] on your speaker cone.
[00:22:32] So this is basically pushing your speaker cone out
[00:22:36] and this is pushing your speaker cone in.
[00:22:40] So it changes the voltage of your speaker cone.
[00:22:43] So you usually use this when you have a DC offset
[00:22:48] when the audio waveform is not exactly
[00:22:52] in the center, in the middle line.
[00:22:55] So we can use this here and offset this.
[00:22:57] So this is why we have this.
[00:22:59] But the interesting part is we can misuse this
[00:23:04] by using an LFO.
[00:23:05] And the LFO here we can use audio rate.
[00:23:11] So instead of hertz, kilohertz,
[00:23:13] which gives us already a sound.
[00:23:17] (electronic music)
[00:23:20] Right, we can use your, for instance, pitch.
[00:23:22] Pitch and maybe an ADSR.
[00:23:26] So the ADSR modulates from the LFO.
[00:23:31] Can I open up these two together?
[00:23:34] So the ADSR modulates basically the modulation amount
[00:23:38] that's just this.
[00:23:39] And then the LFO itself modulates here the DC offset.
[00:23:43] And it gives you basically a synthesizer
[00:23:44] because now I can just play on the keyboard.
[00:23:47] (electronic music)
[00:23:49] And I have a monophonic synthesizer.
[00:23:51] (electronic music)
[00:23:54] Right, so this is the idea basically
[00:24:01] that I use a polymer synthesizer here.
[00:24:03] Like this, and instead of using a wave table,
[00:24:08] I use a DC offset wave table,
[00:24:11] which is minus one, zero and plus one,
[00:24:14] which emulates exactly just what I did
[00:24:16] with the DC offset device.
[00:24:18] But here I need to use the index.
[00:24:21] So I can put this here on zero, actually I'm 50%.
[00:24:26] And then just modulate,
[00:24:27] audio rate modulators here.
[00:24:29] And then I can utilize this to my advantage.
[00:24:33] So let's remove here all the modulators.
[00:24:35] Use a wave table modulator,
[00:24:38] or wave table LFO, that's how it's called.
[00:24:42] But the wave table LFO goes also into audio rate.
[00:24:46] Hertz kilohertz, right?
[00:24:48] What we can use here also to pitch.
[00:24:51] So when we have a note input,
[00:24:52] the LFO changes the frequency
[00:24:55] exactly to the frequency of the note we are playing.
[00:24:59] So when I play here C3,
[00:25:01] I get 262 Hertz out of this, okay?
[00:25:05] So with this now, we can modulate here the index.
[00:25:09] (electronic music)
[00:25:14] So we can change the shape now on the wave table LFO,
[00:25:17] which modulates the DC offset wave table,
[00:25:20] which itself doesn't produce any sound.
[00:25:23] But the wave table LFO gives us basically the sounds.
[00:25:26] We have, instead of using the wave table directly,
[00:25:29] we use the wave table LFO to modulate the wave table.
[00:25:33] So the big question is now, why should you do this, right?
[00:25:40] Because we can use now multiple wave table LFOs
[00:25:44] instead of just one.
[00:25:46] And we can go here from this wave table oscillator
[00:25:50] into, yeah, this wave table LFO, right?
[00:25:54] So we modulate here the phase.
[00:25:58] Maybe open up here, or these two.
[00:26:08] So here we can use a different wave table.
[00:26:11] Here we can use a different wave table.
[00:26:12] (electronic music)
[00:26:15] Yeah.
[00:26:22] So this LFO phase modulates this LFO,
[00:26:32] and this one phase modulates,
[00:26:34] or modulates actually the wave table,
[00:26:36] which produces the sound.
[00:26:37] So with this, we can create a wave table synthesizer
[00:26:42] with as many wave tables as we want.
[00:26:45] We can all phase modulate each modulator with itself,
[00:26:50] if you want to do this, right?
[00:26:53] So we can also do something interesting.
[00:26:58] We can do a vector synthesizer with this.
[00:27:01] So this one modulates here the wave table.
[00:27:05] Then we have this one here.
[00:27:06] Also modulates maybe this wave table.
[00:27:08] And here we use, let's say, a different table.
[00:27:15] Let's use this one.
[00:27:16] Also this one modulates here 50%,
[00:27:21] different wave table.
[00:27:24] And another one also modulates here this by 50%.
[00:27:34] And here we also use something random.
[00:27:39] It doesn't matter, it's just to show you what you can do.
[00:27:44] So we have now four oscillators here,
[00:27:46] or four LFOs actually that play with audio rate
[00:27:49] and modulate this wave table.
[00:27:51] So we have the amount here, so we can pull these down.
[00:27:54] So nothing modulates anything.
[00:27:59] And in the middle, we use an XY thing here,
[00:28:03] or maybe not an XY, maybe a vector four, something like this.
[00:28:08] So, and with this, we can move around in these edges
[00:28:13] and we can use here the top left one
[00:28:15] to actually change the amount of this LFO.
[00:28:19] This one changes the amount of this one.
[00:28:23] This one changes the amount of that one.
[00:28:26] And this one goes to this one.
[00:28:30] Okay, so now,
[00:28:32] (upbeat music)
[00:28:35] we not only can move through the index here
[00:28:42] on each of these LFOs,
[00:28:46] we can also morph a vector,
[00:28:51] vector blend between all of these LFOs
[00:28:55] that then changes here the wave table.
[00:28:59] So we have basically a four wave table oscillator
[00:29:03] vectors in this iser,
[00:29:04] which is probably not on the market right now.
[00:29:07] There's probably something in terms of Eurorack.
[00:29:12] I think it's called harmonic navigator.
[00:29:14] I think this is something like this.
[00:29:16] So we can blend over different wave shapes here.
[00:29:21] So it's very interesting to do, very easy to do.
[00:29:25] The DC offset wave table,
[00:29:27] I put you this in the description below.
[00:29:29] So you can download, it's very simple.
[00:29:31] It's not, it's a very small file,
[00:29:34] but you can utilize this here for this type of stuff.
[00:29:37] I made a video about this a few years ago.
[00:29:40] (upbeat music)
[00:29:42] It's not like that you get any new sounds out of this
[00:29:48] that you never heard before.
[00:29:50] But if you want to play around with this
[00:29:52] and have a bit of fun, you can do it, right?
[00:29:57] So maybe before I continue here,
[00:29:59] maybe I use random stuff.
[00:30:02] Can I open this?
[00:30:06] Yeah, so this is bipolar.
[00:30:08] Okay, nice.
[00:30:09] So we modulate this randomly
[00:30:11] and use another one for different seeds to modulate this.
[00:30:18] This is also bipolar.
[00:30:20] Yeah, okay.
[00:30:26] And we want to turn the smoothing up.
[00:30:28] It's maybe too fast.
[00:30:36] Okay, so we move around here
[00:30:39] in this XY coordinate system randomly.
[00:30:42] We can also use then here that for this one.
[00:30:47] Also polyphonic, this one goes here.
[00:30:55] Let me copy this here.
[00:30:56] We move around in this table randomly
[00:31:00] and also in this table, of course.
[00:31:02] So we have one, two, three, four, five, six random
[00:31:09] oscillators here and they all
[00:31:11] randomly change the sounds.
[00:31:15] We change randomly each index.
[00:31:17] We randomly morph between the positions here
[00:31:20] and combine everything.
[00:31:22] (bright music)
[00:31:24] This is actually polyphonic.
[00:31:28] Oh, it's not polyphonic, okay.
[00:31:32] So we have to switch on your polyphonic mode
[00:31:34] on each of these LFOs.
[00:31:39] So now we can play multiple keys.
[00:31:40] (bright music)
[00:31:43] And we need a bit of reverb here maybe.
[00:31:52] Supermassive.
[00:31:53] (bright music)
[00:31:58] I mean, isn't this not great?
[00:32:18] I mean, that's the...
[00:32:20] I don't know how, any other darn where we can do
[00:32:24] something like this so quickly.
[00:32:26] Okay, it's mind blowing to me.
[00:32:30] And I want Bitwig to go back to these great things.
[00:32:35] I know a lot of people want to have specific workflows,
[00:32:38] right, MIDI, comping and all that crap.
[00:32:41] I don't need, and I'm okay when it's in there,
[00:32:45] when it's not getting in my way.
[00:32:47] But I want to go back to this kind of greatness here
[00:32:50] of this modulation system,
[00:32:52] of having small little devices that you can combine.
[00:32:55] Maybe give me a nice interface designer
[00:32:57] where I can design an interface.
[00:33:00] So some beginners have an easy access
[00:33:04] to these type of tools instead of having a lot
[00:33:07] of bunch of modulators, which can look a bit cryptic,
[00:33:11] but if you know what it's doing,
[00:33:13] it's very simple actually.
[00:33:15] So now we turned basically a very simple
[00:33:18] subtractive synthesizer into a multi-wave table
[00:33:23] vector synthesizer and also an additive synthesizer
[00:33:29] where we can control everything about the partials
[00:33:32] very easily, just with a few or with a bunch of modules.
[00:33:36] It's very great.
[00:33:37] So this is the polymer for you.
[00:33:40] Then there's something like the sampler.
[00:33:44] Actually, before we start with the sampler,
[00:33:46] maybe I should record something.
[00:33:49] Of course, we need something inside of the sampler, right?
[00:33:52] (gentle music)
[00:33:54] That's okay.
[00:34:05] So record something and use the sampler.
[00:34:10] And there was some kind of plug-in in the headlines
[00:34:14] a few weeks ago, a few days ago.
[00:34:18] I actually have to find here.
[00:34:19] Can I open this here?
[00:34:22] Yeah, master recordings, so we can drag this in.
[00:34:26] So there was some kind of device in the headlines.
[00:34:32] I don't know what the name was.
[00:34:35] Solve this, yeah, exactly, this device here.
[00:34:39] And I tried this out and what it does,
[00:34:42] it's basically you have a sample down here,
[00:34:44] just a sample.
[00:34:47] And then instead of using granular synthesis
[00:34:50] to just loop one position here
[00:34:53] and then scan through the whole wave form,
[00:34:56] they made this kind of complicated grid here,
[00:34:59] which is created randomly
[00:35:01] or maybe on some type of algorithm.
[00:35:04] And then you move your cursor through this kind of grid
[00:35:07] and then you jump from this position maybe
[00:35:09] to this position or to this position, right?
[00:35:11] Instead of progressing in a linear way
[00:35:15] through this sample here.
[00:35:17] So this is all there is to it.
[00:35:19] And also it's spectral-based.
[00:35:22] So it's not the granular synthesis type of thing.
[00:35:26] They say it here, "Powered by spectral synthesis.
[00:35:30] "Take any mono from sound, single note or chord texture
[00:35:33] "and hold it forever without loops or clicks."
[00:35:36] In my opinion, just taking the wave form at this position,
[00:35:40] use all the overtones and then sustain these
[00:35:44] with some type of spectral stuff.
[00:35:48] Usually it doesn't sound that great, in my opinion.
[00:35:50] Maybe it's exactly your sound,
[00:35:52] but I think granular synthesis still sounds a bit better
[00:35:55] because you have this organic feel to it
[00:35:57] because it's a real sample and you loop it.
[00:36:00] And yeah, so I'm not a big fan of this anyway.
[00:36:04] So I tried this out here
[00:36:07] and it kind of works nice, neatly.
[00:36:09] Maybe it's not worth 85 bucks, I have no idea.
[00:36:14] Maybe I can load it in here, source this.
[00:36:16] Do I have it?
[00:36:18] Yeah, I have it here.
[00:36:20] But for some reason it doesn't work anymore.
[00:36:21] It gives me a browser window.
[00:36:23] I don't know what I did here.
[00:36:25] But yeah, it doesn't work anymore.
[00:36:27] Anyway, so we can actually copy this
[00:36:32] in a certain way.
[00:36:34] So what we can do here is we have a sample
[00:36:37] and we can play the sample.
[00:36:38] Multiple sounds in there already.
[00:36:44] So we can use it in the textures mode
[00:36:46] and we have a speed knob and a grain size knob
[00:36:48] and a motion knob.
[00:36:50] So what we can do now is we can freeze this here
[00:36:53] with the freeze play heads.
[00:36:54] We can click this and now instead of a speed knob
[00:36:57] we have now your position.
[00:37:00] And it looks exactly the position where you add
[00:37:04] in the sample.
[00:37:04] And there's also no clicks or anything like this.
[00:37:12] Maybe when we do the grain size a bit bigger.
[00:37:30] So what we can do now, instead of progressing here
[00:37:34] from this position to this slowly,
[00:37:36] which is not what this plugin does,
[00:37:39] it jumps from one point to the other,
[00:37:41] we can just utilize a step sequencer here.
[00:37:44] And this is basically our grid.
[00:37:47] Instead of having this fancy GUI grid,
[00:37:50] it looks nice.
[00:37:52] It's a nice looking plugin, okay?
[00:37:54] I don't want to say it's a bad plugin or anything like this,
[00:37:58] but I'm just realistic in a way.
[00:38:01] So instead of having here a nice looking grid,
[00:38:05] we have just step sequences here
[00:38:07] and we can randomize this.
[00:38:09] Just use this to position ourselves
[00:38:13] inside of the sample here with modulation.
[00:38:17] Maybe I'll close this here for a moment.
[00:38:19] So now when I hit play.
[00:38:21] (orchestral music)
[00:38:24] It jumps from one position to the other,
[00:38:33] more or less, and we can change the path
[00:38:35] by randomizing this.
[00:38:37] (orchestral music)
[00:38:40] (orchestral music)
[00:38:43] Now we can also use a different one,
[00:38:59] second one here for the grain size.
[00:39:02] (orchestral music)
[00:39:07] (orchestral music)
[00:39:10] So the whole point of this plug in here
[00:39:16] is basically that you can create these kind of pathways
[00:39:19] and create interesting modulations with that.
[00:39:23] But here you can do it too.
[00:39:26] It's maybe not spectral based,
[00:39:28] but it still sounds great.
[00:39:29] It does exactly the same thing.
[00:39:31] And because you have here this randomized or dice button,
[00:39:34] you can find easily different paths through the sample
[00:39:38] and it gives you different rhythmic ideas.
[00:39:41] And yeah, it's, whoa, that's the same thing.
[00:39:44] (orchestral music)
[00:39:47] So here again, it's very simple,
[00:39:54] but we can also use voice stacking.
[00:39:55] So we can say we want to play the sample twice
[00:39:58] instead of just one instance.
[00:40:00] We have two instances now here.
[00:40:02] And again, we use the stack modulator.
[00:40:05] Maybe we can use the stack spread here
[00:40:07] or the voice control where we can say
[00:40:09] the second voice has different options.
[00:40:12] So here we can say,
[00:40:13] we want to pitch the second version maybe down,
[00:40:18] one octave, right, something like this.
[00:40:21] And then we want to slow down here this playback speed.
[00:40:24] Where does it land?
[00:40:29] I don't know.
[00:40:31] (orchestral music)
[00:40:32] Oh, we have to probably make this pair of voice.
[00:40:35] Yeah.
[00:40:36] (orchestral music)
[00:40:38] I can see as a second playhead progressing
[00:40:40] at a different speed.
[00:40:41] (orchestral music)
[00:40:44] And maybe we can say,
[00:40:59] yeah, also this one, yeah, different position.
[00:41:03] And maybe this first one is a bit quieter
[00:41:08] because it's pitched up.
[00:41:09] (orchestral music)
[00:41:12] Then we can use the smoothing here.
[00:41:28] So it's not, you know, steps too much.
[00:41:31] (orchestral music)
[00:41:34] I mean, these are even options
[00:41:41] you don't have in the plugin, I guess.
[00:41:43] (orchestral music)
[00:41:46] Also here, reverb.
[00:41:55] (orchestral music)
[00:41:58] There you go, two octaves down.
[00:42:06] (orchestral music)
[00:42:12] And it's lower.
[00:42:23] (orchestral music)
[00:42:25] (orchestral music)
[00:42:28] So this is what I mean.
[00:42:41] You start basically with the plugin and you say,
[00:42:43] oh, I actually can do this in Bitwig in a certain way.
[00:42:47] And then you start experimenting
[00:42:49] and then you get new ideas and you add to this idea.
[00:42:52] And then you get something unique out of it
[00:42:54] and you end up in places you don't know.
[00:42:59] You should want to go before, okay?
[00:43:02] So that's what I'm talking about.
[00:43:03] So then there was something yesterday on Reddit here.
[00:43:07] Someone asked, so turn to saturation.
[00:43:10] How to achieve this in Bitwig, right?
[00:43:12] So very simple question.
[00:43:14] And I get something like this all the time.
[00:43:16] So I said here as an answer transfer curve
[00:43:19] or saturator gives you all the saturation types.
[00:43:21] FX3 gives you the band splitting just combine it.
[00:43:25] And yeah, it maybe doesn't give you the interface.
[00:43:29] The nice neat little interface of a PEP filter,
[00:43:33] but still you can manage to achieve something.
[00:43:36] FX3 here, what do you band FX3?
[00:43:43] Okay, so here we have the band splitting, right?
[00:43:46] And then you put the saturator on it
[00:43:48] or what I do all the time is using here filter plus.
[00:43:52] And then use it a transfer curve
[00:43:54] to draw in my own kind of a shape or curve
[00:43:58] for very subtle saturation
[00:44:04] or maybe some hardcore stuff here, right?
[00:44:06] Something like this.
[00:44:08] And then I can say I want to have this,
[00:44:11] well, it's actually not looking in here.
[00:44:13] Okay.
[00:44:14] You can have different types, different positions
[00:44:19] inside of the frequency spectrum, right?
[00:44:21] You put this then here or here.
[00:44:25] So it lacks basically the neat little interface
[00:44:28] of FEP filter, but you can still manage
[00:44:30] to create something similar and go even beyond that
[00:44:34] because you can modify it so much.
[00:44:36] I don't think you can modify the saturation curve
[00:44:40] inside of FEP filter Saturn too.
[00:44:42] I think there are only a few types you can choose
[00:44:45] and that's it.
[00:44:46] Here you can tweak it and twist it
[00:44:48] and get something new out of it.
[00:44:51] That's what I'm saying.
[00:44:52] So this is why I use Bitwig Studio
[00:44:54] and still my most loved feature
[00:44:58] that you can combine these devices so fast
[00:45:02] and create something, oh, it's my hair,
[00:45:06] so unique easily without, you know,
[00:45:11] coding without going into deep patches
[00:45:15] or asking people questions.
[00:45:17] Of course, you have to know some,
[00:45:20] you have to need some knowledge.
[00:45:22] How does a synthesizer work?
[00:45:24] How does a certain type of effect work, right?
[00:45:28] But that's why it's great.
[00:45:31] Why it's great to have Bitwig
[00:45:32] because you learn actually how to combine the devices
[00:45:35] in certain ways to get a certain effect
[00:45:37] and then you learn why the effect sounded this way
[00:45:41] and why it works this way
[00:45:42] and why it's not always helpful to just buy a plug-in
[00:45:46] that completely abstracts everything away from you
[00:45:49] and gives you a nice simple image, which is cool too.
[00:45:54] It's not bad, but you don't learn anything.
[00:45:56] You can't just dissect it.
[00:45:58] You can't just don't put it apart
[00:46:00] and go in there, exchange things and that's what's fun.
[00:46:04] And this is also what gives you, like I said in the beginning,
[00:46:07] unique sounds and that's what you want usually.
[00:46:11] You want to have unique sounds, right?
[00:46:13] You want to have unique songs.
[00:46:15] You don't want to sound like any other AI pop song.
[00:46:19] Maybe that's your goal, but then you just use,
[00:46:21] probably just use AI.
[00:46:23] That's what I want to say.
[00:46:24] That's why I love Bitwig.
[00:46:25] Let me know what you think in the comments down below
[00:46:27] if maybe it was too fast.
[00:46:29] What I explained, maybe I should go deeper
[00:46:31] into some of the ideas there.
[00:46:33] Let me know, okay?
[00:46:34] I also here use this kind of click thing here.
[00:46:39] This one here, the circle.
[00:46:42] Maybe it was more distracting to you.
[00:46:45] Some people said they can't actually track my mouse
[00:46:47] all the time.
[00:46:49] I'm too fast.
[00:46:50] Anyway, leave a like, leave a subscription
[00:46:52] to your next video.
[00:46:54] Bye.