Ableton Push support is here

[moss]

p.s. I still can only set the background color to the config file, all my other custom color selections don't save for some reason, even though I always hit "save".

Please check if the config file (or the folder in which it is located) is not write protected.

I have checked both, and I just did a chmod a+w on both the config file and the folder it was in (push2display), and it makes no difference. It still only saves my font, text color, and background color. Nothing else. This is on macOS Sierra.

Got it, will be fixed in the next update!

[moss]

Ok! Here we go!

Thanks for all your suggestions!
Will need to think about some of them. I won't promise anything but some might happen.

[moss]

Does anyone know if it is possible to use microtonal scales in Bitwig? Seems like the flexible note layouts on Push/Push2 in Bitwig would be a great way to work with scales that divide the octave into more/less than twelve notes.

Sorry, that's not possible.

[pstare]

I have a whole bunch of suggestions/ideas forthcoming, but I needed to post this one first, since I've been using Push4Bitwig a whole lot in the last two weeks.

#1.

Please please please allow an alternate method to "step up" the group/nesting hierarchy. The long press is very very slow and inefficient. It would be nice if we could just hit the Mix button to get to the top level (tracks), and Device to go back to where we last were, whether that was one or two or three levels deep. But I've found that hitting Device doesn't always reliably go to the deeply nested page you were in. So walking up/down the chain is necessary.

Double clicking a button (to select it first, and then to "enter" it) is not a bad worklow, but please give us some sort of contextual back button, or allow us to choose to remap "Tap Tempo" to "back" or "up", whatever you wish to call it.

On the Push2 in Ableton, the leftmost top row button (in your script it's usually dedicated to Volume) gets a contextual "<-- Serum" for example, if inside the Serum device. So if you were seeing the list of Serum's preset /parameter pages, but wanted to go one level up to the list of devices for the entire track, you just press that button and it pops you back up.

Having this "back" function always in the same place is very useful because you could have your left hand hovering over it and do very rapid navigation this way. This is the single most urgent thing. I have found that I just cannot use the Push 2 to good effect in Bitwig except to do session view clip launching and to play notes and sequence drums. Anything to do with devices or muting/soloing group tracks or devices in an instrument layer is so painful that I just do it with the mouse. This is unfortunate. The same goes for quickly muting or soloing things that are several levels up or down the nesting.

#2.

Please allow some sort of shift-lock. If we could do this, we would be able to use the knobs to much greater effect in the cases where the "useful range" of a parameter is a fraction of the total range. Shift-knob works, but the shift is on the right, so for right handed people, you either have to cross your arms, or just accept that you must operate the knob with your left hand, which is not ideal.

#3.

Solo/Mute multiple tracks. You can hold mute or solo and hit multiple drumpads to mute/unmute or solo/unsolo them. Not sure why we have to do the Shift+Solo to get a top row of buttons that are dedicated to mute or solo. Why can't we just hold Mute and then click on the tracks we want to mute?

#4.

Stop clip should stop the current clip -- if this is thought to be dangerous, please let us enable it with an option. It is currently very cumbersome to stop a playing clip, as you have to hold Stop and then click on one of the clips in the track of the playing clip. In Ableton when you hit stop clip, it flashes the track header button for the track that contains the last-launched playing clip. It's very nice visual feedback about which track is about to stop (quantized).

#5.

Flashing buttons. Is this not possible through the API? The Metronome, maybe quantize settings could use this. I realize we don't have Note Repeat yet, and the way Fixed Length works in Bitwig is different, but there are still some buttons that could benefit from flashing feedback to indicate they're active.

#6.

Session view pad blinking when playing. Can we have them blink but retain their color, instead of changing to green? It's difficult to see quickly which track is playing because the color is changed to green. In Ableton the playing clips simply flash. They only go green when they have been queued to be launched, but before the quantized launch start (of the next bar). Then they retain their usual color, but flash.

#7.

Synchronized flashing for playing clips. In Ableton they pulse in accordance with the tempo and beatgrid, and they are all synchronized. In Push4Bitwig they all pulse with seemingly different phases. I think it has to do with when you first press the pad (i.e. the flashing is not quantized) so it seems like the clips are out of phase.

#8.

Push2Display text overlay for things like: Undo, Redo, and Quantize. Basically functions that do something that do not currently result in visual feedback on the display (especially Quantize). Can there be an overlay animation like on the Push2 in Ableton? If fading in and out an animation isn't feasible, can we have the text simply overlay and then disappear? I.e. "Applied Quantize: On" or "Revert Last Action: Quantize On".

#9.

Please make the currently selected track/group/chain/device more obvious both in the display and by making the bottom row button WHITE instead of a slightly brighter yellow which is very hard to notice. In the display, make the color a much lighter version or allow it to be user selectable in push2display's panel. I'm using #1a1a1a currently and it's very hard to tell which track is selected if I have the "volume" button selected so that I see meters for all the tracks.

#10.

Consider using the top row buttons to select between devices in the chain for a given track, instead of the Volume Pan Send stuff we have now. Or have a way of picking Volume/Pan/Send mode when needed, but by default, show the first X devices in the chain on the top row and allow us to select between these without having to menu dive into the track/group. This is by far the best thing about the workflow currently in Ableton. I can send a picture or some videos, but I have a feeling you've already seen this and played with it in Ableton.




I'll continue to provide suggestions as I think of them. These were the most urgent, especially #1!!

Thanks moss. If you need someone to check how something works in Ableton, I can volunteer to do that -- I have a demo copy for the next month (I downloaded it just to compare).

If Push4Bitwig could get even some of these improvements I think I would have no temptation to ever switch to Ableton. But their workflow is so fantastic on this controller! I am very jealous. I think I can live without the sampler (for now) but the navigation stuff is getting very frustrating so I'd love to be able to find a solution, even if it's different from the way ableton does it.

P.S. I haven't been able to switch to session view (temporarily) by holding the Session button, launching a clip, then releasing the session button to return to the Mix view. I think it was stated that this was possible, but it's not working for me.

[moss]

Released a new update 9.21:

• New: Scenes can be started from Play and Piano view.
• New: Push 2: The last selected mix mode is remembered when switching back from other modes.
• New: Push 2: Long pressing the Stop Clip button does indicate if a track has a playing clip by coloring the track buttons red.
• Fixed: Info knob in setup mode was switched with 2nd button row.
• Fixed: Locrian scale contained a wrong note.
• Fixed: Switched variants of Hirojoshi, Pelog scale.
• Fixed: Display of some scales in chromatic mode were wrong (e.g. Diminished, Whole-Half, Whole Tone)
• Fixed: Push 1: Send mode did not work

Get it as usual from: http://www.mossgrabers.de/Software/Bitwig/Bitwig.html

Enjoy!

[pstare]

moss,

A few years ago, there was another guy helping you with the work on the Push1/2/LaunchpadPro. I'm not a Java developer; I work primarily in Ruby, but I may be able to help you out with the codebase if you're interested in collaborating.

At the very least, I can be a beta tester.

Thanks for the update, I look forward to trying it at home.

[pstare]

p.s. I still can only set the background color to the config file, all my other custom color selections don't save for some reason, even though I always hit "save".

Please check if the config file (or the folder in which it is located) is not write protected.

I have checked both, and I just did a chmod a+w on both the config file and the folder it was in (push2display), and it makes no difference. It still only saves my font, text color, and background color. Nothing else. This is on macOS Sierra.

Got it, will be fixed in the next update!

Unfortunately this does not seem to be fixed. I replaced the entire push2display directory under ~/Documents/Bitwig\ Studio/Extensions, and ran the "./run.command". Push2Display came up, but when I change colours, and then exit, it says "Storing configuration" on STDOUT, but it still only remembers the font change and the main text colour; not the others.

It says Push 2 Display v1.20 in the titlebar.

I also looked at https://github.com/git-moss/DrivenByMos ... 090593e2b3 and don't see any changes that would relate to parsing a config file. Is it possible that the new version of push2display wasn't properly bundled with your latest DrivenByMoss.zip file?

[stamp]

Ok! Here we go!

Thanks for all your suggestions!
Will need to think about some of them. I won't promise anything but some might happen.

You're welcome! Nice to know you appreciate.
I think the most important ones are points 1-4.
And forget about point 6 that was a stupid one.

[stamp]

New: Scenes can be started from Play and Piano view.

[stamp]

#6.

Session view pad blinking when playing. Can we have them blink but retain their color, instead of changing to green? It's difficult to see quickly which track is playing because the color is changed to green. In Ableton the playing clips simply flash. They only go green when they have been queued to be launched, but before the quantized launch start (of the next bar). Then they retain their usual color, but flash.

#7.

Synchronized flashing for playing clips. In Ableton they pulse in accordance with the tempo and beatgrid, and they are all synchronized. In Push4Bitwig they all pulse with seemingly different phases. I think it has to do with when you first press the pad (i.e. the flashing is not quantized) so it seems like the clips are out of phase.

+1

[moss]

I also looked at https://github.com/git-moss/DrivenByMos ... 090593e2b3 and don't see any changes that would relate to parsing a config file. Is it possible that the new version of push2display wasn't properly bundled with your latest DrivenByMoss.zip file?

Uh, damn. Forgot to update it. Please redownload.

[moss]

Ok! Here we go!

Two general comments:
1) Everything which requires synchronisation/clock is not possible due how the API works. Communication between Bitwig and Extensions are asynchronously to prevent any kind of audio delays. Therefore, you won't get any stable clocking in an Extension/Script.

2) Push 2: Wishes which are related to display drawing changes will be delyed until Push2Display can/will be fully integrated into the Extension. Currently, I use a proprietary protocol between the 2 applications, which is hard to update.

[stamp]

1) Everything which requires synchronisation/clock is not possible due how the API works.

I saw that coming.
Will this change in the future?

[pstare]

Two general comments:
1) Everything which requires synchronisation/clock is not possible due how the API works. Communication between Bitwig and Extensions are asynchronously to prevent any kind of audio delays. Therefore, you won't get any stable clocking in an Extension/Script.

2) Push 2: Wishes which are related to display drawing changes will be delyed until Push2Display can/will be fully integrated into the Extension. Currently, I use a proprietary protocol between the 2 applications, which is hard to update.

Have the Bitwig developers ever expressed that they might open this up?

Did they say that Push2Display can be integrated into the extension in the next release, or is this something we will have to wait for for a long time?

[pstare]

I just realized there is no way to select the colour of a clip through the Push. Is this possible through the API? We can hold Select and hit the pad, and that "selects" the clip (though it's not like a full mouse click) but it would be nice if we could change the colour directly on the Push. This is useful when creating duplicates of clips and adding things to the pattern, to color-code the patterns (esp. in a drum progression).