Drone Control
When experimenting in the Bitwig grid I will often remove any sort of envelope while trying to build an interesting drone. This generate something akin to the classic Reaktor patch “Space Drone”. I’ve always been inspired by Space Drone but have found it painful to work with because it will generate audio continuously even when nothing is playing.
This can be great while developing but less so once you would like to start utilizing the patch in a completed piece. I have generated a small utility FX Grid patch to make working with these types of generators more bearable. It will create a envelope that is controlled by the system transport so that you will only hear the patch while Bitwig is playing.
- Create a new FX Grid patch.
- Drag an AR Envelope onto the patch cord that is running from the input to the output. This will insert the AR envelope into the signal path.
- On the AR uncheck “Gate On Notes”.
- Set the attack and release to zero.
- Patch a Transport Playing control into the gate input of the AR.
- On the device create two macro modulators.
- Map one of them to Attack and set the range to 1.
- Map the second one to release and set the range to 1.
- Set the attack and decay macros to reasonable values
- Rename the device “Transport Envelope”.
- Double click the titlebar of the device to hide additional controls.
- Save the FX Grid patch to your library.
Now anytime to you need to tame a droning VST you can drag and drop the transport envelope into your signal path and the drone will only play while the transport is.