14 instances of Voltage Modular vst in Bitwig
(6 for drums, 3 for hi-pitched glitches/percs in the second part, 5 for tonal sounds)
Bitwig effects:
drum machine
note pitch shifter
eq5
compressor
tool
reverb
delay-2, delay-1
note receiver, note filter (for sidechain business, paired with note sidechain modulator)
mid-side split
3rd party:
Ozone imager 2
kHz reverb
kHz delay
OTT
TDR Molotok
Loudmax
Updated details:
It was an interesting challenge. At first I was somewhat annoyed of the free version not having modules for some basic functionality(no stereo device for panning was especially frustrating), but then I embraced the challenge. Also it turned out it's pretty easy to make your own modules in VM (compared to VCV with c++ and designing ui with code), so I already made a panner device and in the process of making a multimode filter.
I tried to make all sound design to happen inside VM, and use the daw only for mixing/sequencing/automation. It sort of worked out, except for some stuff like reverb - at first I was really going to use only VM's reverbs for the sake of additional challenge, but after some time playing with them realized that I don't like any of the free ones. So I decided concentrate on other stuff and mostly use bitwig and khz reverbs.
Same for panning, although I had some ideas of implementing panning with two mixers with levels controlled by perform knobs that are inversed for one of the mixers. But that didn't look like a lot of fun and I just used ozone imager and bitwig/khz delays for widening the sounds.
Also the delay module was a disappointment. I could neither make a chorus out of it - no cv for time, and actually turning the time knob produces horrible artifacts, nor use it as an adjustable comb filter - the time takes only integer amount of ms(and no cv again). It's probably made this way so it's as light on cpu as it could, but that was a bummer.
My computer is quite slow, so I had to freeze tracks to satisfy VM's appetite. In addition to freezing synth tracks I used another trick - after roughly designing the drums I sampled them and used the samples as a placeholder for composing drum parts. Then when it felt like drums needed more sound design I would do it by one and resample again. This way the drum track is always in midi form and is easy to deal with. Of course in the end I rendered everything without samples as required by the rules. The final render took 8:40, which I guess is not so bad for 5:30 track. This trick has its pitfalls, it's hard to match velocity response for example, and I had such problem when quiet hihats disappeared completely after render, and I had some time wondering why the track sounds not the way it sounded before. But overall this trick worked quite well for me.
Also worth mentioning that the performance is not an issue for me, as in real life scenario I would just resample all the stuff I like and disable the plugin. This approach has a benefit of committing to stuff and not designing one sound endlessly. Also samples are subject to chopping, stretching, reversing and other fun manipulations.
Well, in the end I really liked this challenge. I haven't been making any music for a while and it was a nice refresher. I liked the plugin, compared to VCV I was missing huge selection of modules, but then realized that my VM's experience is probably more like a hardware experience. Usually you don't have a lot of hardware stuff, and you use the stuff you have to the max. Similarly, I mostly used just simple oscillators, filters and Vult's adsr/ahd, and that was enough to make decent subtractive as well as FM-based patches. I also used Partial Oscillator and Impulse Synth for glitches/percs, these two are great. Partial Oscillator is really deep, and Impulse is instantly inspiring(also clean interface is great, I hope people behind Playertron don't mind I put its image on soundcloud cover of my track
