10 things i do not understand about Bitwig

[nowiamone]

Hi there dear Bitwig community

i m trying to switch from Ableton to Bitwig
as a live-musician using audio+vst instruments
(with two 24inch Touchscreens as my control-interface!),
and i m wondering how to do the following in Bitwig:

RECORDING:

1- how to do audio-overdub-recording for Live Performance? Has anyone found a smart workaround for Bitwigs limitations in that area? If there would be a “Post Recording Action”, for example, which instead of recording “into the next free clip slot” records “into the next free SCENE Slot”, then it would be possible to automate recording Audio-Layers, automatically switching from Track-recording to Track-recording, with a pre-set Bar-count. But this seems impossible without the help of the developers, right? [i m not searching for any Looper-Plugins, since they do not result in having the actual audio material IN the Clipview]

2- how to midi assign and fully use the “Post recording action”, including midi-assigning specific “post Record Delay”-values to midi buttons? I m really stunned that an essential tool like “fixed clip length” recording, aka “Post Record Action = Play Recorded after a certain Bar-count” is basically hidden into Bitwigs Project Panel and neither pin-able, nor midi-assignable? With a Launchpad Pro or the Push you can use Fixed Clip Length - you can quickly select a certain bar-count, with the press of a button. But i don't want 300 Euros/500 Euros Hardware just for one function, which obviously exists in the Bitwig API and COULD be assignable to my own controllers! So is this impossible in Bitwig? It’s dearly needed for LivePerformance!

TOUCH CONTROL

3- How to disable the Bitwig way of handling Touchcontrol temporarily? I'm not only talking about the radial menu, but the whole touch experience. It’s a mess! It has to be deactivate-able, at least i hope so!
Explanation: You’re unable to
a) make normal selections of many clips, notes, audio events etc. by drawing a diagonal line, like you’re used to since years of using a mouse or tablets
b) use the knife tool or any other tool which isn’t part of the radial menu.
c) use lots and lots of other functions which are part of the normal right-mouse-click menu.
d) select clips in the ClipView without Launching them,
e) grab automation points and pull them!
f) use any functions which are usually accessible via mouse-hover-over, like grabbing fades, clip-gain, loop selection size, cue markers, etc.
g) many, many more. There are so many functions which are not available via touch, and which - unnecessarily - force us to go back to mouse+keyboard. The Bitwig way of Touchcontrol has its advantages in some specific areas, where the radial menu shines - but there MUST be a quickly accessible button to deactivate it whenever needed!? ("disable pen gestures" in Bitwigs preferences does not do the job)

4- The possibility to “pin” some shortcuts of Bitwigs menus to the Bitwig-Toolbar is awesome. But: How do i pin the shortcuts i really need (from the shortcut list in the preferences) to the Bitwig-Toolbar? Usually, using the shortcuts is faster - but that doesn't count for Touchcontrol!

EDITING:

5- how to glue together audio events in the Clip Detail View? Reason i want this: I sliced Percussion-Audio on onsets to quantise and edit event-snippets to my liking, and then want to consolidate some of them, so they fit as a 16th note length and can be quickly duplicated, in a perfectly fitting 16th grid. I want to be able to do that without having to stop playback (live)!

6- how to insert audio silence? I don’t mean the ctr+alt+P silence insert in arranger - i mean a way to insert audio-silence into audio, like: making a selection -> insert silence -> selection has 0 db. The only way i see right now is to switch to “gain”, make a CUT, and reduce the cut-areas gain to 0db. But that’s unnecessarily creating 2 cuts, making 3 audio events out of one…

7- how to copy&paste and duplicate without "destroying" the audio/midi clips which are in the way, and instead they just get overlapped, while staying whole? (this is something i loved in Cubase and missed in Ableton)

PERFORMANCE

8. How to Midi Assign the Plugin activate-button for specific plugins? It's really strange, that the Plugin-bypass button is midi-assignable for each and every device - but the activate/deactivate button (which is the same button, but with shift+leftclick) can not be midi assigned for specific plugins... !? I still hope i was too dumb to assign it, and that it's possible, haha
I need this to permanently shut down effect VSTs which draw much CPU - which i only want to turn on when needed. I know that turning them on might cause a tiny click noise, i don't care. I care much more about overall Liveset performance!

LOOK

9- How to further reduce the height of the “large Track View” while still showing the waveform/midinotes inside the clips? I want to reduce the vertical height of the Tracks in “Arrange - ClipLauncher - View”, because i love seeing the content of clips (waveforms and midinotes) while also seeing more Tracks at the same time. But they can’t be reduced in size any more, except with deactivating the button “Use large track height”, but then the Clips no longer show Waveforms and Midinotes!How to make them show Waveforms and Midinotes, even when the Tracks are collapsed?

10- In the “MIX” View, we see the Cliplauncher and the Mixer, but also the Device/Editview, all at the same time. How to have Mixer and Device/Editview open at the same time, while in “ARRANGE” View? I m asking because i chose Bitwig over Ableton for one reason: the vertical scenes. I love them! I want to be able to See a tiny mixer AND device/editview, together with the vertical Scenes. 24 inch Screen is big enough for that.

Thanks for your patience, if you really read all this, haha

And thanks for any help!

[llze]

Ideally you get in touch with support I figure. support@bitwig.com

Good luck!

[backtomusic]

Hi there dear Bitwig community
6- how to insert audio silence? I don’t mean the ctr+alt+P silence insert in arranger - i mean a way to insert audio-silence into audio, like: making a selection -> insert silence -> selection has 0 db. The only way i see right now is to switch to “gain”, make a CUT, and reduce the cut-areas gain to 0db. But that’s unnecessarily creating 2 cuts, making 3 audio events out of one…

You write "Insert" silence, insert normally moves the audio(in other daws), so you insert 1 bar of silence, you want the audio after the insert point to come one second later? why not just cut and move at the insertion point?

If you dont want to move the audio, I dont understand why you make a cut when you have gain automation, just draw the gain without doing a cut. if you switch to pen-tool(shortcut 3 , or press 3 and hold until you are done), you can alt+drag(as shown in the info in the bottom of the window) to draw quantized automation to the current division in the detail editor, making is simple pushing the gain to zero and it inserts points for the square automatically.

[backtomusic]

... duplicate

[dayjob]

sorry for necro bump but in the arrangement view is there a quick key command for when you want to copy -> paste -> insert at play ahead marker and have it move everything that is to the right of that insert point to the right by the length of what is being pasted?

"Paste insert time" or paste create time or something? this is part of every DAW i've ever used. but in bitwig it seems i have to select everything, drag it to the right, paste into that space i just created.

i don't want to paste on top of what's already there.. i want the pasted material to be inserted causing everything to the right of the insertion point to move right... on all tracks that are selected.

what am i missing?

[Funk Dracula]

sorry for necro bump but in the arrangement view is there a quick key command for when you want to copy -> paste -> insert at play ahead marker and have it move everything that is to the right of that insert point to the right by the length of what is being pasted?

"Paste insert time" or paste create time or something? this is part of every DAW i've ever used. but in bitwig it seems i have to select everything, drag it to the right, paste into that space i just created.

i don't want to paste on top of what's already there.. i want the pasted material to be inserted causing everything to the right of the insertion point to move right... on all tracks that are selected.

what am i missing?

Hold down SHIFT when deleting/pasting/duplicating and Bitwig behaves like Pro Tools "shuffle mode" where everything is moved, or "shuffled" if you will, to the left/right depending on whether you were deleting or adding material to the timeline.

If you wanted to do this across all tracks, you make a selection with the beam tool up at the top on the arranger timeline, and you can quickly add/take away sections to the entire arrangement in this same fashion.

Cheers

[dayjob]

sorry for necro bump but in the arrangement view is there a quick key command for when you want to copy -> paste -> insert at play ahead marker and have it move everything that is to the right of that insert point to the right by the length of what is being pasted?

"Paste insert time" or paste create time or something? this is part of every DAW i've ever used. but in bitwig it seems i have to select everything, drag it to the right, paste into that space i just created.

i don't want to paste on top of what's already there.. i want the pasted material to be inserted causing everything to the right of the insertion point to move right... on all tracks that are selected.

what am i missing?

Hold down SHIFT when deleting/pasting and it acts like Pro Tools "shuffle mode" where everything is moved to the left/right depending on whether you were deleting or adding material to the timeline.

If you wanted to do this across all tracks, you make a selection with the beam tool up at the top on the arranger timeline, and you can quickly add/take away sections to the entire arrangement in this same fashion.

Cheers

that was the first thing i tried. doesn't work. copy.. then command shift V at another location and it pastes on top of what's there.

[Funk Dracula]

that was the first thing i tried. doesn't work. copy.. then command shift V at another location and it pastes on top of what's there.

Oh ya know what you're correct. I've been using the beam selection with the SHIFT modifier to delete sections/clips, duplicate sections/clips, or insert/remove silence, and not copying/pasting clips down the timeline, so I am sorely mistaken assuming this modifier applied across similar operations. It would make sense to assume that it would though lmao.

Sounds like a feature request. As it stands, that's like "80% of shuffle mode functionality" Damn...

Cheers

[dayjob]

that was the first thing i tried. doesn't work. copy.. then command shift V at another location and it pastes on top of what's there.

Oh ya know what you're correct. I've been using the beam selection with the SHIFT modifier to delete sections/clips, duplicate sections/clips, or insert/remove silence, and not copying/pasting clips down the timeline, so I am sorely mistaken assuming this modifier applied across similar operations. It would make sense to assume that it would though lmao.

Sounds like a feature request. As it stands, that's like "80% of shuffle mode functionality" Damn...

Cheers

thanks for trying though. it's strange it doesn't do this in an obvious way. it's a very common editing feature/workflow.

feature request it is then!

[dayjob]

so, it's sort of possible it's just a slightly different process.. use the time selection tool. select the thing you want to copy.. then go to where you want to paste it and select the exact same amount of time and then "insert silence" then "paste" and it will paste the audio there and move everything to the right.

it's easier if the thing being copied/pasted/inserted is right next to the time just selected.. if the location of where the inserted audio/silence is later in the track then it's kind of a pain.. also more of a pain if the edits aren't snapped to a grid.

this is kind of a monkey wrench into the editing workflow and imo needs fixing.

[pdxindy]

thanks for trying though. it's strange it doesn't do this in an obvious way. it's a very common editing feature/workflow.

feature request it is then!

There's an alternate paste key command, but it doesn't seem to work.

I would call it a bug

[dayjob]

thanks for trying though. it's strange it doesn't do this in an obvious way. it's a very common editing feature/workflow.

feature request it is then!

There's an alternate paste key command, but it doesn't seem to work.

I would call it a bug

i heard back from support but they only offered the solution i posted above. shrug.