Hello,
I have been an active reader of this forum for a number of years and have now decided to create a user account. Music production is not new to me - I have been working with Ableton for more than 10 years. Of course, the years do not say anything about how well I know my way around. I only do music production as a hobby. I recently switched from Ableton to Bitwig and I still have a few questions about my new DAW. A video for Pitch Innovations' Fluid Chords plugin demonstrates the use of Bitwig. The sequence played live is recorded and the notes appear multicolored in the editor. To the left of the note editor, channels are displayed in the same colors. Can someone please explain to me what this means? Are multiple channels being recorded at the same time? I hope my first question here isn't too stupid. Thank you.

 

Seems that there are pre-programmed chords on different notes of the keyboard, and the program allows auto-bending from a chord to another seamlessly.
Sounds nice, I have to try it.

 

Bro I have no answers for your question.
However I do feel the need to inform you that there is no such thing as a dumb question. The only dumb question is the one not asked.
This forum is for the learning no matter how advanced or green we may be. e all start from somewhere. I've been in music 45 years now. And I still find myself not knowing something and I feel good to know I have this wonderful group of professionals & novices who can not only answer my questions but give insight and example.
So my brotha please feel free to ask away.

-BiG Pluck

 

I'm also interested and I'll watch later this vid at home.
Like our fellow above well said, don't hesitate to ask as long you've a valid question. Even if it seems a beginner one.

Moreover I think what you ask is related to a pretty unique functionality of this plugin and that's why it's made quite the impact.

Like I said could be wrong, have to watch it still.

 

It's using a midi channel filter... essentially, each separate note can get routed to a different midi channel, opening up worlds of opportunity. C3 can get routed to, say, Omnisphere, D3 to Pigments, D#3 to Serum etc etc.

Here's a good Bitwig tutorial on doing that:

 

To add to the previous answer, routing each midi note to its separate channel is what we call midi polyphonic expression (mpe). This allows us to creat pitch bends on one single note while playing a chord and not change the pitch of all the notes, something that would happen with regular midi routing.

 

This is just a demo vid for the fluid chords vst, they just happen to be using it in bitwig. They could have used almost any daw. Essentially its similar to other midi vst's in the sense that you can play chords by only hitting one note (a la Scaler 2 and the like), but it adds the ability to use the mod wheel to bend the chord to any other chord. This was something that was not possible prior to the release of this vst. I mean you could achieve something similar using several different tracks and tons of automation but not possible in such a simple fashion.

Edit: For clarity regarding mpe, the vst you will be sending midi to will need to be mpe compatible but you do not require a mpe midi controller. All you need is a controller with a mod wheel or to program the modwheel in automation.

Edit also for clarity because I didn't address the question about the colors: so yes multiple channels are being used and each color represents a different channel but I'm pretty sure that was more so for eye-candy than a necessity for this to work.

 

Last edited: Jun 1, 2022

with one of the lead dev's of fluid pitch

 

Thanks guys, your answers helped me a lot

 

It appears to me that they are sending each note to its own instrument which is CPU heavy. The only other way to achieve chord bending like this is by using an MPE compatible synth. In both ways I don't see a use of this plugin because you can do it manualy

 

I just tested this out, and it has a very basic internal synthesizer that is just like an organ sound. You can also have it scan for MPE compatible plugins and it looks like it runs an instance of that plugin within FluidChords.

As far as I can tell it uses just one instance of said plugin, and then you can just pitch bend chords automatically.. which is pretty wild. Of 10 VSTs that I tried, only one actually pitch bended chords properly - Serum*. It actually works really well, but it might be hard on some people's CPUs though.

No routing of MIDI channels anywhere was required. However, one thing I did notice was it just outputs everything as audio, not MIDI. So I wonder if there are different setups with this thing, in which you can either have it generate audio (like I had), or maybe have it generate midi on separate channels you route to wherever. I'll see if I can figure the latter out later.

Edit: if you change it to "no sound", then it actually outputs MIDI that you can record.
* - It is working with multiple MPE compatible VSTis now... I think I didn't have MPE enabled on some that I tried.

 

Last edited: Jun 1, 2022

It is not sending each note to its own instrument, but I finally realize why you guys keep saying that... He's only playing one note and you are misunderstanding that this is one of those midi fx plugins that when you press a single note it can play a chord (which is why I mentioned similar to scaler earlier). Now I get why it seems so confusing if you missed that part.

Man I gotta make sure I read folks entire comment first lol, I was about to say what you put in the edit...