Let‘s speculate about 6.0

[Zikax]

Hello Bitwig Fam,

I'll just keep our tradition going here.
I believe it's time to speculate on whats next. They say that the upcoming update will focus on the Arranger and Piano Roll, I'm curious about how this will be implemented. How extensive will the update be? Since the Arranger and Piano Roll have remained largely unchanged since the first version, I think they might be completely overhauled from the ground up like the Browser but in a good way, which I would welcome. However, this isn't certain; they might also just make slight enhancements while keeping everything as it is and call it 5.4

What I hope for:

MIDI Capture
Chord Track
Print Note FX to Clips
MIDI Comping
Arranger Snapshots
Global Transpose
ARA Integration
Sampler 3.0
Limiter plus

[xbitz]

yepp, MIDI capture, chord track, and visible scale/chord notes in the background, scale snaps etc. so Cubase, let’s not have to do this in two DAWs anymore,

and happiness, though since Cubase can run in the background and you can drag and drop clips from it, it's not too bad even now.

[coroknight]

Well we know piano roll and arranger updates are next. I have a feeling Sampler+, and Grid+ are at least being talked about. Probably themes too. It would have been a wasted opportunity to not include theme support during the recent UI rewrite they did to add GPU support.

[Zikax]

Well we know piano roll and arranger updates are next. I have a feeling Sampler+, and Grid+ are at least being talked about. Probably themes too. It would have been a wasted opportunity to not include theme support during the recent UI rewrite they did to add GPU support.

That would also explain why they haven’t introduced themes yet, if their plan was to first change the UI in the arranger and piano roll. It would also explain why they’re so hesitant with gridlines behind the clips.

Without changing the UI in the arranger, it’s not possible to add MIDI comping. The way they implemented audio comping only works with audio. Personally, having MIDI comping only editable in the lower editor would be too confusing and cluttered for me.

The developers of Bitwig always have their own way of giving us what we want. I clearly remember how many people years ago were already asking for visible gridlines behind the clips. And what did we get?

…The Grid.

Sometimes I think they don’t really understand our feature requests. Maybe we just need to express ourselves differently. If we ask for scales in the piano roll, there’s a good chance we’ll end up getting something to imitate a pianist’s velocity dynamics instead.

Which would also be an insane feature, by the way.

[Fleer]

And finally… AU compatibility

[The Mantra]

constrain to scale in piano role
midi comping
quantizing/midi transformations/grooves that affect pianoroll midi notes in real time
midi capture
new midi key commands
maybe some changes to the piano roll multi tool

[Chameleonman]

There's the poly grid, FX grid and the note grid. Some kind of visual grid would be totally game changer. You can now already re-create many 3rd party plugins ( if you can ) but it's not always worth it without any GUI.

Having the plugin always open in your device panel is so convenient it would be also nice to have better options to change how all the plugins look in the device panel. Maybe more options to build nicer looking macros and change some colors etc.

So, over all more visual customizations. But i love how Bitwig look as a whole and feel like I never want to change it. So if they do change it , i hope they keep the option to have the classic theme available.

[xbitz]

What allowed me to make a significant leap in my workflow was separating the mixing and creative processes. The former was handled with SSL360, where having gain, compressor, gate, EQ, and filter controls for multiple tracks in one place (a classic workflow, of course, or the Reason one) without needing to open tracks or plugins is priceless. But I don't think we'll ever see something like this natively in Bitwig.


typically fewer devices are needed, basically just one sourceí(with some MIDI manipulator): one of the channel strips from SSL360 and maybe two or three from the Grid/ShaperBox, so the whole project becomes much more manageable and transparent.,,Anyway, I, for one, would be happy with a "modular" mixer.

[TheYke]

I know haters gonna hate and I'm fine as it is for the most part, but I really hope they can meet the expectiations with this QOL/piano roll/arranger what-ever-update. I mean, they created a hype around it just by teasing it with one short paragraph of text, which shows how many people are hoping for some improvements there. As I said, I'm mostly fine workflow-wise, but if they don't deliver on this one it could backfire massively.

What I still really miss is a slicing option in the sampler. Oh, and please finally squash the bug on Linux which results in an extra project tab with a "New" project, each time opening a project from the dashboard after starting up Bitwig. I reported it back in v.3 or something and it is really annoying, as you get reminded this bug is still there every time you open Bitwig on Linux. Not a big problem otherwise, though

[kinkajou]

And finally… AU compatibility

Serious question: what's the real benefit of AU on Mac?
I'm totally new to the Mac ecosystem and use VST3 or CLAP wherever it's possible. I was always under the impression that AU most beneficial usage is in Logic and for all other DAWs it's more or less a combatibility thingy...
Or is there actually a remarkable difference and it's better to use AU whenever it's possible?

[fwsuperhero]

There's the poly grid, FX grid and the note grid. Some kind of visual grid would be totally game changer. You can now already re-create many 3rd party plugins ( if you can ) but it's not always worth it without any GUI.

Having the plugin always open in your device panel is so convenient it would be also nice to have better options to change how all the plugins look in the device panel. Maybe more options to build nicer looking macros and change some colors etc.

So, over all more visual customizations. But i love how Bitwig look as a whole and feel like I never want to change it. So if they do change it , i hope they keep the option to have the classic theme available.

I do agree. Having something like Waveform would be nice. On the other hand - it will make some updates like 5.3 much less exciting because we would have a lot of 808 drums in a day 1 .

[NomadMonad]

If the Grid aims to compete directly with MaxForLive it badly needs scripting and UI customisation capabilities. Without these features it would feel like a bit of an incomplete project imo.

Also an API to automate the arranger, devices, mixer etc would be my personal dream, but that's never gonna happen I'm afraid.

[Dionysos]

Without changing the UI in the arranger, it’s not possible to add MIDI comping. The way they implemented audio comping only works with audio. Personally, having MIDI comping only editable in the lower editor would be too confusing and cluttered for me.

I don't think that's the reason why MIDI comping wasn't implemented yet. It's more likely that audio comping was easier to implement because the clip-event relationship is much simpler for audio, where individual audio events inside a clip can't overlap. For MIDI, there's no equivalent, e.g. nothing like a "slice of midi" that could easily be comped.

I'm pretty sure that if we get MIDI comping, it'll still be inside of the editor panel, not the arranger.

What I think we get out of the piano roll/arranger rewrite is stuff like stepless vertical zoom in the arranger and a hopefully much better drum sequencing view.

[Zikax]

Without changing the UI in the arranger, it’s not possible to add MIDI comping. The way they implemented audio comping only works with audio. Personally, having MIDI comping only editable in the lower editor would be too confusing and cluttered for me.

I'm pretty sure that if we get MIDI comping, it'll still be inside of the editor panel, not the arranger.

MIDI comping in the editor panel wouldn’t make sense. Let’s assume you have 10 MIDI lanes to choose from and want to see the piano roll at the same time… how would that even work? The editor would be too small, and if you scaled it to fit, it would look extremely cluttered.

The other option would be selecting the lanes in the editor and then switching to the piano roll view when needed. But even that solution would be too cluttered from a workflow perspective.

[Dionysos]

MIDI comping in the editor panel wouldn’t make sense. Let’s assume you have 10 MIDI lanes to choose from and want to see the piano roll at the same time… how would that even work? The editor would be too small, and if you scaled it to fit, it would look extremely cluttered.

But it's exactly the same with audio comping – the audio comp editor is a dedicated UI that doesn't have most of the audio event editor's regular editing capabilities, outside of those needed for comping. So you wouldn't get midi comping plus detailed note editing crammed into a single view, you'd switch between those modes using the selectors on the left-hand side.

You can enlarge Bitwig's editor panel to be displayed in the large main area, too, by the way.