Bitwig ruins things

[Taika-Kim]

With BW I find I can fall into a total trance, everything working in lightspeed just the way I want.

I wake up from that trance most of the time when trying to use keyboard shortcuts.....
Bitwig is ruining my will to use my keyboard...

Hmm why, when you can configure them freely? Or are you missing some essential to you?

[antic604]

With BW I find I can fall into a total trance, everything working in lightspeed just the way I want.

I wake up from that trance most of the time when trying to use keyboard shortcuts.....
Bitwig is ruining my will to use my keyboard...

Hmm why, when you can configure them freely? Or are you missing some essential to you?

I imagine it's the fact that many shortcuts only work when you're focused in specific screen / panel. It throws me off all the time, despite having worked in Bitwig for 3+ years...

[stamp]

With BW I find I can fall into a total trance, everything working in lightspeed just the way I want.

I wake up from that trance most of the time when trying to use keyboard shortcuts.....
Bitwig is ruining my will to use my keyboard...

Hmm why, when you can configure them freely? Or are you missing some essential to you?

I imagine it's the fact that many shortcuts only work when you're focused in specific screen / panel. It throws me off all the time, despite having worked in Bitwig for 3+ years...

This. A lot of the shortcuts are virtually useless since you have to use another shortcut to make them work or use the mouse to focus a panel or the other. You can get away with it for casual use but when you want to get work done it is beyond frustrating. I use Bitwig since 1.3 and can't believe that this still isn't fixed. It's really the weakest part of the ux. Extremely bad designed.

[antic604]

...can't believe that this still isn't fixed. It's really the weakest part of the ux. Extremely bad designed.

I think there's a reason why they made it like this, because it had to be intentionally coded. I think this might have something to do with on-line collaboration, so e.g. if one person works - is focused - in Arranger and the other in Clip Launcher, they won't change something for the other person?

[stamp]

...can't believe that this still isn't fixed. It's really the weakest part of the ux. Extremely bad designed.

I think there's a reason why they made it like this, because it had to be intentionally coded. I think this might have something to do with on-line collaboration, so e.g. if one person works - is focused - in Arranger and the other in Clip Launcher, they won't change something for the other person?

If that's the reason then it's even worse since in the last 7 (seven!) years there has been no on-line collaboration... I'm pissed... really...
this is the stuff that makes you loose customers.
Where are the "new solutions to old problems"? This is an old problem in my book. I fear that they simply don't care. Take a look at the shortcut list; there are at least 20 shortcuts that do absolutely nothing. It's a f***ing mess.

[theorize]

I can't believe all the narrow minded people who are asking for a MSEG like it's something required, when so much more can be built from the components, and importantly, everything can be very reactive to what's happening inside the patch and elsewhere in the song.

Narrow minded eh? You sound like you are outright against a MSEG. That's pretty narrow-minded.

[Taika-Kim]

Of course I'm not against it, but I'm a bit puzzled why it comes up so much over and over again. I'm getting an impression that many people are just used to using one for many things and are kind of getting stuck on that instead of thinking up new ways of doing things.

[stamp]

Of course I'm not against it, but I'm a bit puzzled why it comes up so much over and over again. I'm getting an impression that many people are just used to using one for many things and are kind of getting stuck on that instead of thinking up new ways of doing things.

Sometimes you know exactly what you want and don't want to fiddle with 3 or 4 modulators for half an hour just to get you in the ballpark when an mseg will get you there in minutes.

[coroknight]

Of course I'm not against it, but I'm a bit puzzled why it comes up so much over and over again. I'm getting an impression that many people are just used to using one for many things and are kind of getting stuck on that instead of thinking up new ways of doing things.

I've been trying to synthesize kickdrums in the grid and it's a pain without MSEG.

Getting a kickdrum to sound just right requires precise envelopes. Even the steps module isn't quite precise enough sometimes. Additionally, with the steps module at maximum resolution, the bars are small enough that it's easy to click the wrong bar. Finally, I haven't figured out a good way of triggering the steps module like a normal envelope so it'll just keep looping if I don't throw another envelope after it.

But hey, I need an envelope so why not just use a normal envelope? The issue with envelopes is that the envelope curvature is very limited. The precision matters with kickdrums.

If you've ever used Kick2 then you'll understand why synthesizing kicks in the grid is so frustrating. And that's only one type of sound.

[pdxindy]

Of course I'm not against it, but I'm a bit puzzled why it comes up so much over and over again. I'm getting an impression that many people are just used to using one for many things and are kind of getting stuck on that instead of thinking up new ways of doing things.

I've been trying to synthesize kickdrums in the grid and it's a pain without MSEG.

Getting a kickdrum to sound just right requires precise envelopes. Even the steps module isn't quite precise enough sometimes. Additionally, with the steps module at maximum resolution, the bars are small enough that it's easy to click the wrong bar. Finally, I haven't figured out a good way of triggering the steps module like a normal envelope so it'll just keep looping if I don't throw another envelope after it.

But hey, I need an envelope so why not just use a normal envelope? The issue with envelopes is that the envelope curvature is very limited. The precision matters with kickdrums.

If you've ever used Kick2 then you'll understand why synthesizing kicks in the grid is so frustrating. And that's only one type of sound.

Yeah, the Bitwig envelopes are not very flexible for detailed curve shape.

You can use the 4-Stage modulator for something like kick drums in the Grid. The 4 stages are enough for transient shapes like a kick drum. There is also the AHDSR modulator with the Hold stage being useful.

Also, in the Grid you can combine signals however you want via add, multiply, etc.

[coroknight]

Of course I'm not against it, but I'm a bit puzzled why it comes up so much over and over again. I'm getting an impression that many people are just used to using one for many things and are kind of getting stuck on that instead of thinking up new ways of doing things.

I've been trying to synthesize kickdrums in the grid and it's a pain without MSEG.

Getting a kickdrum to sound just right requires precise envelopes. Even the steps module isn't quite precise enough sometimes. Additionally, with the steps module at maximum resolution, the bars are small enough that it's easy to click the wrong bar. Finally, I haven't figured out a good way of triggering the steps module like a normal envelope so it'll just keep looping if I don't throw another envelope after it.

But hey, I need an envelope so why not just use a normal envelope? The issue with envelopes is that the envelope curvature is very limited. The precision matters with kickdrums.

If you've ever used Kick2 then you'll understand why synthesizing kicks in the grid is so frustrating. And that's only one type of sound.

Yeah, the Bitwig envelopes are not very flexible for detailed curve shape.

You can use the 4-Stage modulator for something like kick drums in the Grid. The 4 stages are enough for transient shapes like a kick drum. There is also the AHDSR modulator with the Hold stage being useful.

Also, in the Grid you can combine signals however you want via add, multiply, etc.

4-Stage is much closer to what I'm looking for! I only wish it was more precise and had a zoom option.

[pdxindy]

4-Stage is much closer to what I'm looking for! I only wish it was more precise and had a zoom option.

Yeah, it could use a zoom function... I sent a feature request for that a while ago.

In the Grid I use 2 envelopes to get shapes not possible with 1... not the most elegant, but hey

[sbmongoose]

Does the F5 key on my keyboard count?

[machinesworking]

With BW I find I can fall into a total trance, everything working in lightspeed just the way I want.

I wake up from that trance most of the time when trying to use keyboard shortcuts.....
Bitwig is ruining my will to use my keyboard...

Hmm why, when you can configure them freely? Or are you missing some essential to you?

I imagine it's the fact that many shortcuts only work when you're focused in specific screen / panel. It throws me off all the time, despite having worked in Bitwig for 3+ years...

This. A lot of the shortcuts are virtually useless since you have to use another shortcut to make them work or use the mouse to focus a panel or the other. You can get away with it for casual use but when you want to get work done it is beyond frustrating. I use Bitwig since 1.3 and can't believe that this still isn't fixed. It's really the weakest part of the ux. Extremely bad designed.

I've ranted about this before but I'm starting to come to terms with how this all works. Panel selection is possible via key commands, so it's more a matter of for instance hitting t to get to the Tracks window before hitting any shortcut you want in that window. e for the sub Edit window, d for Device etc. etc. The one thing that still kills me though is an acknowledged bug by Bitwig where hitting option/alt b to show the browser also puts a ∫ in the Search window, and locks you from using any shortcut at all until you close the Browser window or manually unselect it.

Plus to be fair a lot of DAWs are panel specific for commands, it's not just Bitwig, the thing is most also extend functions of those commands to other aspects of the editing etc. so Control b might be something different in the audio editor VS the MIDI or score editors. It's possible Bitwig are looking to a future when the same shortcuts have multiple uses. As it is though I find a few odd discrepancies in that I cannot assign the same shortcut to minimize the height of tracks and Clips in the Arranger and the Mixer Views, which makes no sense at all to me, if the shortcut is panel specific then there's no conflict in assigning the same shortcut to both functions.