Why are clips recording into arranger tracks?

[xx JPRacer xx]

Why not just record in the launcher and when you're done move the clip in the arranger?

[mevla]

But when I for instance have a loop playing with a drum beat or a bass in the launcher and I want to jam to it and record that jam into arranger, it's impossible without also recording the clip, overwriting whatever is on that track already.

What I do, and I do that very often, is that I record the jam as a clip alongside the drums and bass clips. Just another clip is created. In any case it's a jam. Who knows if it will be as-is in the final arrangement ? And if it is, then drag and drop the jam clip in the Arranger, presuming the drums and bass are already there, repeated, as found in the Launcher.

[babel2]

Another vote for making this optional. I honestly thought it was a bug in v1 that would be ironed out with all the others... or that I just needed to spend more time and rtfm to find out how to make it work properly

[mevla]

Yeah, IMO it would be very easy to solve - just do the recording for tracks that have recording enabled when you want to jam in the clip launcher and record the jam in arranger.

Depends on how one proceeds. For instance, I build parts in the Launcher. Jam there. See how things work in there. Copy scenes, remove parts, play one scene after the other, see how things fits. All in the Launcher. Then when it looks like there's some potential to go further, to actually arrange and glue things, preparing for an eventual mix, I play (eg, record) the clips and scenes into the Arranger and work from then on from the Arranger.

At that moment record should be enabled on, say, 30 tracks one by one, to make sure they are recorded into the Arranger. Sounds a bit tedious.

[pdxindy]

At that moment record should be enabled on, say, 30 tracks one by one, to make sure they are recorded into the Arranger. Sounds a bit tedious.

I would not want to lose the current functionality.

But it would be handy to have a button that switches it.

I tend to stick to Launcher also, and when I want to record to Arrange with clips playing, I do it into different tracks than the launcher clips are on. I've tried moving stuff in tracks, but then sometimes I inadvertently over-write.

[sagetone]

Thanks pdxindy!

[babel2]

Call me crazy but I'd also love to be able to:
select a clip in the launcher,
select the pen tool in the arranger and just draw in that loop into the arrangement. That would make me sooo happy

[auricle]

I also think this behaviour is crazy. There is no way I want anything recorded into an arranger track unless that track is armed for recording.

[ThomasHelzle]

Just for clarification: I think that in certain situations and for certain workflows this behaviour is great and yes, I can somehow work around it. I just think that for the kind of flexibility one has in pretty much every area of Bitwig, this being kind of hardcoded with no way to disable it is very non-cool.
If you do not work this way or are not used to a DAW that does this, it feels like a bug like babel2 wrote.
Initially I reported it as a bug too IIRC, when it first started to overwrite something that was already there...

Cheers,

Tom

[xbitz]

+1 if there is layer lock in the editor then should be a track lock in the arranger (and would be nice if they able be work synced optionally)

[mevla]

I guess the functional question is, why would something sketchy be recorded in the Arranger when the Launcher is there to do sketches and play around with ideas ?

I do not recall sitting down in front of a blank Bitwig and immediately arrange something out of the blue, committing immediately to an arrangement something that never existed before w/o ever doing any sketches first. Or any composition. Or maybe just once. Straight from 'heavens' to committed piece in one jest. So the Launcher, following this, is there to record and play around with ideas.

But then since I use Linux, DAW experience is limited to Ardour/Mixbus which is a very good traditional recording console metaphor basically rooted in the 70s. I see Bitwig as certainly more than that. I do not use Bitwig as an old style multitrack DAW to record and mix tracks as if it was a hardware console. But I do still use a console metaphor, Harrison Mixbus 32C, to do proper mixes. This might be a different way of doing things.

There was a few times in which recording a single clip into the Arranger w/o recording all the existing clips could have been useful, but it did not last long since it's possible to simply drag the clip into the Arranger and place and copy as necessary after all.

There would probably not be any problem in providing a workflow option to record single clips into the Arranger without having all clips recorded and overwriting Arranger tracks as long as the current, original, workflow can be preserved, in which one does npot need to arm 35 tracks or more to have them all recorded into the Arranger when the time has come to move forward one step further with the piece and start working on an actual arrangement. That could be a matter of shift-clicking-scrolling done twice, to arm and then to disarm after recording, and it would be a bit awkward, making the software intrude coarsly in the work flow, IMHO, when the software wants to be relegated to the background to allow creation to take place. A toggle option for this kind of behaviour would preserve current behaviour.

[stamp]

Imo a simple 'exclusive record' button in arrangement could solve this. When enabled only armed tracks are recorded when disabled all tracks are recorded.

[sagetone]

Thanks all, for good comments in this thread. It seems that this is a matter of workflow. I came to Bitwig frm Sonar, not Abelton Live, so my workflow thinking has always been linear. As such, I find myself exclusively recording in the arranger and then bringing clips over into the launcher to try different arrangement of the song until I come up with the one I like. This thread has inspired me to get out of that comfort zone and try to record in the launcher at the start of a project. I'll give it a go. Wish me luck!

[jonljacobi]

This doesn't affect me, and I can see the behavior's usefulness, but it should absolutely be optional. Don't start recording stuff that the user didn't ask you to.

There are some occasional puzzlers in Bitwig along with the more normal brilliance. And good luck Sagetone!

[sagetone]

There are some occasional puzzlers in Bitwig along with the more normal brilliance.

Well said!

And good luck Sagetone!

Thanks, jonljacobi!