Clean Sub Bass and Harmonic Layering in Bitwig

[00:00:00] Hey folks, welcome back, in the last video I showed you how to use the key track plus
[00:00:05] modulator of Bitwig Studio to change the overtones of a bass sound, so the first harmonic, second
[00:00:10] harmonic, third harmonic and so on, while also keeping track of the pitch of the notes,
[00:00:16] so when the notes change also you need to change of course the frequencies of the EQ.
[00:00:22] So this is very easy to do in Bitwig Studio in my opinion, I do it all the time, but you
[00:00:27] can re-watch just video if you haven't already so. So I got some questions about this, right?
[00:00:32] So here on YouTube someone asked, "Can the key track plus modulator be used to add harmonics
[00:00:38] to the original signal, but one octave higher, such as the waves max bass plug-in is doing?"
[00:00:45] So if you have the notes in Bitwig here for the bass sound, so it's just the same track as in the
[00:00:52] last video I showed you how it sounds. So we have a bass sound in here, so the question is how can
[00:01:10] we add now a bass or a sine partial one octave higher? And we don't need to use a key track
[00:01:17] modulator for this, because we already have the notes, we already have here all the notes we need.
[00:01:23] So we can simply just put this synthesizer here into an instrument layer by using CTRL and G,
[00:01:31] and we can add here a second synthesizer, a polymer synthesizer, that only plays one sine
[00:01:39] partial here, we can use the wave table synthesizer for this or the wave table oscillator for this,
[00:01:44] or just use the sine oscillator, it's also possible. We need to match of course here the
[00:01:49] amplitude envelope, roughly, something like this, and we don't need to use filter so we
[00:01:56] can completely switch off here the filter. So with this we just play the sine or the fundamental
[00:02:03] frequency here of all of these notes. Maybe open this up here. So we basically double here the
[00:02:20] fundamental or the sub of the bass sound. So the question now is how can we play actually the
[00:02:26] second harmonic? And it's very easy, we just use here the second layer, like all the sine,
[00:02:31] and we can use it the ratio, we can put this to two to one. And this is actually the second
[00:02:38] harmonic, this is the third harmonic and so on. So second harmonic, right, it's just this.
[00:02:55] So we can easily just add another synthesizer, polymer synthesizer, and we can play any overtone
[00:03:02] that we want by just using here this ratio thing, right? So this is the easy answer to this because
[00:03:10] you don't need to use a key track modulator for this. Maybe later on we use it and we why I show
[00:03:16] you how you can do this in multiple ways. So this is the simple way. So let's pull out here the
[00:03:23] polymer synthesizer again. Another question was very effective. Do you think the strategy can
[00:03:31] also be used to replace the fundamental of a bass sound with a sine wave to get these ultra clean
[00:03:38] subbases? And a lot of people also, you know, they want sub super clean high precision sounds. So
[00:03:48] here we can just replace the fundamental, because you can see I'm using a detuned reese, or just
[00:03:57] two saw waves slightly detuned when you get this hova. This volume fluctuation and some people don't
[00:04:05] like it. I like it because it brings movement to the sound. But we can replace this here very
[00:04:11] easily inside of the polymer synthesizer. And if you use the wave table oscillator, we can use
[00:04:19] this feature called remove fundamental. So if we just check this, right, we can completely remove
[00:04:31] the subharmonics here. Maybe a loop here on the first note for a while. So with this, we just remove
[00:04:46] the fundamental, but we can bring it back with this clean sub sine wave here by using the sub
[00:04:53] oscillator on 50%. And we use here a sine zero. So zero percent is no fundamental, 50% is half dry,
[00:05:12] half sub oscillator. And 100% is just a sub oscillator. And we can see there are some overtones
[00:05:21] here, because there are some distortion here in the FX chain, of course. So this is the simple
[00:05:29] answer. We can use the wave table oscillator to just remove the fundamental. And we can then use
[00:05:36] here the sub oscillator to bring back in a very static, clean sub base. That's at least how I do
[00:05:43] it. So the question now is, if you don't use the wave table oscillator, is there something you can
[00:05:49] do? And of course, the answer is yes, you can always do something in bitwig about something. So
[00:05:56] we can just add, let's say, a low cut, a very steep low cut, because we completely want to remove
[00:06:04] the sub base. And the steepest low cut you can find inside of EQ plus, because here, you have an
[00:06:11] eight P, eight pole, low cut, 38 dB per octave slope. It's very steep, right? And then we need to find
[00:06:20] the right frequency, because we want to just cut out the first harmonic or this is actually the
[00:06:27] fundamental. So the lowest, the lowest partially we want to cut out. And we do this exactly like in
[00:06:34] the last video, we use a key track modulator here, because the sub is also just monophonic. It's just
[00:06:40] one note at a time. And you modulate here the shift parameter by exactly 60 semitones again. That's
[00:06:51] the magic number. And we can put this the center frequency here on C three. So this is the frequency
[00:06:58] of the sub, but it's not the right frequency we need. Maybe I use also different resolution,
[00:07:03] because you can see here the frequency is where the frequencies where we cut is exactly the sub
[00:07:12] frequency. That's not the right frequency. We need to go one partial higher. So we go here to C four
[00:07:19] instead of C three. And now we cut basically at the second harmonic. And everything below it is gone.
[00:07:27] So we completely cut out the fundamental, right? It's completely gone here. Can we show this here? No.
[00:07:37] Okay, so we completely removed here the fundamental just with a cue. And when you change the notes,
[00:07:52] or we play different notes, you can see it moves around. So it's always at the right position for
[00:08:07] just the second harmonic. Also in the last video, I just completely forgot to say that this is also
[00:08:15] working on NPE data. So if you have your notes and with pitch bands, something like this here,
[00:08:22] it also works. You can see here the EQ moves. So it's always in the right position for the
[00:08:32] right pitch band or for the right note. Very cool, actually. So now that we cut out here the
[00:08:40] fundamental, we want to add back a clean sign oscillator, of course, because we don't want to
[00:08:46] use the features of the polymer. But in my opinion, just use polymer for everything. And you're
[00:08:51] good to go. But maybe use the sampler or something like this. So you can use this trick here. So
[00:08:57] then we can add here a chain container. And because it's a bit weak, we can add multiple
[00:09:04] instruments into the chain. It's not a problem at all. So we add here another polymer synthesizer.
[00:09:10] Also use a sign oscillator here, and just match maybe the ADSR a little bit, something like this.
[00:09:18] And then you receive the notes here also from the clip to the polymer. And then we mix in 50%
[00:09:30] the sign partial and 50% the tri-signal without the fundamental. You can see here this partial
[00:09:43] or this sub bass is completely static. There's no movement at all.
[00:09:47] Yeah, you can do this further if you want to. So we can cut here higher instead of the second
[00:10:10] partial. We use the third partial. So this would be G4, I think, bit higher. So we also remove
[00:10:20] here the second harmonic, right? And then we can say, okay, let's bring in also here the second
[00:10:29] harmonic, this one. And we can change the loudness of this. So this is our original sign or saw wave.
[00:10:41] And we add just these two partials. So if you don't like this, that you have to match here the
[00:11:04] ADSR. We can try and clone the ADSR or the sound itself with just using a follower. So here,
[00:11:13] instead of a polymer, we can use, let's say, a polygrid. And here we just use a sign partial and
[00:11:24] we use instead of an ADSR, we use a multiply. And then we use here an envelope follower,
[00:11:38] which changes the amplification. And we use an audio in. So we receive basically the tri-signal. So
[00:11:51] everything that's cut it out here, or left out from the EQ plus. So we receive this here.
[00:12:00] So it changes now in volume with our original signal here.
[00:12:19] Let's go to 50%. Right, this is our partial here. Okay, works nice. So here we don't need to use
[00:12:39] actually the layer. We can do this inside of the grid pretty easily. So we use here maybe a second
[00:12:46] sign. So this is the second harmonic. Use a mixer. So you have all the options in the world.
[00:13:05] We can just use an envelope follower to mimic the audio shape or audio waveform of the incoming
[00:13:14] signal to change the volume here of our partials. Or we can just use a polymer synthesizer and dial
[00:13:20] in our own audio envelope or amplitude envelope. And it kind of works. So this is also something
[00:13:27] you can do. Maybe go back here to C4. Another option is to use something like the tree monster.
[00:13:37] Most of the times it's more experimental. So this is trying to pitch track what's going on in the
[00:13:44] audio signal. So this one doesn't receive or uses the notes coming here from the note clip. It really
[00:13:51] tries to pitch track, which makes it also usable on just audio signal. So if you have just an audio
[00:13:58] file here and you want to try and pitch track it, you can use the tree monster. So we can try and
[00:14:04] single out here the lowest partial. And then it plays just a sign wave exactly at this frequency.
[00:14:14] But here we can say just play it one octave lower.
[00:14:20] Then you mix it in with a dry signal.
[00:14:29] The speed knob changes how fast it reacts to the audio changes. So it can react pretty fast.
[00:14:35] Or very slow.
[00:14:39] But it's not always working perfectly. Sometimes it's very nice. I tried this out on kick drums.
[00:14:55] It works on kick drums pretty nice sometimes. But yeah, the big benefit is it tries to pitch
[00:15:01] track the audio signal. So you don't need to use notes. Or if you don't have notes,
[00:15:06] you can just try it out. But it's also not always giving you a clean result. So the tree monster
[00:15:14] is an option, of course. Okay, I think that's it for this video. I want to show you basically
[00:15:21] here these kind of tricks. I know for a lot of people this is not, you know, this is nothing new,
[00:15:26] but there are also a lot of people just new to Bitwig. And I don't know that there are actually
[00:15:31] some instrument layers and stuff like this. Maybe I should do more some of these simple tutorials
[00:15:37] just for some new commas or some new Bitwig users. But these are kinds of tricks I use over the years
[00:15:45] for certain situations. And you can do pretty much everything in Bitwig with some kind of work
[00:15:52] around. And as you can see, you can work on every partial, you can replace it, you can cut it out
[00:16:01] or replace it with something else. And yeah, play around with these kind of combinations
[00:16:07] of different devices in Bitwig very easily. Also with the last video, by just using notes
[00:16:13] from a different channel here from the from the piano, for instance, here, right, I play some piano
[00:16:20] notes. So I can use these notes here and just control some kind of notch filter on my bass,
[00:16:29] so I can cut out these frequencies so they make room for the piano and stuff like this. Or you
[00:16:35] use the notes from the piano, and you use a bandpass filter on the bass, so you have a resonator
[00:16:43] that plays a melody on top of your bass sound. Everything is possible. And yeah, I hope it gives
[00:16:50] you some inspirations to try this out. And if you have questions, of course, let me know in the
[00:16:55] comments down below and make some videos about it, right? That's it for this video. Thanks for watching.
[00:17:01] And leave a subscription, leave a like, and I'll see you in the next video. Bye!
[00:17:26] where's the bass see you guys