Record guitar in Bitwig

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SLiC wrote:I am a big Bitwig fan but if your main instrument is guitar it may not be the best choice.
I play guitar. Acoustic guitar, although I do have an electric with a small Vox amplifier. I find Bitwig simply great. It opened so many creative possibilities. I use a 1010LT audio card (4 stereo line in plus two XLR in) in Linux Mint 18. All types of audio can be connected to the card, including the Vox amplifier line out. In Bitwig I have defined inputs by name so I can switch easily from say the stereo out of a synth to the stereo in from the guitar mics. The guitar mics are fed into an Art stereo tube preamp and stereo tube compressor.

An example:

https://soundcloud.com/nominal6/123a

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You can record with any DAW. It's just how easy in makes it. Bitwig looks inviting and has some great features, but also some issues that you will probably discover as you go along. Especially mixing raw and stretched audio, no undo for specific takes in a loop, etc. It's certainly doable, but other numerous DAWs are much better for straight recording.

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SLiC wrote:I am a big Bitwig fan but if your main instrument is guitar it may not be the best choice. I would say Bitwig excels at creative sound design, electronica, working with CV, modulation, experimentation and as a big 'playground' for sound design in general. Clip stuff is fun and can be used for arrangements but was originated for playing clips 'Live' like a DJ, or for just 'jamming' a track down. If you doing need this there are other fast arrangement methods such as track arranger in Cubase (I don't know reaper) setting 'parts' in the time line and then using a track to play the parts in any order any number of times (I use this normally when putting together a typical Verse/Chorus structure)

As I said, I don't know reaper, but it sounds like you have a cheap solution, for the next big step up I would make sure you have tried all of your options, including Cubase and Studio One etc. (Cubase has an very good cross grade sale at the moment)
I don't think guitar being one's main instrument is necessarily a reason not to make Bitwig one's main DAW. Guitar is my main instrument - I've played for 30 years and am quite accomplished at it. However, my productions are very much electronica affairs with lots of synths and sampled drums. I invariably include guitar parts in what I'm doing though, and I use the guitar for composing/arranging/working out chords/playing guitar parts and converting them to MIDI with Melodyne etc. I haven't used Bitwig yet (am on the fence) but I'd like to think that it would be perfectly adequate for getting an instrumental part down to use in a production.

Granted, if your productions consist almost entirely of recorded instruments like guitars and you just need to add the occasional synth pad, then Bitwig is not the best choice available.

I used Sonar for years, which is great at recording and editing audio, but the audio recording and editing I do in my productions only uses a fraction of what Sonar is capable of.

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sharke wrote:
Granted, if your productions consist almost entirely of recorded instruments like guitars and you just need to add the occasional synth pad, then Bitwig is not the best choice available.
unless you want to record those instruments and then trigger them from the clip launcher in a fluid and non-linear way... then Bitwig is splendid :)

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pdxindy wrote:
sharke wrote:
Granted, if your productions consist almost entirely of recorded instruments like guitars and you just need to add the occasional synth pad, then Bitwig is not the best choice available.
unless you want to record those instruments and then trigger them from the clip launcher in a fluid and non-linear way... then Bitwig is splendid :)
Yes! I do!

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jonljacobi wrote:You can record with any DAW. It's just how easy in makes it. Bitwig looks inviting and has some great features, but also some issues that you will probably discover as you go along. Especially mixing raw and stretched audio, no undo for specific takes in a loop, etc. It's certainly doable, but other numerous DAWs are much better for straight recording.
I've been using Bitwig since 1.1 or so, very often recording guitar along with synths and other material. I find it very easy to use. What I would like to see is a comping workflow, for any instrument, which might go along your mention of undo for specific takes. I would be happy to have say 5 tracks of the same and comp between them to build a composite track for a given instrument. Ah, maybe a feature suggestion. As if it was not asked before.

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I use Bitwig for guitar and bass and it is superb, especially if you want to create some really unique textures to your distortion.

It sounds as if in this case there is some kind of compatibility problem between Bitwig's audio interface code and the audio interface. I've never heard of it before, but from your description it sounds like you are hooking up to the incorrect input and there is some leakage from the main input to the incorrect input and that's what you are hearing (electronical interference).

Have you configured you line inputs in Bitwig's audio interface configuration panel? Then make sure you select those defined inputs as the input for your track.

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Dunno if someone has already said this but sometimes Bitwig gets weird if another app is trying to set the audio playback rate. For instance, a web browser. If you reboot and turn on just Bitwig and no other audio things does it still sound bad?

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brownerthanu wrote:Dunno if someone has already said this but sometimes Bitwig gets weird if another app is trying to set the audio playback rate. For instance, a web browser. If you reboot and turn on just Bitwig and no other audio things does it still sound bad?
What rate is your audio set to in Windows? I use Sonar primarily and my projects are all at 48 kHz. I think before I set Windows to 48 kHz, I used to have problems with for instance trying to play videos in a browser while Sonar is running and I presume that's because I had Windows audio running at 44.1 kHz. Perhaps it's the same in Bitwig?

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I've just started using Bitwig 8-track and I'm actually attracted to the idea of limitation. I think the quality of their plug-ins is quite good as well. I was inspired by this particular thread today so I went and recorded this. Would also be curious to hear if guitarists here are still using Bitwig or if they've moved on to something else.
Here's my Bitwig track, no effects pedals, just Bitwig plug-ins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faIe1gxBi_g

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