Whats in the future of Grid?

[pdxindy]

After a couple of hours trying to cope with the grid, a good headache, I finally concluded this is not my kind of think.
Searching for the right module hidden in the several menus, understanding the purpose of each module, what a mess and not interesting task for me as a musician !
Sorry but for me this will stay the drak side of bitwig and I will not miss it !
Parhaps for those who like to play with cables and have time to lost ...

No surprise you came to the conclusion you already started with...

I don't like playing with cables and thankfully for what I do in the Grid I hardly have to. The Grid mostly auto-cables and for modulators like LFO's and ENV's no cables are even needed.

[pdxindy]

After a couple of hours trying to cope with the grid, a good headache, I finally concluded this is not my kind of think.
Searching for the right module hidden in the several menus, understanding the purpose of each module, what a mess and not interesting task for me as a musician !
Sorry but for me this will stay the drak side of bitwig and I will not miss it !
Parhaps for those who like to play with cables and have time to lost ...

I have similiar thoughts. For me the Grid would be more useful, if it would become more like Patcher in FL. I'd rather use it to layer VSTs and Effects apply rule based routing to incoming notes and midi effects.

That is what the Layer and Selector devices are for.

[pdxindy]

You tried it ONCE, didn't learn any of it, then never tried it again, yet somehow you can assert publicly what it's "for" and who is using it and how well they are using it......

Exactly...

[docbot]

After a couple of hours trying to cope with the grid, a good headache, I finally concluded this is not my kind of think.
Searching for the right module hidden in the several menus, understanding the purpose of each module, what a mess and not interesting task for me as a musician !
Sorry but for me this will stay the drak side of bitwig and I will not miss it !
Parhaps for those who like to play with cables and have time to lost ...

I have similiar thoughts. For me the Grid would be more useful, if it would become more like Patcher in FL. I'd rather use it to layer VSTs and Effects apply rule based routing to incoming notes and midi effects.

That is what the Layer and Selector devices are for.

well it's much easier to draw up complex routings in a flow chart than with those devices.

[pdxindy]

That is what the Layer and Selector devices are for.

well it's much easier to draw up complex routings in a flow chart than with those devices.

For you maybe...

For 90% of what I do, I find those devices fast and easy to work with. Especially the Selector devices are one of my favorite tools from any DAW! They are so useful and creative to do all sorts of stuff.

My stuff is not that complex though... anything that actually needed a flow chart would be too complex for me to be doing anyway.

In any case, whether they satisfy you or not, those are the tools for layering and working with VST's in Bitwig.

[minortom]

I actually like to tinker, but for that it's too basic. It would need to allow me to save and import clusters, so I can patch together subsystems /functions that I've build, which again would be a sort of grid for grid/vsts/etc.

another thing I really don't like is that you can't drag cables from the modulators / lfo but have to use the regular way to assign modulation. Kinda conflicting design philosophy imo. But whatever, Grid is great of course if you like that sort of stuff!

This is just my own interpretation of their design philosophy, but that's exactly what it's for: tinkering and safely and quickly building relatively simple things for use together other simple things within the Bitwig ecosystem to create something complex. It's basic by design in the same sense that Reverb is. The Grid itself is a module that's just one level deeper than the rest, but not much more. Meanwhile the design is consistent. They did a genius thing with Polymer and its "expand to Grid" function, lessening the gap between the levels.

The upside is the Grid has a relatively nice UX and handles the low level detail behind the scenes. The downside is that the extended complexity and the programming environment feel invariably lead people to want to go deeper and actually get to the low level details and then getting frustrated that they cannot.

Best advice is to enjoy the Grid for what it is, keeping in mind that Bitwig's overall flexibility yields workarounds for the seemingly absent functionality: for example, you could have your patched clusters by sticking more Grid modules in Grid's FX slot and wiring them up via modulation. This could even get around the fundamental limitation of no multichannel audio and no Grid MIDI out, you could simply pass gate/pitch/control/audio signals as modulation (at least in one direction).

When you do need to go deeper than possible, it's best to reach for something else like Reaktor. The Grid meant to be fun, quick and safe, not deep. It doesn't provide everything, but it does provide quite a lot. I use both and I'm happy.

[dellboy]

The main problem I have with the grid is that its too addictive. I have owned Reaktor for years and could never get into it, but I learnt the grid in minutes. Not sure what the Logic modules do yet, I guess you could design your own oscillators etc ?

[dupont]

After a couple of hours trying to cope with the grid, a good headache, I finally concluded this is not my kind of think.
Searching for the right module hidden in the several menus, understanding the purpose of each module, what a mess and not interesting task for me as a musician !
Sorry but for me this will stay the drak side of bitwig and I will not miss it !
Parhaps for those who like to play with cables and have time to lost ...

No surprise you came to the conclusion you already started with...

I don't like playing with cables and thankfully for what I do in the Grid I hardly have to. The Grid mostly auto-cables and for modulators like LFO's and ENV's no cables are even needed.

The learning curve is too long and I have no time left. When you have a full day job and only a couple of hours a days to make music, the choice comes by itself !
I use to prepare some tracks in BW for a insta techno live for the week end. These week, 2 evenings lost with grid. And honestly, I went throught several presets and found nothing fantastic. Some plugins suit better for my kind of music : spire, pigment, tal plugins...

[xbitz]

you can drop VSTis into its prefx slot to modulate/process them at the same time

that's also usable

[perpetual3]

Come back to the vault dupont.

[pdxindy]

The learning curve is too long and I have no time left. When you have a full day job and only a couple of hours a days to make music, the choice comes by itself !

Hey, you don't have to justify whether you want to use the Grid or not... use it or not as you see fit. You also don't have to say it is only for people who waste time. It is okay that some people find it useful and some don't and there is no right way.

[dupont]

The learning curve is too long and I have no time left. When you have a full day job and only a couple of hours a days to make music, the choice comes by itself !

Hey, you don't have to justify whether you want to use the Grid or not... use it or not as you see fit. You also don't have to say it is only for people who waste time. It is okay that some people find it useful and some don't and there is no right way.

That's correct but It will be interesting to know the percentage of BW user who uses the grid. It seems last BW updates are not about the grid so I think it is a clue !

[xbitz]

^^^ big + in mono mode note (re)triggerable polymodulators are triggered from inside the prefx container (Polarity has a nice MIDI note generator)

alone worth to use it (... arghhh and these are the kinds of stuff why I can't use any other DAW after Bitwig )

[Tj Shredder]

I use it all the time. Its so much fun to do things you can’t achieve with any other tool except Max or Pd, but its faster and way, way easier to grab than Max or Pd…
There is still much to be enhanced though, Max is still more advanced but it also has a history of almost 40 years… In the past Cycling74 dropped the pluggo format, which allowed to create VSTs, for the Max4Live project. But I never liked Live.
It is also much easier than Reaktor, which can go deeper, but coming from Max I can’t wrap my head around it…
The Grid is the best tool to make polyphonic MPE instruments. When I want to make a sound from scratch, the Grid is the only tool I consider. All other synths I have and use, are preset containers I can modify in all their details.
On the other hand, if you are not into sound design at all, just load the sounds others made for you.
For me wading through presets to find a sound is sometimes more time consuming than just creating it…

[dupont]

I use it all the time. Its so much fun to do things you can’t achieve with any other tool except Max or Pd, but its faster and way, way easier to grab than Max or Pd…
There is still much to be enhanced though, Max is still more advanced but it also has a history of almost 40 years… In the past Cycling74 dropped the pluggo format, which allowed to create VSTs, for the Max4Live project. But I never liked Live.
It is also much easier than Reaktor, which can go deeper, but coming from Max I can’t wrap my head around it…
The Grid is the best tool to make polyphonic MPE instruments. When I want to make a sound from scratch, the Grid is the only tool I consider. All other synths I have and use, are preset containers I can modify in all their details.
On the other hand, if you are not into sound design at all, just load the sounds others made for you.
For me wading through presets to find a sound is sometimes more time consuming than just creating it…

I rarelly use presets but most of synths know have enough editing power.