Make Acid Bass with Bitwig

Back at the beginning of the month I read an update from bitwig.com wishing electronic music makers a happy 303 day.

Taking encouragement from the update, I decided to try my hand at making a 303-inspired track in Bitwig.  So I loaded the arpeggiator device into an instrument track, added a step modulator, dropped in a polysynth and got right to it.

The result is Acid Choo Choo, just about 3 minutes and 03 seconds of non-stop acid bass action.

Below are some details about how I put the track together.

1) The Bass

The raison d’etre is, of course, the bass.  I used the Acido preset from Bitwig’s polysynth instrument.  The polysynth is loaded into the fx slot of a step modulator.

A step modulator adds movement to the bass line.

An arpeggiator device precedes the step modulator and starts the device chain for the bass track.  (So the full chain is arpgeggiator > step mod > polysynth.)

Nothing but 16th notes

2) Cowbell

I decided the track should have some cowbell.  It didn’t seem right to limit the use of arpeggiators and step modulators to just the bass track.  So I added them to the cowbell track for good measure.

Don’t fear the cowbell.

Here’s what the arpeggiated, step modulated, and distorted cowbell sounds like.  (Not really anything resembling an actual cowbell!)

3) Compositional Approach

I tried something new with Acid Choo Choo and used both the clip launcher and arranger sequencers to put the track together.  I started by experimenting with some building block material and improvising using the clip launcher.  (I trigger clips using a control script I wrote for Korg’s nanoPAD2 controller.)  Once I had the basic flow laid out as scenes I recorded several takes launching scenes, manipulating parameters, and recording the results to the arranger.

The basic structure laid out in clip launcher scenes.

With a good take recorded into the arranger timeline I began experimenting with layering in additional sounds.  I added a couple supporting tracks during this phase.

I used the arranger to capture multiple takes of clip launcher improvs.

And the result is a short, 303-ish bass track that I had a bunch of fun making.  Thanks for the idea, Team Bitwig!