Space Ambient in Bitwig 6

[00:00:00] So I came across this video here on YouTube.
[00:00:02] It's a space station or an image of a space station.
[00:00:06] And in the background, you can hear some ambient music.
[00:00:08] It's just a drone sound with some musical pieces on top.
[00:00:12] And it has a lot of views.
[00:00:13] A lot of people love this kind of sound.
[00:00:16] And there are probably millions of these videos on YouTube.
[00:00:19] So I thought it's maybe a good idea
[00:00:21] to give you some tips and tricks
[00:00:22] how to do this in Bitwig Studio very easily in the grid
[00:00:25] because it's not very hard.
[00:00:27] I give you here an idea how it sounds
[00:00:29] just to not get flagged.
[00:00:31] It's like this for one hour.
[00:00:40] So just a drone sound and then a lot of movement,
[00:00:43] a lot of musical bits on top.
[00:00:46] Just, you know, with a lot of reverb.
[00:00:48] So that's basically it.
[00:00:49] So in Bitwig, you can do this pretty easily here.
[00:00:52] I have nothing in the project here.
[00:00:55] Just a pulley grid and a spectrum analyzer
[00:00:57] so you can see what I'm doing.
[00:00:59] And we start here with the sine oscillator
[00:01:02] and then amplitude envelope.
[00:01:04] And we don't need to go for a saw oscillator here
[00:01:09] because usually these pad sounds are made with saw leads.
[00:01:14] I'll show you this here, what I mean.
[00:01:17] Go down here one octave.
[00:01:20] This is how it looks like with a saw, right?
[00:01:25] A lot of overtones.
[00:01:26] And then you usually go for a low pass filter
[00:01:29] and filter everything away on top.
[00:01:33] And then you play with the movement.
[00:01:41] But what I do is I go for a sine oscillator
[00:01:45] without the filter because the sine oscillator
[00:01:48] is just pure.
[00:01:49] And then you can use this cue.
[00:01:53] (machinery buzzing)
[00:01:56] To make it to a saw with all the overtones.
[00:02:00] So it's basically just a saw with the filter
[00:02:03] just in one device for me, at least.
[00:02:06] Okay, that's it.
[00:02:07] So what we want to do is we want to stack now
[00:02:09] a lot of these oscillators here
[00:02:11] just with root note or with the root note of our key.
[00:02:15] And I want to use the fourth and the fifth,
[00:02:20] but in different octaves.
[00:02:22] Just one octave multiple octaves.
[00:02:25] Okay, so you can do this pretty easily
[00:02:27] but just maybe cloning here the oscillators
[00:02:31] many, many times.
[00:02:33] But we can also just use voice stacking.
[00:02:36] So that's what I do at least.
[00:02:38] And yeah, so we start by using actually a pitch.
[00:02:42] So we want to use a pitch for our key
[00:02:45] and we use here EB minor.
[00:02:47] So instead of using the pitch module
[00:02:51] and dialing in here this manually,
[00:02:54] we go for the root module, looks like this,
[00:02:58] which gives us basically what we dialed in here
[00:03:00] on the top, the global selector, right?
[00:03:02] So it's EB, maybe E can see it switches to E or F sharp
[00:03:07] and so on.
[00:03:08] So we can just use this and as an input.
[00:03:11] We also want to go lower in pitch
[00:03:17] because we're on D sharp three.
[00:03:19] So we can select here on the left side
[00:03:21] when we select the module and we can say here,
[00:03:23] go to maybe one octave one.
[00:03:25] We are in this kind of range.
[00:03:29] Then we want to stack actually multiple voices.
[00:03:32] So we go here maybe for six
[00:03:35] and we use a stack spread modulator
[00:03:40] and we go for value.
[00:03:43] And then we can use here the ratio knobs.
[00:03:46] It sounds like this.
[00:03:48] (electronic music)
[00:03:51] But with this, the problem is we end up
[00:04:00] on all kinds of different notes and frequencies,
[00:04:04] but we only want to hit the root note,
[00:04:08] the fourth and the fifth.
[00:04:09] Okay, so how do we do this now?
[00:04:11] We can just use a quantizer, right?
[00:04:17] And then use the root note,
[00:04:22] the fourth and the fifth of the scale.
[00:04:26] But the problem now is when we switch here this to E,
[00:04:29] this, it doesn't fit anymore.
[00:04:32] Yeah, every time you basically switch here this,
[00:04:34] we have to switch also here these knobs,
[00:04:39] all these buttons to fit actually your current scale,
[00:04:43] which is a bit tedious.
[00:04:44] It works, but it's tedious.
[00:04:46] We also have your by scale, this kind of thing,
[00:04:49] but it also targets all of the notes of the current scale.
[00:04:53] This is also not what we want.
[00:04:54] We only want to target three different notes
[00:04:57] from each scale and these are all always different
[00:05:01] in each scale.
[00:05:02] So we can do something very easy with this.
[00:05:06] We just unhuck this here, disable this basically.
[00:05:14] So we use an ad and we want to add the pitch here.
[00:05:19] We actually do this here in one scale
[00:05:25] and this is the C major scale.
[00:05:28] And we use a ratio in front like this.
[00:05:33] And then we say, oh, this is C major now.
[00:05:36] So C major, this is the root.
[00:05:38] Then we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
[00:05:42] We have the fourth and the fifth here in the root.
[00:05:45] And then we add this to this, put these two together.
[00:05:50] Maybe this is better because C three is always zero.
[00:05:57] So we don't need an input here because the input is zero.
[00:06:01] So zero is C three.
[00:06:03] So you don't need to have an input.
[00:06:06] And then we get here all the offsets, offset values, right?
[00:06:12] So here this is zero, then this is probably, I don't know,
[00:06:16] zero dot zero three or something like this.
[00:06:18] And then we use this root note here as an offset.
[00:06:22] So we move it up or down on the keyboard, on the scale.
[00:06:27] So we offset this.
[00:06:28] So we can change this here and we are still using
[00:06:31] the pitches or the offsets here for the notes.
[00:06:34] I hope this makes sense in a way to you.
[00:06:37] I can show you this in a minute.
[00:06:40] So we use value slider here.
[00:06:42] So instead of modulating this,
[00:06:43] we modulate actually this here in the C major scale.
[00:06:46] And it sounds like this.
[00:06:49] Then again, add some notes.
[00:07:06] And now you can see that all these overtones
[00:07:10] here are actually louder than the initial pitch,
[00:07:13] which is not what we want.
[00:07:14] We want to have this the loudest and this is the quietest.
[00:07:17] So it's actually the opposite way around.
[00:07:20] So we can use the value slider here and say,
[00:07:22] the more we go up in pitch,
[00:07:25] the more we go up in pitch, the more we go up in voices,
[00:07:29] the lower we want to go with the volume.
[00:07:32] So we bring in here a DB slider like this
[00:07:37] and then we modulate this down, right?
[00:07:40] We use this value.
[00:07:41] The higher we go in voice,
[00:07:45] the lower we go with the volume.
[00:07:46] I maybe use a different one here.
[00:07:53] Maybe if this one ranges much, much higher.
[00:07:59] Okay, maybe add some voice stacks here.
[00:08:04] So we can tweak the slider on here much better.
[00:08:19] So now that we have these stacks
[00:08:21] and all of these stacks are actually only the root,
[00:08:25] the fifth and the fourth,
[00:08:26] and we can now change here the initial root key
[00:08:30] and everything is on point.
[00:08:33] Perfect.
[00:08:40] So we can change the key and everything stays in place.
[00:08:44] It's exactly what we want.
[00:08:46] So now we can also add maybe your reverb.
[00:08:48] So I'm going for a super massive,
[00:08:54] all the way up, density here,
[00:08:57] and it probably already sounds very ambient-ish.
[00:09:00] Let's tweak this a bit.
[00:09:09] So again here,
[00:09:24] we can already bring in some movement
[00:09:26] just by modulating here the volume.
[00:09:28] So what we do now is we want to modulate the volume
[00:09:31] of each voice.
[00:09:32] We want to have go this down and up
[00:09:34] and this up and down, right?
[00:09:36] So very randomly.
[00:09:38] We can do this easily by just adding here a random modulator.
[00:09:43] And this random modulator is already in per voice mode,
[00:09:46] as you can see on the left side.
[00:09:48] So on each voice, we get the value
[00:09:53] and you want to smooth this here.
[00:09:54] So it's slowly moving
[00:09:56] and you want to maybe have this moving over four bars
[00:10:01] very slowly.
[00:10:02] And we use this to go down in volume here.
[00:10:06] So now each partial is
[00:10:13] randomly moving slowly up and down in volume.
[00:10:20] (gentle music)
[00:10:22] So let's play around here with a ratio setting.
[00:10:33] Yeah, let's go actually here to
[00:10:49] three.
[00:10:50] So this is the highest setting we want to go.
[00:10:54] And now we can use a macro button here
[00:10:57] and just modulate the amount of this,
[00:11:03] of this maximum three.
[00:11:05] So with this now we can go from,
[00:11:09] only use one partial to
[00:11:18] yeah, use a different spreading.
[00:11:21] So we use a random modulator here.
[00:11:27] Maybe we switch this to monophonic
[00:11:31] and we say bar and we say every four bars
[00:11:35] or maybe every five bars,
[00:11:38] we switch to a different value
[00:11:41] and this is then a different spread setting.
[00:11:43] (gentle music)
[00:11:46] (gentle music)
[00:11:48] And because it's very
[00:11:58] abruptly changing from one chord to the other,
[00:12:03] maybe we can bring in here a lag.
[00:12:05] So it's slowly moving the notes
[00:12:14] from one point to the other.
[00:12:16] Can you hear it?
[00:12:24] (gentle music)
[00:12:26] Are you a bit slower?
[00:12:36] I don't know.
[00:12:37] It depends on what you like.
[00:12:44] Or maybe it's too slow.
[00:12:47] So it all depends on taste, on what you want to do.
[00:12:58] Okay, so now that we have this,
[00:13:00] we can also clone here this randomizer
[00:13:04] and we go maybe for a bit slower, six bars.
[00:13:11] And then we go here for the skewer.
[00:13:14] So now some of the voices get randomly
[00:13:20] morphed into a solid.
[00:13:23] (gentle music)
[00:13:25] That's also nice.
[00:13:46] So let's clone this randomizer here again
[00:13:49] and do it for the fold.
[00:13:50] (gentle music)
[00:13:53] Okay, so maybe we want to slightly detune each voice
[00:14:10] because it's very perfect on point.
[00:14:14] So we can maybe use the value again,
[00:14:17] detune everything a bit.
[00:14:19] (gentle music)
[00:14:22] Or we can do also another randomizer here.
[00:14:38] Just randomize each voice slightly.
[00:14:43] (gentle music)
[00:14:46] We can also try and push this down one octave.
[00:15:05] (gentle music)
[00:15:07] That's better.
[00:15:12] (gentle music)
[00:15:15] Okay, so this is one thing you can do.
[00:15:24] We can also do something like self resonance.
[00:15:29] We bring in here a delay.
[00:15:30] Take the output of this oscillator
[00:15:35] and bring it back into the input here for face modulation.
[00:15:41] (gentle music)
[00:15:45] And we do the same thing here with the randomizer.
[00:15:47] (gentle music)
[00:15:50] Give some interesting sounds sometimes.
[00:15:57] (gentle music)
[00:16:01] Not too much.
[00:16:02] (gentle music)
[00:16:06] (gentle music)
[00:16:09] So maybe we also want to use the chorus here, chorus plus
[00:16:27] just for extra movement.
[00:16:31] (gentle music)
[00:16:35] (gentle music)
[00:16:37] Maybe the output is a bit too high here.
[00:16:39] (gentle music)
[00:17:03] Yeah, and like I said, the best part is,
[00:17:05] you can now change the root key
[00:17:09] and you get a different sound.
[00:17:10] (gentle music)
[00:17:13] Okay, so I think I don't like here actually the switch.
[00:17:31] So maybe I just removed that.
[00:17:33] Let's move this here, remove that.
[00:17:39] And we go for three is maybe too much.
[00:17:44] (gentle music)
[00:17:46] That's okay.
[00:17:48] (gentle music)
[00:17:50] Yeah, two is okay.
[00:17:58] (gentle music)
[00:18:01] (gentle music)
[00:18:04] So now that we know the scale, which is EB minor,
[00:18:14] we can maybe place something on top.
[00:18:17] So I want to add here an EQ.
[00:18:19] For now, maybe filled out here the bass a bit.
[00:18:24] (gentle music)
[00:18:27] (gentle music)
[00:18:30] Yeah, we maybe could could use here
[00:18:34] my textures block in again.
[00:18:36] Textures.
[00:18:37] (gentle music)
[00:18:41] Oh, it's this one, yeah.
[00:18:44] Yeah, it's this one.
[00:18:48] (gentle music)
[00:18:50] Let's see.
[00:18:53] (gentle music)
[00:18:56] (gentle music)
[00:18:58] (gentle music)
[00:19:08] Maybe in front of the reverb.
[00:19:25] Yeah, it sounds a bit better.
[00:19:27] (gentle music)
[00:19:30] So now we can maybe use a sampler.
[00:19:41] And I can use my Triton Keywords patch.
[00:19:54] It's just a bunch of samples from the Triton Keyboard.
[00:19:57] A lot of different presets here as one sample.
[00:20:01] And we use a random modulator for that.
[00:20:06] And we select the random sample.
[00:20:09] Every time we press a key and then we hold it.
[00:20:12] Let's see how this sounds.
[00:20:15] (gentle music)
[00:20:17] Yeah, we got different key.
[00:20:19] (gentle music)
[00:20:23] And we want to have a slow attack here.
[00:20:25] Maybe we go for textures mode, longer grain.
[00:20:29] (gentle music)
[00:20:31] And we use the same reverb setting on that.
[00:20:41] (gentle music)
[00:20:43] (gentle music)
[00:20:46] Maybe a little longer.
[00:21:03] (gentle music)
[00:21:06] And then you play some random notes on top
[00:21:13] out of the key.
[00:21:14] (gentle music)
[00:21:17] I may be recorded.
[00:21:30] (gentle music)
[00:21:33] (gentle music)
[00:21:36] And because this randomized,
[00:22:02] you get a different sound every time here.
[00:22:05] (gentle music)
[00:22:07] And I mean, maybe use
[00:22:08] 50% chance on each note.
[00:22:14] So it's not played all the time.
[00:22:15] (gentle music)
[00:22:18] Maybe delay.
[00:22:19] (gentle music)
[00:22:22] (gentle music)
[00:22:24] Also very nice is here the delay plus, this one.
[00:22:38] And sometimes I like to
[00:22:41] randomize here the delay times.
[00:22:46] (gentle music)
[00:22:50] (gentle music)
[00:22:52] Ah, let's say every
[00:23:01] six half note.
[00:23:04] (gentle music)
[00:23:19] Let's put this here.
[00:23:20] (gentle music)
[00:23:22] So we have the
[00:23:23] (gentle music)
[00:23:26] Yeah, maybe in high pass, more high passing.
[00:23:29] (gentle music)
[00:23:31] EQ five on that.
[00:23:45] (gentle music)
[00:23:48] Bam, nice ambience.
[00:23:50] (gentle music)
[00:23:53] So all we need now is maybe a bass.
[00:23:58] (gentle music)
[00:24:00] So we can go for a polymer.
[00:24:02] (gentle music)
[00:24:04] Use maybe saw.
[00:24:05] (gentle music)
[00:24:07] Detuned.
[00:24:08] (gentle music)
[00:24:10] And we use your transpose.
[00:24:14] (gentle music)
[00:24:16] Go down to octaves.
[00:24:18] The tool device here.
[00:24:20] Make it mono.
[00:24:21] Use ADSR here.
[00:24:24] It's a bass so we can go monophonic.
[00:24:27] Let's see how this sounds.
[00:24:28] (gentle music)
[00:24:30] That's way too, way too high.
[00:24:32] (gentle music)
[00:24:34] (gentle music)
[00:24:37] And then you play a bass line.
[00:24:57] I don't know what.
[00:24:59] (gentle music)
[00:25:03] Or maybe stop at the root.
[00:25:05] (gentle music)
[00:25:32] Yeah, then you maybe use another reverb.
[00:25:35] At the end, maybe not too much.
[00:25:40] (gentle music)
[00:26:01] Then you bring everything into balance.
[00:26:03] (gentle music)
[00:26:06] Yeah, you can get creative with what kind of sounds
[00:26:24] you put on top or where you put it right.
[00:26:26] You have a lot of options here in the drone generator.
[00:26:30] You can see it's very easy, very simple,
[00:26:33] but you can make it so complex if you want to.
[00:26:36] Just stacking here fifth and fourth
[00:26:40] and also using some random sounds on top.
[00:26:44] Some sample treat on keyboard presets than a bass.
[00:26:49] You know, it's very, very simple actually.
[00:26:53] And there are so many options you can push this
[00:26:57] into different directions, right?
[00:26:58] You can put the beat below that,
[00:27:01] use some drums or leave it as it is.
[00:27:05] Maybe exchange the sine oscillator here
[00:27:08] for a wave table oscillator.
[00:27:10] Use some wave tables in there.
[00:27:12] Get a different sound.
[00:27:13] Whatever you want to do, right?
[00:27:17] So yeah, I just want to give you a quick idea
[00:27:20] how to do this and how to approach this.
[00:27:23] I maybe put this whole project here on my dispenser
[00:27:28] or on my Github page so you can download this for free
[00:27:31] if you want to.
[00:27:32] But actually you can, you just saw it.
[00:27:34] It's not that much.
[00:27:35] But this is a great starting point for ambient songs.
[00:27:38] So if you want to create these kinds of sounds
[00:27:42] or videos here on YouTube and get 80K views (laughs)
[00:27:47] which you probably don't get.
[00:27:48] But yeah, that's how you do it, okay?
[00:27:53] I hope this helps in a way.
[00:27:55] Thanks for watching, leave a like.
[00:27:56] Let me know what you think.
[00:27:57] Maybe you need some more stuff like this.
[00:28:01] Anyway, let me know.
[00:28:03] Let me know in the comments, okay?
[00:28:04] Thanks for watching.
[00:28:05] See you next video and bye.
[00:28:06] (dramatic music)
[00:28:10] (dramatic music)
[00:28:13] I don't let this run for one hour.
[00:28:34] Bye.