Topics / Bitwig Studio / Bitwig Grid / Bitwig Grid Modules / Grid Oscillator Modules / Swarm

Swarm

Bitwig Platform

Swarm module panel in Bitwig Grid
Swarm in Bitwig Grid 6.0.6.

A nine-voice internal unison oscillator using saw or sine waves with controllable detune width and distribution curvature.

What it does

Swarm layers a center oscillator with eight additional oscillators spread around its pitch. Spread controls the total detune width, Skirt redistributes the inner and outer offsets, and Wave chooses saw or sine for every voice.

Controls and ports

Control Label Official description
spread Spread Width of detuning applied
skirt Skirt Fine-tunes the detuning distribution
wave Waveform [various waves] Waveshape to use for each voice of the swarm

Practical uses

  • Choose Saw and raise Spread for wide supersaw-style leads, basses, and pads.
  • Choose Sine for softer organ-like or beating textures where individual detuned components remain audible.
  • Modulate Spread gently and use Skirt to move energy between the center and outer pitch offsets.

Things to know

  • The recovered implementation contains one center voice plus eight detuned voices, for nine total oscillator contributions.
  • Skirt changes the distribution of detuning; it is not a level envelope around the voice stack.
  • The additional voices begin at fixed differing phase offsets to avoid perfectly coherent starts.
  • Phase In is additive to the root and unison phases; Ratio 0:1 stops the ordinary root progression for external phase experiments.
  • Output is normalized by 1/sqrt(9), which controls energy but does not guarantee a fixed peak level for every phase relationship.

Technical details

A high-confidence Nitro implementation candidate supports the technical summary, but the visible-module mapping remains inferred.

The confirmed grid_swarm4 body generates a center saw or sine plus eight phase accumulators. Their signed base offsets are [1, .75, .5, .25, -.25, -.5, -.75, -1]; Skirt applies sign(x)*|x|*(1+s-s|x|) before Spread scales the detune. The eight phases start from fixed decorrelated values and advance relative to the root phase increment. All nine signals are summed and multiplied by 1/sqrt(9). Pitch, ratio, reset, external phase modulation, and stereo detune wrap the unison core.

Nitro port Type
pitchValue InputAudioPortType
pitchOffset InputAudioPortType
numerator InputValuePortType
denominator InputValuePortType
triggerIn InputAudioPortType
phaseIn InputAudioPortType
phaseMod InputAudioPortType
stereo InputValuePortType
spread InputAudioPortType
skirt InputAudioPortType
detune InputAudioPortType
waveform InputValuePortType
out OutputAudioPortType

Open questions

  • Measure the visible Spread and Skirt ranges, voice frequencies, reset behavior, and phase initialization per note or voice.
  • Compare output RMS, peaks, and aliasing between Saw and Sine across the keyboard.

Version and sources

Checked against Bitwig Studio 6.0.6. This page combines Bitwig's module metadata, the existing Grid course and guides, and Nitro analysis where the mapping is strong enough to support a technical statement.

Return to Bitwig Grid Modules or the Grid Modules course lesson.

Also matches: Bitwig Swarm module, Bitwig Grid Swarm, Swarm Grid module