The All In One Source Bitwig Information & Speculation Thread

[dsan@mail.com]

Actually Lawrence, I've just started Bitwigging and you are already way ahead of the class

Unfortunately my day job keeps me so occupied I only have about 3 hours in. But the good news is I'm down to 1079 days of day job left

Yes, I see some great potential with BWS. The more I play with it the more I learn about how easy it is use. I find it quite intuitive in design.

Some elements are missing; for example, its limitation on MIDI Ins/Outs; however, Thomas' contributions have helped ease this. Being able to give sensible names to input devices is a blessing.

I'm not fond (yet) of the MIDI routing techniques and find routing from a track to another difficult.

For example, I am finally able to communicate 2 computers over LAN and want to route a track for the LAN input to other tracks with the VST's. Unfortunatley this is not yet possible. It seems you can only route MIDI in - not WITHin. Or at least I haven't figured it out yet. So there are some limitations I'm not liking so well.

All in all, I think BWS will get there - eventually. I really liked working in Live - except for the constant crashes. I find BWS similar in structure yet quite a lot different. What it lacks in some freatures it more than makes up for in what it is capable of.

One thing I love so far is opening and closing the program. Well under a minute - maybe less than 30 secs (haven't timed it). In Live I was waiting as much as 20 minutes to open and at least 10 minutes to close and release memory.

I'm getting the impression your kinda liking BWS And with your abilities writing scripts and macros I'm sorta thinking...... Watch out Lawrence - you may be buying yourself a new toy soon

Happy Musiking!
dsan

[dsan@mail.com]

In case anybody is not watching the Bitwig forum here and needs a script for the M-Audio Axiom Pro 49 keyboard, I have posted one here:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 2&start=15

Disclaimer: It works fine for playing the keyboard into a VST; however, I have not tested full functionality. It will control track parameters via the "Learn" function.

Happy Musiking!
dsan

[LawrenceF]

you may be buying yourself a new toy soon

Lol. Not a chance in hades of that happening.

I am fascinated by the audio track architecture though, just kinda seeing what happens with it. It's... interesting... to record a mix directly to the master bus track in arrange and what happens on playback is that the printed section on the master track takes precedence over the tracks playing from the other arrange audio tracks.

This is one of those things some of the old PT guys do, mix in sections, but here those sections can print on and remain on the master track. It's a very interesting fundamental design.

It's ... interesting ... (I know, I know, I keep using that word ) that a product who has no designs on that market would have a design bit that would actually be fantastic in a conventional linear audio daw.

I love technology... how it kinda keeps surprising you.

[dsan@mail.com]

I find that intriguing actually. I've never work with a DAW, at least that I realize, that offered the ability to record to the Master Track. Does S1 allow this?

I'm not sure of the practicality of this but you are right - it is interesting. I'm trying to visualize the usefulness.

Maybe Dom is reading and can clue me in.

I thought I was going to get time to work with BWS this weekend......turns out the better half has other ideas

Oh well

Happy Musiking!
dsan

[LawrenceF]

Does S1 allow this?

No it doesn't, that was kinda my point, that I've never actually seen it before anywhere, record buttons on all the busses, and seeing it sparked some things in my imagination, made me think of the possibilities of that kinda thing if it was intentionally built for a linear workstation.

I mean, as it is, there's no muted pass through, you can't mute a clip and have the bussed audio on that track play through. But in a more intentional design for that for tracking and mixing it would, which would open up even more possibilities.

But my view of all that is how it may apply to linear work. The rest of it, the other non-liner stuff it's designed for, holds no particular fascination for me personally.

/droning on about the track architecture

[humanbeingbeing]

Noticed another slight annoyance in Bitwig, nowhere to convert to mono?

[hibidy]

you may be buying yourself a new toy soon

Lol. Not a chance in hades of that happening.

I am fascinated by the audio track architecture though, just kinda seeing what happens with it. It's... interesting... to record a mix directly to the master bus track in arrange and what happens on playback is that the printed section on the master track takes precedence over the tracks playing from the other arrange audio tracks.

This is one of those things some of the old PT guys do, mix in sections, but here those sections can print on and remain on the master track. It's a very interesting fundamental design.

It's ... interesting ... (I know, I know, I keep using that word ) that a product who has no designs on that market would have a design bit that would actually be fantastic in a conventional linear audio daw.

I love technology... how it kinda keeps surprising you.

Yeah, just because I'm not going to get it doesn't mean I'm not interested.

[humanbeingbeing]

Quick update on the midi drop situation with Addictive drums, there is a workaround, apprently the loop get dropped into the sound library... then they drag over just fine... not sure if this is correct or intuitive behavior, but it works...

[humanbeingbeing]

Noticing another thing, just tried to setup my ipad for modulation, no way to use Generic for it because it doesn't loop back..but worse than that, a lot of assignments are impossible because they are too simple... I can't do x, y, x x/y pads for example... Ableton had a list of parameters and you could undo your last override which made it possible...

[humanbeingbeing]

Would love a chain assignable to CC for FX chain too.

[humanbeingbeing]

...so I've been thinking hard about this whole situation with Ableton and Bitwig... I need to start writing an album, so I've been thinking about workarounds for the shortcomings of both apps.... the more I use Bitwig, the more I like, genuinely I was a little bit confused with it at first and a tad disappointment by the very small things that seem to be missing... that being said, I am extremely enthusiastic that Bitwig have pushed 2 updates already, they've explicitly acknowledged PDC and automation issues and I believe they will fix them shortly... I also think it's great that they are communicating wit us about bugs, I think that was Ableton's biggest mistake... now I've discovered loads of cool tricks about the app, it needs a bit of a mindshift to get the most out of it... anyway... what it is lacking I've stated in another thread:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 8#p5694478

I am fortunate to have a second hackintosh computer with Ableton.. my plan is to use it to solve this midi problem with network midi and rtpMidi on my windows computer, this has worked well before... tempo sync may be an issue, we will see, BUT potentially it would allow me to use my APC to send midi from Ableton into Bitwig legato style.... another thing it could allow is for me to take audio parts in ableton and move them to Bitwig... I could even Jack the two systems... this would've been a timing nightmare before, but if it's compensated, then it's ok... midi and audio will be fine.

I may still need to use Cubase to mix, but now that I don't have to worry about timing issues with Bitwig, I can actually write parts that stay the same, and I can mix with whatever compressors and eqs as I'm working, which is the modern thing to do... I don't like writing tunes that sound like shit, then expecting to 'fix' them in Cubase... hopefully Bitwig will allow for music production that is tight and if I have to resort to Ableton for it's lost features, then so be it-- UNTIL Bitwig fixes their issues which hopefully will be very soon.

[hibidy]

If exporting the parts in bitwig is at least as good as live, then exporting and mixing in cubase isn't a sin.

[humanbeingbeing]

If exporting the parts in bitwig is at least as good as live, then exporting and mixing in cubase isn't a sin.

Well they'd be produced 'better' than Live because say for example, in Bitwig, if I want to throw on a bunch of high latency eqs, I can do that without fear in Bitwig (soon I hope) and then do more rudimentary mixing in Cubase like levels and pannings, but do all my cool stuff in Bitwig that affects the music IMHO... I can do things in Ableton right now but I can't automate properly and Bitwig has some cool stuff that I'm really liking.

[pdxindy]

I may still need to use Cubase to mix, but now that I don't have to worry about timing issues with Bitwig, I can actually write parts that stay the same, and I can mix with whatever compressors and eqs as I'm working, which is the modern thing to do... I don't like writing tunes that sound like shit, then expecting to 'fix' them in Cubase... hopefully Bitwig will allow for music production that is tight and if I have to resort to Ableton for it's lost features, then so be it-- UNTIL Bitwig fixes their issues which hopefully will be very soon.

Basically, you are saying you may use 3 daw's... if it works for you great.

For me, there are many things in Live that I use all the time that are not there in Bitwig or which are clumsy by comparison.

Sure there are issues with Live as far as PDC and so on. But especially when working with plugins, Live is way slicker than Bitwig (as is right now)

Live's instrument rack has no real equivalent in Bitwig. Sure you can layer stuff with Bitwig's Instrument Layer, but it does not have the fast powerful velocity and key split capability that Racks do. Yes you can put a midi device before each instrument, but that is a clumsy manual affair and still does not have any blending ability or the chainer.

I add an instance of Zebra, play around and tweak until I got something I like as a lead... Command G and it is put in a rack. Alt drag makes a copy of the Zebra instance with the same preset. Tweak it to a different but similar preset. Go to the chainer and split the two and right click on the chain selector and select 'map to macro 1' and now the first knob on my Push can switch between the two leads (or blend). Alt drag another instance of Zebra as a 3rd layer and select a bass preset. Go to the Key Zone editor and set a split point between the 2 lead instances and the bass instance.

In a fluid and intuitive way you have what Korg calls a Combi... Live racks are so fast and easy to layers synths, do key splits and velocity splits. You can blend across the velocity or key range. You can blend across the chainer so you can use a knob or modwheel to blend between two or more synth instances as you play. Hell, you could do it in the middle of a performance if inspiration struck. It is that fast and fluid.

In this area, Bitwig is clumsy by comparison. The thought of giving up Live's instrument racks makes me cringe. Then there is the midi step record, groove extract, etc etc etc. I often play parts in without any quantize. I get exactly the feel I want. Then I can extract that groove and apply it. I cannot imagine doing without that feature now. I regularly create arpeggiated parts and record that as midi so I can tweak it a bit. Cannot do that in Bitwig right now. And the groove extract is essential for making arpeggiated midi blend with my own unquantized playing.

Then I find Live's midi step input way more fun/fast for inputting notes than with the mouse clicking in the piano roll. I think this is one of the great features of Live that nobody talks about. Nothing like it in Bitwig.

I understand the appeal of Bitwig as a Live replacement that also has great PDC and can be a solid mixing app too. That is why I have been watching it for all these months and will keep doing so. But as is right now, it does not come close to the easy fun workflow I have with Live (I work almost entirely with plugins).

Of course someone else may use Live differently than I and they may find that Bitwig already is Live's equal for what they do, so good for them. I look forward to the day when that is so for me and then I will switch.

[humanbeingbeing]

I may still need to use Cubase to mix, but now that I don't have to worry about timing issues with Bitwig, I can actually write parts that stay the same, and I can mix with whatever compressors and eqs as I'm working, which is the modern thing to do... I don't like writing tunes that sound like shit, then expecting to 'fix' them in Cubase... hopefully Bitwig will allow for music production that is tight and if I have to resort to Ableton for it's lost features, then so be it-- UNTIL Bitwig fixes their issues which hopefully will be very soon.

Basically, you are saying you may use 3 daw's... if it works for you great.

For me, there are many things in Live that I use all the time that are not there in Bitwig or which are clumsy by comparison.

Sure there are issues with Live as far as PDC and so on. But especially when working with plugins, Live is way slicker than Bitwig (as is right now)

Live's instrument rack has no real equivalent in Bitwig. Sure you can layer stuff with Bitwig's Instrument Layer, but it does not have the fast powerful velocity and key split capability that Racks do. Yes you can put a midi device before each instrument, but that is a clumsy manual affair and still does not have any blending ability or the chainer.

I add an instance of Zebra, play around and tweak until I got something I like as a lead... Command G and it is put in a rack. Alt drag makes a copy of the Zebra instance with the same preset. Tweak it to a different but similar preset. Go to the chainer and split the two and right click on the chain selector and select 'map to macro 1' and now the first knob on my Push can switch between the two leads (or blend). Alt drag another instance of Zebra as a 3rd layer and select a bass preset. Go to the Key Zone editor and set a split point between the 2 lead instances and the bass instance.

In a fluid and intuitive way you have what Korg calls a Combi... Live racks are so fast and easy to layers synths, do key splits and velocity splits. You can blend across the velocity or key range. You can blend across the chainer so you can use a knob or modwheel to blend between two or more synth instances as you play. Hell, you could do it in the middle of a performance if inspiration struck. It is that fast and fluid.

In this area, Bitwig is clumsy by comparison. The thought of giving up Live's instrument racks makes me cringe. Then there is the midi step record, groove extract, etc etc etc. I often play parts in without any quantize. I get exactly the feel I want. Then I can extract that groove and apply it. I cannot imagine doing without that feature now. I regularly create arpeggiated parts and record that as midi so I can tweak it a bit. Cannot do that in Bitwig right now. And the groove extract is essential for making arpeggiated midi blend with my own unquantized playing.

Then I find Live's midi step input way more fun/fast for inputting notes than with the mouse clicking in the piano roll. I think this is one of the great features of Live that nobody talks about. Nothing like it in Bitwig.

I understand the appeal of Bitwig as a Live replacement that also has great PDC and can be a solid mixing app too. That is why I have been watching it for all these months and will keep doing so. But as is right now, it does not come close to the easy fun workflow I have with Live (I work almost entirely with plugins).

Of course someone else may use Live differently than I and they may find that Bitwig already is Live's equal for what they do, so good for them. I look forward to the day when that is so for me and then I will switch.

Unfortunately I haven't got time to go into everything you've written here, but I don't think Bitwig is clumsy and I'd imagine I can phase out Ableton and Cubase eventually because I'm liking where things are going with Bitwig... there is all this vitriol about missing features but that's always the same, and I think Ableton is genuinely clumsy. PDC effects almost all of the things that you like about Ableton, but I'm not going to get into it...and as I got used to Bitwig I like it more.