Bitwig for composing

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Are there any benefits in Bitwig for orchestral composers ?
For someone who's not into dj-ing or creating complex synthesis so things like live clips, CV, etc are not needed
Who simply create cinematic music and music using sample libraries. Lots of midi / instrument tracks.

EDIT: I already use Cubase, was using it since early 2000s.
I'm just wondering about BitWig just out of curiousity
Last edited by TS-12 on Thu Feb 01, 2024 1:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
Main Computer Specs: MacBook M1 Max, 32GB, 4TB, Cubase 13.

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Bitwig is geared more towards electronic music and also has no support for video tracks. However, it does come with an orchestral library.

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Logic or Cubase is usually what such composers use. Nuendo if you want some extra goodies (which is really a more feature-rich Cubase).

Of the two, if you have a Mac, Logic is a no brainer since it also allows the clip launching like Bitwig-Ableton.

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Bitwig has the weakest piano roll now. Hope they work on it.

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Bitwig is my favourite DAW, but if you really want to 'score' music then Steinberg Cubase/Nuendo/Dorico are better places to start.

They just have better ways to manage the articulations.

Here's a summary
https://ask.audio/articles/using-expres ... -in-cubase

That said it's not impossible in Bitwig or other DAWS, just maybe not as clean.

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I love Bitwig to death, you can absolutely write orchestral music in it, but I recommend checking out Studio One for scoring/composing (in addition to the other recommendations, cubase, logic, etc,) especially If you're using loads of Sample Libraries. Studio One also has an interesting way of managing key switches/articulations called sound variations (below video). There are some other nice quality of life composer features like notation, chord tracks, etc






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a9k1tp wrote: Mon Jan 29, 2024 6:31 pm Bitwig has the weakest piano roll now. Hope they work on it.
Combine the piano roll with note-grid, note fx, containers, modulators, operators, its pretty powerful stuff.

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especially if you would like to create a juno reactor kind of music


There's always room for Bitwig
"Where we're workarounding, we don't NEED features." - powermat

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duanosforde wrote: Mon Jan 29, 2024 10:26 pm
a9k1tp wrote: Mon Jan 29, 2024 6:31 pm Bitwig has the weakest piano roll now. Hope they work on it.
Combine the piano roll with note-grid, note fx, containers, modulators, operators, its pretty powerful stuff.
Speaking off... here is some fun stuff from Polarity :)


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^^^ Actually, I don't quite get it, one (virtual) screen shows Bitwig and the other FL Studio(as plugin in Bitwig if you need its PR), and the mouse buttons can be mapped to control right and left to be able to switch between them quickly

Image

If you add MIDI Cap to this, then you don't even need to press the record button when moving MIDI between the two apps, BWS is even able to read the .fls format (- automation)

... on mac

ps. I did check that, and yes, the MIDI channels assigned to the notes do come out of FL Studio, so it's usable as a scratchpad, then I wasn't lying
"Where we're workarounding, we don't NEED features." - powermat

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duanosforde wrote: Mon Jan 29, 2024 10:26 pm
a9k1tp wrote: Mon Jan 29, 2024 6:31 pm Bitwig has the weakest piano roll now. Hope they work on it.
Combine the piano roll with note-grid, note fx, containers, modulators, operators, its pretty powerful stuff.
Ja, but that's not a substitute for a more fully featured piano roll. I'm sure they will do something like improving this in the future.

I'd also really like it if somehow they could visualise the note FX stuff.

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_leras wrote: Wed Jan 31, 2024 6:10 am
duanosforde wrote: Mon Jan 29, 2024 10:26 pm Combine the piano roll with note-grid, note fx, containers, modulators, operators, its pretty powerful stuff.
Ja, but that's not a substitute for a more fully featured piano roll.
The combination of existing tools works pretty well for me.

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pdxindy wrote: Wed Jan 31, 2024 6:44 am
_leras wrote: Wed Jan 31, 2024 6:10 am
duanosforde wrote: Mon Jan 29, 2024 10:26 pm Combine the piano roll with note-grid, note fx, containers, modulators, operators, its pretty powerful stuff.
Ja, but that's not a substitute for a more fully featured piano roll.
The combination of existing tools works pretty well for me.
I find Bitwig very useable. I think its piano roll can be improved on though. I also think they should add some other clip types, based on sequences. Some kind of sequence clip, with multiple sequencer GUIs would be really great.

The multi clip selection for editing is probably my favourite Bitwig piano roll thing.

Tbh, I haven't deeply explored all the options like delays and strum note FX, I need to figure how to bounce out to new midi clips as this would seem more natural to me I think.

Here's the fl piano roll overview, has a few more options. It's the extra edit options like chop I think could be added. (Maybe it's just a different workflow in Bitwig)
https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-le ... l_menu.htm

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_leras wrote: Wed Jan 31, 2024 6:38 pm
Tbh, I haven't deeply explored all the options like delays and strum note FX, I need to figure how to bounce out to new midi clips as this would seem more natural to me I think.
I use Bird's Midi Cap plugin to capture midi into clips. Until I found that, the process was on the tedious side for me. With it, it has dropped below the threshold where now I'm happy enough with the workflow. Of course others will have a different threshold.

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btw. I already use Cubase, was using it since early 2000s. I'm just wondering about BitWig just out of curiousity
Main Computer Specs: MacBook M1 Max, 32GB, 4TB, Cubase 13.

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