Polarity's Picks: 10 Years of Bitwig Tutorials
The producer and educator selects his favorite Bitwig videos and shares insights from his musical journey.
For Polarity, music, learning, and community have always gone together. Perhaps it dates back to his childhood: growing up in East Germany, this "introverted computer nerd" was fascinated by technology he couldn't yet access. He started producing in the '90s, when music gear was progressing fast but knowledge was scarce. When the internet came along, he finally saw an opportunity to connect and share, founding a community site, Producer Network, in 1999.
Since then, the veteran Bitwig user and Sound Package creator has lived by the motto: "When I discover stuff, I have to share it." He's involved in multiple community projects, including launching the Bitwig Discord. But he's best known for his YouTube channel, a treasure trove of tips and tutorials reflecting a deep knowledge of music production and Bitwig Studio. To mark the channel's 10th birthday, Polarity picked five of his favorite Bitwig videos from over the years. He also shared insights from his musical journey, and explained why Bitwig Studio is the DAW for him.
“My music is always the origin of the videos I make. I'm sharing my discoveries with the world.”
Music and community have combined for you since the late ‘90s, when you founded Producer Network. Why?
Yes, I feel like it all belongs together in some way. When I started making music there were no resources. The software was just starting to become available in a form where you could make music without expensive hardware synthesizers and mixing consoles. There was so much to discover, so much to learn. Every year there was software that could do something new. And it wasn't like it is today, where you can exchange ideas with someone every second.
All the UK producers were a bit among themselves. They had their secret recipes for drum ‘n' bass – how to make a fat bass or a rolling drum beat. I thought, "We in Germany should do some kind of joint project." Producer Network was a forum for exchanging ideas. We basically learned together. So ever since I started making music, that's how it's been: I have to share my knowledge. I don't really have production secrets that I keep to myself.
When did you first discover Bitwig?
I remember seeing an announcement when it launched in 2014. I downloaded the demo and then kept switching between Cubase and Bitwig. At some point I realized I'd been in Bitwig the whole time for a week, making music and having fun. So I bought it, and at some point I infected my friends too. There was a lot to discover with Bitwig, and when I discover stuff I have to share it. So that more or less led to my YouTube channel.
What was the idea behind the channel at the beginning, and how has that changed in the 10 years since?
I didn't have a plan at all. I never had in mind that I'd do this professionally – that came many years later. Back then, nobody was making YouTube videos about Bitwig. Why not? It's a cool thing, right? So I decided to do it.
Now, I don't have an overarching ambition for the channel: reach, viewers or something. What drives me is that I want to make music, I want to explore things, and I want to share them. I can see that I have a certain role to play in the community. What I really want, actually, is to expand the community, but in a meaningful way. That's how I try to approach the channel. So not rapid growth and as much as possible, but focus and quality.
Where do the ideas for your videos come from?
The music I make is always the origin of the videos. I make music, then I discover something. And then I can package it in a video and share it with people. So I'm sharing my discoveries with the world, more or less.
The videos you've picked out for us show some ingenious patching ideas, using everything in Bitwig from The Grid – which you offer a free course in – to simple devices like DC Offset. Where do these ideas come from?
I come from East Germany. We didn't have all those Western products – we only had very simple toys. I got a gift back then, a very small package of Lego. It was a car or something, like 20, 30 Lego bricks. At some point my father said, "You got that two months ago, and you've built 20 or 30 different toys out of it." Simply because I was so fascinated by it. It occurred to me that it's the same with Bitwig. So I guess Bitwig is a bit like Lego to me!
You set up the Bitwig Discord Server in 2020. What's special about the community there?
I was already spending a lot of time on Discord – I'm a bit of a gamer – then I had this crazy idea to set up a Bitwig server. There were already Bitwig forums, but the live chat aspect was missing. The Bitwig Discord is a place for exchanging information, collaborating, sharing presets and samples or bug reports and feature requests. It's just about being in contact with other people, and it's worked really well. Lots of people have joined.
Generate Chords Using Harmonic Theory
My first successful Bitwig video and preset, from 2017. It can generate all the chords you need, familiarizes you with harmonic theory, and shows how powerful Bitwig's modulation system is. I'm interested in music theory in my videos because I have no idea about it. It's basically research. So for this preset, I was learning how scales and chords work in functional harmony, while seeing how far I could push the modulation system, which arrived in Bitwig Studio 2.
Build a Tempo-Synced Looper With Delay-1
Here I take the ancient Delay-1 device and turn it into an endless looper that can be synchronized to the project tempo. Sometimes you can really get a lot out of the old devices because they are all very modular in design. The best thing about Bitwig is its modularity. The individual devices are very simple, but you can combine them and build new devices from them. That's exactly why I switched to Bitwig, because I realized that I didn't need all those complex VST instruments anymore.
Turn Polymer Into an FM Synth
This shows how Bitwig's modularity allows you to turn the Polymer synth – which is actually quite simple in design – completely upside down, and even teach it FM synthesis using modulators. The idea for this came to me over time: that you can build the DC Offset device as a wavetable so it can be used in Polymer. When I'm making music I have a text app where I write down whatever ideas I have, so I don't get distracted in the moment.
Extend the Piano Roll With a Custom Script
After more than eight years using Bitwig, I worked with controller scripts for the first time in this video. Scripts are actually intended for integrating MIDI controllers into Bitwig. But it turns out you can use them to build tools that don't involve hardware. This tool writes generative notes into the piano roll natively in Bitwig. I have a background as a web developer, which has the same origins as my music: I'm an introverted computer nerd, and have been since the ‘90s.
Generate Melodies From Noise
Here I explain how to create a generative melody from a noise blip in The Grid, just with filters and some envelope following. The patch uses a very simple source sound from the Test Tone device. I know from experience that in most music, the individual sounds don't have to be complicated. I've always said that I could switch back to Bitwig Studio 2 right now and easily make just as much music. I think it's cool that new features are in there, but when I make music, I just take simple sounds and put them together exactly the way I want. I don't use 1,000 modulators.
