Drum Machine channel doesn't mute midi - potential philosophical stand off?

[lloydcole]

I appreciate your continued input, but I tried that and I can't see how that makes any difference to my situation. I can deactivate the Drum Machine within the Mixer, it shows up in the channel strip, and can be toggled on/off, but I can't mute it with the MUTE button, which is what I want to do, one way or another.
If I'm missing something obvious here, please let me know.

[pdxindy]

I appreciate your continued input, but I tried that and I can't see how that makes any difference to my situation. I can deactivate the Drum Machine within the Mixer, it shows up in the channel strip, and can be toggled on/off, but I can't mute it with the MUTE button, which is what I want to do, one way or another.
If I'm missing something obvious here, please let me know.

Why does it matter whether it is the mute button or deactivating the drum machine?

[lloydcole]

Muting. That's what a MUTE button should do. If a track has a MUTE button that does nothing then something is wrong. Yes you can workaround it, but it's a workaround and how many other workarounds are there? Which tracks work with MUTE, which don't? MEMORIZE. No good.

[justin3am]

Muting. That's what a MUTE button should do. If a track has a MUTE button that does nothing then something is wrong. Yes you can workaround it, but it's a workaround and how many other workarounds are there? Which tracks work with MUTE, which don't? MEMORIZE. No good.

But you have to understand, that is not what the Mute button does. It is supposed to Mute audio. It doesn't prevent note data from being transmitted. Routing a drum machine to a mixer, the mute on each mixer channel doesn't stop the drums from triggering, it breaks the audio connection between the channel and the associated output.

As I said previously, this isn't a bug or an oversight. It is something that doesn't work the way you expected/how you would prefer. If it did work the way you would like by default, I imagine it could be confusing to other users. You have a number of options for preventing MIDI from getting to your drum machine, globally or on a per note basis. You can either choose to use them or not. It comes down to whether or not that is practical for your particular use case.

[ejgallego]

Indeed that is what we have been trying to say; the way mute works is a conscious design choice:

• mute: the devices still run, but audio on the channel is suppressed
• activate/deactivate: the device stops to run, hence MIDI.

As you can see mute _is_ expensive, but there is good reason for that; I agree that you have a good use case and maybe the drum machine could have a special mode.

[stamp]

I'm 100% with the op.

...the way mute works is a conscious design choice.

At least at the moment.
More than one year ago I wrote to support complaining about the fact that it wasn't possible to mute midi in the mixer (using mutes). Guess what; Dom told me that the mixer was audio only, etc. And look what happened in 2.1

"IMPROVED Improved workflow for tracks which are routed to a note/MIDI destination (mute/solo/meters)"

[lloydcole]

But you have to understand, that is not what the Mute button does. It is supposed to Mute audio. It doesn't prevent note data from being transmitted. Routing a drum machine to a mixer, the mute on each mixer channel doesn't stop the drums from triggering, it breaks the audio connection between the channel and the associated output.

I believe that was the case in Bitwig 1 but it isn't the case in Bitwig 2. See the previous posters quote from Bitwig themselves.
Also, as I mentioned in an earlier reply, I have in my test project a Drum Machine track, playing midi notes from the arranger, AND a simple midi track playing hi hat from a launcher clip, routed to the Drum Machine. I cannot mute the midi coming from the drum machine with the MUTE button, but I CAN mute the midi from the midi track using the MUTE button.

[VariKusBrainZ]

What about sticking a velocity tool on the required channel and use that to mute

[ejgallego]

I'm 100% with the op.

...the way mute works is a conscious design choice.

At least at the moment.
More than one year ago I wrote to support complaining about the fact that it wasn't possible to mute midi in the mixer (using mutes). Guess what; Dom told me that the mixer was audio only, etc. And look what happened in 2.1

"IMPROVED Improved workflow for tracks which are routed to a note/MIDI destination (mute/solo/meters)"

Sure, indeed I think it makes sense to have more flexibility in this regard, but IMO you want the current behavior most times.

[lloydcole]

I tweeted to Thavius Beck to see what he might have to say. Selected quotes

"yeah, you are absolutely correct in this case... muting the track doesn't mute the outgoing MIDI, muting the drum cell doesn't mute the MIDI coming from that cell (for example whatever is sending MIDI to my kick drum), and the only way I can stop the MIDI without stopping the transport is to deactivate the drum machine or the HW instrument device(s) inside my drum machine. And yeah, you can't remap the track Mute buttons to control anything else. Honestly there isn't a workaround that would let you use the track mute button to mute the outgoing MIDI that I know of. You would still need to map something to deactivate the drum machine, or create a blank MIDI clip on that track that you can launch when you don't want the drum machine to play... neither is a great alternative"

" to be honest, there were a few MIDI quirks with bitwig when I was beta testing 2.0 before it got released... a lot of it has been smoothed out, but this definitely shouldn't be an ongoing issue..."

"I am not sure if it has been brought to their attention quite honestly, but I talk to those guys a lot so I will put it on their radar. The whole staff is only about 15-20 people, so it is just a matter of them prioritizing it as something to fix... "

[lloydcole]

Until we hear from Bitwig I don't think there is more to say. Based on Thavius' comments this does look like an oversight, and they will fix it, sometime.... The workaround isn't terrible - there isn't even any need to insert and device before Drum Machine, the device itself shows up in the Mixer, even my smallest version of it, so it's activate/deactivate button can be toggled there.

[pdxindy]

I tweeted to Thavius Beck to see what he might have to say. Selected quotes

You should also email Bitwig and request what you want. The Bitwig Devs' might not even know this thread is here.

In the meanwhile, I just assigned a Key Command to the mute button on the track the drum machine is on... and I also assigned the same Key Command to disable the device. (I used a note receiver because that still lets me edit the drum machine). That would work from a midi controller as well.

[lloydcole]

I emailed a few days ago and linked to this thread.

[pdxindy]

The workaround isn't terrible - there isn't even any need to insert and device before Drum Machine, the device itself shows up in the Mixer, even my smallest version of it, so it's activate/deactivate button can be toggled there.

Sure, there does not need to be a device before the drum machine... however, I like using the note receiver cause then one can still manually trigger the drum machine and do some editing with the drum machine itself even though the incoming midi is disabled.

[lloydcole]

The workaround isn't terrible - there isn't even any need to insert and device before Drum Machine, the device itself shows up in the Mixer, even my smallest version of it, so it's activate/deactivate button can be toggled there.

Sure, there does not need to be a device before the drum machine... however, I like using the note receiver cause then one can still manually trigger the drum machine and do some editing with the drum machine itself even though the incoming midi is disabled.

That makes sense. Thanks for the help. I'm still trying to learn the Bitwig way of working, and if it will work for me. It looks like there is enough flexibility. Fingers crossed.