Bitwig is so great and so flawed at the same time.

[Yokai]

It's pretty fast to do in the Event Editor (by hand). First, make sure the clip itself is set to one of the STRETCH modes. You can't do this in RAW mode. Also make sure the "Tempo" value for the clip down in the bottom half of the Inspector is set to the original BPM tempo of the sample in the clip.

Next, double-click the audio clip to open the Event Editor. Then in the Editor, click the STRETCH button.

Now just work your way along the BOTTOM edge of the waveform in the event editor. Left click near an obvious transient spot in the waveform and then drag to the nearest grid line you want to snap to. When you left click near the transient, if there's an actual blue onset marker very close by at the top of the waveform, the stretch marker will snap to that onset marker. If there isn't a nearby onset marker, you'll need to double click to create a stretch marker, and then drag it to the nearest grid line.

Note that there are two modes for stretching the waveform this way. One is just dragging a stretch marker. The other is to hold down ALT (on Windows; probably something different on OSX) while dragging a stretch marker. When you hold Alt, the stretch marker stays where it is on the grid, but the waveform itself moves. When you don't hold Alt, the stretch marker moves and pulls the waveform point that it's anchored to along with it.

Why would you want to use the Alt modifier like this? Like 70% of the onset markers will be in the right spot exactly over the transient. But the other 30% are probably off by a bit. Or there might not be an onset marker at all for some reason. So the stretch marker won't be exactly on the transient you want because it snapped over to where the onset marker is, right? Or there wasn't an onset marker near the transient, so you double-clicked to place a new stretch marker, but your aim was off a bit and the stretch marker doesn't really line up with the real transient, right?

So in both of those cases, FIRST drag the stretch marker onto the gridline you want, and NEXT use Alt-drag on that same stretch marker to slightly drag the waveform itself over the stationary stretch marker to pull the transient right on top of the stretch marker.

It's really fast and simple, and you can effectively quantize an 8-bar drum loop or whatever in less than a minute or two. Just stay in STRETCH mode and work along the bottom of the waveform from left to right, occasionally using the Alt modifier as needed. It's kinda like hanging a big bedsheet on a clothesline by using clothespins one at a time, left to right, to shape and hang the sheet exactly the way you want.

BTW you can right-click any stretch marker and choose "Start Audio Event Here" to make that stretch marker the new left edge of the Audio Event inside the clip. Then you can drag this new left edge of the event to line up with the left edge of the clip.

[Yokai]

Here's a super short, unlisted, SILENT video showing what I just described above. When you see the cursor change it's shape to something that looks like a double-barbell, that's me holding down the Alt modifier to change the stretching mode.

NOTE: I did this in a hurry and typed in the wrong original BPM value for the clip , but you get the idea

TIP: You don't have to quantize every single transient in the waveform. Often it works best to just quantize the transients on the first downbeat of every bar. Then look at what's in the middle of each bar and *maybe* adjust a few transients that look too far off of the quarter note markers. You usually don't have to do much more than that, which is why it can be so fast and simple to quantize an 8 bar loop.

https://youtu.be/EXUr9pkeX20

[antic604]

Here's a super short, unlisted, SILENT video showing what I just described above.

I'm all for using workarounds (or "the Bitwig way"), but this just isn't acceptable if someone works with a lot of audio. It's perhaps fine if you need to add 2-3 drum loops to your music, but that's it.

Two things are missing:
1) A threshold for algorithm detecting the transients / onsets, to - in practice - decide the density of transients in the file
2) Ability to select all onsets (like you can for stretch markers for multiple tracks - can't thank you enough for that tip! ) and hit Q or whatever key to quantize to grid or Ctrl+Q to invoke the quantization menu

And one more thing that's sorely missing - keyboard shortcuts for switching between editing modes for audio (Onset, Stretch, Gain, Pan, Pitch, Formant)

[jonljacobi]

Markers and time correction have been a ridiculously convoluted process in Bitwig since day one. It's a major issue and a real head-scratcher.

[brunomolteni]

A tip for working with stretch markers:

do just like the video posted by Yokai, but start by the LAST onsets first... if you can locate the 1 beat on the last bar of the loop, just add a stretch marker and move that to line up with the grid... if you do that it will actually compress all the other onsets to it's left ( if you pick one of the last onsets, then it's gonna be most of the loop) and you if you line it up correctly, all other onsets should line up ok too... easy peasy

[jonljacobi]

I don't quantize, I selectively and mildly time correct certain notes that may be too far off the beat. The tiny markers, the finicky and touchy way of inserting anchors... Just tried this with 3.1. Before it was click and drag up to insert three markers. It was horrible, but is this gone now? Did they replace it with anything?

At least the onset detection doesn't seem to crap out with long silences anymore. Also, I've always wondered why there are separate stretch and onset modes if you then have to create the stretch markers manually. Why aren't they already inserted in stretch mode as the onset markers are in onset mode?

[jonljacobi]

I didn’t mean to rant. I was really asking questions.

[bielphc]

As a composer, a mind behavior student and a marketing analist, i'll justify.

Composer view: More (useful) midi tools means you get your work done in less time. This is very important. How many time takes to you compose one minute of music?

Mind behavior view: in all aspects of learning, if you want to achieve someting (evolve a motif or a melody), your mind considers questions like "which chord progression do I choose?" "Do I must test 100 progressions? This will take the eternity" and others workflow "issues" or not shortcutted, at least, as an obstacle. Once your mind takes this idea, it will difficult you to achieve your motif, melody and the music itself. So, you must have a good mindset to compose, in order to get rid of this.

Marketing view:
Why the kids choose Cubase? It's quite simple!

It has some tools to make the composing process easy. So, once you get the job using chord pads and testing the chords more easilly, you get "addicted" with the feature.

If you are new to music and daw, using Cubase to compose you will not leave it behind because make music without these features (chord pads, chord tracks and assistant) would be kinda hard. And this is a fresh human among the zombies.

[jonljacobi]

Just what are you referring to as "composing"? What makes you think the kids are all choosing Cubase? You're also contradicting yourself in your "mind behavior view". It takes musicians as long to compose a minute of music as it takes to hear it in their head. It can be years, it can be seconds. Randomly throwing musical elements onto a grid until something passable pops out is not composing, it's assembly at best.

[outerspacecat]

Here's a super short, unlisted, SILENT video showing what I just described above. When you see the cursor change it's shape to something that looks like a double-barbell, that's me holding down the Alt modifier to change the stretching mode.

Are there any workarounds to use shuffle for audio files? I know I can change the grid to triplets (66,6 % shuffle in Bitwig), but I can't align the stretch markers to an exact shuffle value, can I?

[Yokai]

Here's a super short, unlisted, SILENT video showing what I just described above. When you see the cursor change it's shape to something that looks like a double-barbell, that's me holding down the Alt modifier to change the stretching mode.

Are there any workarounds to use shuffle for audio files? I know I can change the grid to triplets (66,6 % shuffle in Bitwig), but I can't align the stretch markers to an exact shuffle value, can I?

The only workaround I can think of is to drag in an audio clip with a simple shuffled drum loop on it. Then you could use layered editing mode to stack both events on top of each other. Then you could visually eyeball the reference event while dragging stretch markers in the target event.

Honestly, part of a good shuffle feel is some degree of human variance. Not transients perfectly aligned to some perfect shuffle timing.

So to that end, IMO it’s better to work in MIDI for your drums. Because you can use the Global Groove settings to dial in a swing/shuffle and accents for the that’s close to what you want. And then subsequently use the Quantize operation, which for MIDI clips includes a humanization option to move notes off the beat grid. And there’s also little fly out menus in the inspector when you have multiple notes selected in the Event Editor, and you can use little sliders to randomize your notes that way and get them off the grid in a humanized way.

So once you have drum MIDI that has the groove you want, you can bounce out an audio clip of the drums and use that audio clip as a visual reference in layered editing mode to help you quickly drag transients in your other clips to match the drum groove.

Is this as easy as using something like Abletons’s “groove pool” features? No. But it’s not that time consuming to do manually once you get fast at stretch editing. The key is to largely ignore onsets and just stay in STRETCH mode and learn how to use both modes of stretch dragging.

Meanwhile, put in a feature request with the devs asking for better groove and quantization features for audio.

[jonljacobi]

Meanwhile, put in a feature request with the devs asking for better groove and quantization features for audio.

I put one in. Five years ago.

[Biscotto]

Meanwhile, put in a feature request with the devs asking for better groove and quantization features for audio.

I put one in. Five years ago.

Are you using a Time-Machine