What is the future of Bitwig?

[apoclypse]

You are confused. This is a discussion about the future direction of Bitwig. If you are uncomfortable with it, you don't have to read it and participate in the discussion. lol

I do get confused sometimes... this is not one of them.

I do however, look forward to when you actually start discussing something. Mostly you are just being a jerk.

When people who are discussing the actual topic of the thread get told to "git gud" or "git out" when posting criticisms about Bitwig's shortcomings it gets frustrating to say the least. If someone says Bitwig is hard to use and I think Bitwig should address that in the future (just an example), being told to live with or go use something else isn't helpful nor really conducive to conversation on the topic at hand imo. Also repeating the "developers don't read this anyway" isn't helpful to the discussion either. Seems like just an easy way to shut down conversation to me.

[Biscotto]

Mostly you are just being a jerk.

Sorry man, but here it’s quite the opposite.

[pdxindy]

Mostly you are just being a jerk.

Sorry man, but here it’s quite the opposite.

Yeah, I guess the way people are rude to others is so normalized, it is hardly noticed.

I think KVR is just not for me at this point. It's mostly endless complaining, very often rude and hardly anyone is ever kind to others. I'm out. It's been interesting...

[lokanchung]

what do you mean editing the piano roll takes forever? laying out notes in bitwig is easy, i found ableton quite clunky and unintuitive but bitwig i dont see a problem with, i came from fl studio and find bitwig equally easy to use

I used FL Studio since version 4 and Bitwig's piano roll is worse than that. Problem comes when projects get bigger and when editing hundreds of notes.

Here's the list of problems only in piano roll
- Unable to adjust tiny notes
- Time range handle clashes with resize handle
- Sometimes clicking on a clip jumps to place where there is no notes.
- Unable to distinguish bar lines and beat lines
- Unable to set default note length
- Lack of tools: strum, groove, wrap (oh, and did you know Legato is affected by unselected notes)
- Unable to slice multiple notes
- Difficult to distinguish clip borders in piano roll. Markers are not enough.
- Unable to adjust velocities maintaining relative ratios.
- Unable to zoom out vertically further than current limit
- Unable to lay notes that spans two different clips in track mode. (No auto merging)
- Multitrack editing is unintuitive and buggy.
list goes on ...

"Takes forever" is kind of exaggerated, but you get what I mean.

[Dionysos]

-Track freeze.

Given Bitwig's inter-device routing capabilities, what would you expect to happen to tracks that rely on a device signal from a track you're about to freeze, if freezing was a thing?

A seamless one-click freeze function in Bitwig seems very hard to implement to me, even just on a conceptual level. At the same time, the bounce functionality we do have seems adequate enough, without any of the caveats of one-click freeze.

But then again, maybe people use freeze differently (& more frequently) than I imagine.

[Zacchino]

See what I mean? I see these kind of lists (below) all over this Forum since back in v2.5.

If Bitwig is to thrive in this tricky ecosystem, it must prioritize staying RELEVANT. And to be relevant you need to Maintain and Improve what's already there.

When you're a teenager, you always want new things, but as you grow up, you get less and less materialistic as you start seeing more value in working on yourself and actualizing yourself.
It seems boring at first, but the rewards are 10x more exciting and last longer in time.

Bitwig is now a "Young Adult" DAW, and it should start acing this way. It's a tough transition, but a mandatory one.

Here's the list of problems only in piano roll
- Unable to adjust tiny notes
- Time range handle clashes with resize handle
- Sometimes clicking on a clip jumps to place where there is no notes.
- Unable to distinguish bar lines and beat lines
- Unable to set default note length
- Lack of tools: strum, groove, wrap (oh, and did you know Legato is affected by unselected notes)
- Unable to slice multiple notes
- Difficult to distinguish clip borders in piano roll. Markers are not enough.
- Unable to adjust velocities maintaining relative ratios.
- Unable to zoom out vertically further than current limit
- Unable to lay notes that spans two different clips in track mode. (No auto merging)
- Multitrack editing is unintuitive and buggy.

[cel4145]

what do you mean editing the piano roll takes forever? laying out notes in bitwig is easy, i found ableton quite clunky and unintuitive but bitwig i dont see a problem with, i came from fl studio and find bitwig equally easy to use

I used FL Studio since version 4 and Bitwig's piano roll is worse than that. Problem comes when projects get bigger and when editing hundreds of notes.

Here's the list of problems only in piano roll
- Unable to adjust tiny notes
- Time range handle clashes with resize handle
- Sometimes clicking on a clip jumps to place where there is no notes.
- Unable to distinguish bar lines and beat lines
- Unable to set default note length
- Lack of tools: strum, groove, wrap (oh, and did you know Legato is affected by unselected notes)
- Unable to slice multiple notes
- Difficult to distinguish clip borders in piano roll. Markers are not enough.
- Unable to adjust velocities maintaining relative ratios.
- Unable to zoom out vertically further than current limit
- Unable to lay notes that spans two different clips in track mode. (No auto merging)
- Multitrack editing is unintuitive and buggy.
list goes on ...

"Takes forever" is kind of exaggerated, but you get what I mean.

I'm sure you probably have enough to do (I always hate to suggest that others do things on an internet forum). But have you considered starting a discussion thread to create a list of the top 20 or 25 Bitwig piano roll user experience issues?

If Bitwig development would even address a third of the issues in such a list over the next 6 months to a year, that would be a significant improvement.

Break the list up into three tiers based on which improvements would have the most impact. Where impact is some metric of usefulness to production workflow and likelihood to benefit the most people.

[JHernandez]

what do you mean editing the piano roll takes forever? laying out notes in bitwig is easy, i found ableton quite clunky and unintuitive but bitwig i dont see a problem with, i came from fl studio and find bitwig equally easy to use

I used FL Studio since version 4 and Bitwig's piano roll is worse than that. Problem comes when projects get bigger and when editing hundreds of notes.

Here's the list of problems only in piano roll
- Unable to adjust tiny notes
- Time range handle clashes with resize handle
- Sometimes clicking on a clip jumps to place where there is no notes.
- Unable to distinguish bar lines and beat lines
- Unable to set default note length
- Lack of tools: strum, groove, wrap (oh, and did you know Legato is affected by unselected notes)
- Unable to slice multiple notes
- Difficult to distinguish clip borders in piano roll. Markers are not enough.
- Unable to adjust velocities maintaining relative ratios.
- Unable to zoom out vertically further than current limit
- Unable to lay notes that spans two different clips in track mode. (No auto merging)
- Multitrack editing is unintuitive and buggy.
list goes on ...

"Takes forever" is kind of exaggerated, but you get what I mean.

What is "wrap"?

BTW there's a strum device, among other things to get strum like effects and more, and polarity made a groove machine though I'd prefer a groove engine admittedly.

I don't use the piano role the same way some of you seemingly do. I mostly use it to correct things here and there but I don't find it hard to adjust midi notes, not matter the size, (mouse settings?) or distinguish bar lines from beat lines or clip borders but I guess these later ones are subjective.

I would adjust velocity by selecting all the notes I want to change and cmd+shift drag like it says on the footer, relative to each other. There's also the Histogram in the inspector with Mean, Spread and Chaos though I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "relative ratios".

I set a note length and every note after is the same length as the last and so on. Works for my need anyways.

I just tried to slice multiple notes (never needed to yet) and you're right. I can't find a way to do it. If I'm using such a function to double notes, for example, I'd set length, copy/paste right quick but I'm sure I'm missing other reasons to slice midi notes. Just hasn't come up. Slicing multiple midi notes should be possible, agreed.

"Sometimes clicking on a clip jumps to place where there is no notes" I've experienced this before. Not very often but it's there, It's a bug I guess.

Then again I don't edit hundreds of notes at a time. By the time I get that kind of thing done all the ideas I had in my head would be gone. That would be very frustrating no matter what to me. I don't know how some people pencil in entire songs, you all are brave soldiers of the midi world. I solute you.

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to say you should or shouldn't do things one way or the other. Everyone has there preferences and nags. I was just curious about how I would deal with or dealt with some of these.

[JHernandez]

By chance if some of you haven't already. You should watch Polarity Music work with Bitwig on YouTube. That dude is very creative in Bitwig. He's a Bitwig wizard. There's a dude that works with what he has and makes the absolute most of it with intelligence and grace. Though I have seen him want for some things. Just in case any of you haven't. Goldmine.

[Tj Shredder]

Here's the list of problems only in piano roll

A lot of the listed functions can be achieved with Midi FX, which is as well faster and makes more sense. If you come from the praised Midi editor in FL Studio, or any other tool, you might be bound to a specific work flow, but if you insist on it, you haven’t tried hard enough to look for how to solve a specific problem in the Bitwig way… There is a reason why you would move to Bitwig instead of staying with FL studio if their Midi editing is so advanced.
Most complaints I see, are about specific work flows. Some do make sense, and others are just different in Bitwig and often enough even better… Even more often, very fast workflows lead to boring compositional decisions, as its so easy… Don’t get me wrong, I’d still welcome enhancements in that area…
Midi mangling on the Midi FX level actually is inspiring and leads to ways of composing a more sophisticated Midi editor would never do, as you can modulate parameters… It can bring life into too static sequences…
I want features which are impossible to get in the current state, like a polyphonic MSEG.
And concrete feature requests should be less in a thread like that, but sent to support and listed in Bitwish… There we get a better picture how important a concrete feature request is…
If you send feature requests to support, you often get a hint how to achieve what you want the Bitwig way. Could be an enlightening experience…

[lokanchung]

What is "wrap"?

As you mentioned Polarity, he recently made something called Note Wrap. I'm talking about piano roll tool version of it.

BTW there's a strum device, among other things to get strum like effects and more, and polarity made a groove machine though I'd prefer a groove engine admittedly.

Note FX is pretty bad to work with certain notes only. You can't even edit them until baking them back to midi (via recording)

I don't use the piano role the same way some of you seemingly do. I mostly use it to correct things here and there but I don't find it hard to adjust midi notes, not matter the size, (mouse settings?) or distinguish bar lines from beat lines or clip borders but I guess these later ones are subjective.

If you make notes extremely tiny either by zooming out or shortening them, you can't resize them. I remember this as a bug. Visual things are subjective yes, but I got some positive feedback from my mock-up. You might wanna check. https://bitwish.top/t/make-barlines-more-prominent/101

I would adjust velocity by selecting all the notes I want to change and cmd+shift drag like it says on the footer, relative to each other. There's also the Histogram in the inspector with Mean, Spread and Chaos though I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "relative ratios".

If one note has velocity of 100 and the other is 50. I want them to be 80 and 40, which keeps ratio of 2:1. Currently Bitwig would do 80 and 30.
Spread (which Bitwig says Scale) doesn't help this case.

I set a note length and every note after is the same length as the last and so on. Works for my need anyways.

When notes are laid simple, it works for me too. But working with notes in different length, this is not good. After touching a long note, adding note might overwrite existing ones. Actually I'd prefer note length not being remembered.

Everyone has there preferences and nags. I was just curious about how I would deal with or dealt with some of these.

People will rant until Bitwig gets truely customized workflow to match any style*
I dont' think this is bad. Devs should be able find a way to balance between what they want to do and what the users want them to do.

[*]https://www.bitwig.com/overview/

[lokanchung]

A lot of the listed functions can be achieved with Midi FX, which is as well faster and makes more sense.

I tried and it didn't work for me. Why bother automating paramters? My project end up with at least 100 tracks and this would just add more complexity and CPU resources. These can be simply avoided with MIDI editing.
And you talked about humanizing notes. AFAIK Bitwig doesn't have determinisitc random yet. This can even lead to mixing problem. Because transients and peaks would be random, and it would be difficult to tame them.

For me, it sounds like you are also talking about specific workflow. Only different is whether it is currently supported or not. Different approaches have different pros and cons. It's not one or the other though. They can exist at the same time which brings out more choice and more... "possibilies"

[Dionysos]

There's a time and place for both realtime and permanent note effects. The former are amazing for automation and larger, dynamic adjustments, the latter are better for detailed sculpting and deliberate shaping of notes.

I think it'd be amazing to be able to destructively apply Bitwig's note effects directly to a bunch of selected notes in the editor. Essentially how FL's piano roll tools work, but with regular note effect devices – it would make FL's toolset look tiny in one fell swoop (with the caveat that note fx have some limitations due to being designed for real-time usage, whereas offline note effects could be more powerful and, e.g. move notes back in time).

The workaround of applying the effects to the whole track and recording the result to a new track isn't really usable in the same way, it's lacking immediacy.

[j wazza]

Here's the list of problems only in piano roll
- Lack of tools: strum, groove, wrap (oh, and did you know Legato is affected by unselected notes)

i have noticed some of those ui problems
what do you mean by groove? it has the groove engine for swing but do you mean something else?

Note FX is pretty bad to work with certain notes only. You can't even edit them until baking them back to midi (via recording)

there are ways to activate note fx for certain notes - step sequencer, timbre modulation, midi channels, pitch 12 modulator, duplicating the track and putting note fx on one, recieving midi from another track that has the note fx (so you dont have to duplicate the instrument and fx)
still fair enough if you want strum etc in the piano roll though for ease and offline processing, im sure theyll do that eventually

but coming from fl studio, i can do all the same stuff i did with fl's piano roll with note fx and i prefer it this way

Why bother automating paramters?

AFAIK Bitwig doesn't have determinisitc random yet.

automating them means they can change over time which can sound interesting and stop it getting stale

lots of deterministic random probability stuff can be done with bitwigs modulators, the grid, and the chance operator that works directly on midi offline, it probably has more for this than any other daw except maybe live, this kind of stuff is bitwigs forte, let me know what you wanted to do with deterministic randomness and ill let you know if i know a way to do it

[ThomasHelzle]

LOL
We had these threads in spades even before Bitwig was released.
People explained in exhausting detail why Bitwig has to do this or that to be "relevant" or "successful" or whatnot - based on a couple of screenshots.

Now that it's out for years and - in a saturated market - very successful and growing constantly, it's still the same backseat driver style of discussion in threads like this, where the actual interesting ideas and FRs are drowned out by pretty much everything that ever was done in some other DAW and rather petty one-upmanship.

Neither is it a good idea nor does it make you successful to copy everything into one DAW.
That would make for a horrible user experience.
And just because you like something in DAW X, it does not have to work exactly the same in DAW Y, or you wouldn't need both.
If you don't like cocoa, you don't drink it.
You don't try to make it taste like coffee instead.
You just take a coffee.
Easy.

What makes sense is to do your own thing, your own fresh take on something, like with music.
The really interesting music isn't just copying stuff from all over the place into one song.
It's a fresh approach, your own specific view and ear and voice and style.
And yes, it's always a certain niche.

Same with a DAW. If Bitwig would have done just a straight copy of Ableton Live - what a lot of people accused them for quite aggressively in Version 1.0 - they would never even have started. What would have been the point.
What an utterly boring thing to do.
What they wanted to do was something different, while based on certain existing ideas, but with a totally different approach in the codebase and structure and workflow - which in the meantime is clearly visible, but the vision was always there from the start.

Back then I had pretty much every DAW on the planet.
Now I only use Bitwig.
For me they nailed it from day one.

And yes, I am not at all relevant and that I like it does nothing for anybody else.

But that is how it is with software - you test different applications until you find something that fits you.
And if you don't find it, you continue to try stuff and scratch that itch forever.
But that does not mean that any developer has to do what you personally think you want.
Developers are also human beings with certain views, feelings, ideas and interests and a certain vision and style.
And Bitwig definitely has vision and style in my book.

So all your ideas are welcome as feature requests to Bitwig support.
But don't expect "Please make Bitwig work like [Enter DAW Name Here]" to ever happen.
And if you write to them, explain why a certain workflow is "better" than the existing one.
"I'm used to it" doesn't count.

Also make sure you actually really groked how Bitwig works and thinks and is structured.
It can take quite a while to get fluent in a new DAW and during that time, you may simply lack the knowledge to have very meaningful feedback to give.
Just being lazy and demanding that feature X should be the same as in your other DAW so you do not have to learn something new doesn't cut it.

Learning new stuff is the best thing in life.
If you don't, you just die of boredom.
It is also the most inspiring thing ever, to get out of your box and let yourself be surprised and challenged.

So do yourself a favour and let go of your certainties.
Not knowing is the best that can ever happen to you.

I wish you all the fun in the world!

Cheers, over and out,

Tom