A thought experiment about Bitwig pricing

[apoclypse]

Sorry double post.

[Yokai]

From your own cited article. First paragraph. "Ableton Live is clearly the favorite of electronic producers".

The stuff I've been trying to explain is the WHY behind that conclusion from YOUR cited article. Meanwhile, I'm done with you.

What is the best DAW? It’s a question where suddenly families and friends are split and face off against each other. When tribes become fierce. But ultimately, it's a fairly pointless question to a large extent. The DAW we choose often depends on the type of music we make (Ableton Live is clearly the favorite of electronic producers, while Pro Tools tends to have more sway with band-based recording engineers).

[mholloway]

Yokai and Apocalypse, for chrissake get a room you lovebirds!

[antic604]

Ableton doesn't inherently make "bass music" easier, it's just a tool. Saying that "bass music" or more generally electronic music makers don't want to use traditional DAWs is an over generalization at best and a clueless statement at worst.

Agree, sort of.

Because the more interesting question is if we would even have "bass music" if there was no Ableton? Because to some extent the tools dictate - or at least inspire - certain workflows and techniques. Sure you can do multi-instruments or parallel effect chains in Cubase, but it's not as easy, fast and flexible. Likewise, the availability of easily assignable LFOs or envelopes to virtually any parameter in Ableton Suite or FL opened the door for wub-wub type sounds, whereas Simpler's sample chopping or Beat Repeat facilitated the "glitch" genres and aesthetic. And so on, and so forth...

So while I agree you can make "bass music" or "glitch" in Studio One or Cubase, it's definitely easier to do it in Bitwig, Live or FL. And the opposite is true for recording a band or scoring a movie.

And there's nothing wrong with that, just like we have different coats for different weather, different cars for different terrain or different screwdrivers for different screws

[apoclypse]

From your own cited article. First paragraph. "Ableton Live is clearly the favorite of electronic producers".

The stuff I've been trying to explain is the WHY behind that conclusion from YOUR cited article. Meanwhile, I'm done with you.

What is the best DAW? It’s a question where suddenly families and friends are split and face off against each other. When tribes become fierce. But ultimately, it's a fairly pointless question to a large extent. The DAW we choose often depends on the type of music we make (Ableton Live is clearly the favorite of electronic producers, while Pro Tools tends to have more sway with band-based recording engineers).

If you bothered to look at the article you would see the the margin by which Ableton "wins" is barely 1.32 percent. You would also find in that article that a lower percentage consider themselves professionals (as in they make music for a living and or make money from it) versus Logic. As well a larger percentage of them consider themselves "complete beginners" than Logic. Kind of defeats the purpose of citing more users when a lot of those user don't use the software professionally, or don't actually know who to use the software.

[ckam03]

From your own cited article. First paragraph. "Ableton Live is clearly the favorite of electronic producers".

The stuff I've been trying to explain is the WHY behind that conclusion from YOUR cited article. Meanwhile, I'm done with you.

What is the best DAW? It’s a question where suddenly families and friends are split and face off against each other. When tribes become fierce. But ultimately, it's a fairly pointless question to a large extent. The DAW we choose often depends on the type of music we make (Ableton Live is clearly the favorite of electronic producers, while Pro Tools tends to have more sway with band-based recording engineers).

If you bothered to look at the article you would see the the margin by which Ableton "wins" is barely 1.32 percent. You would also find in that article that a lower percentage consider themselves professionals (as in they make music for a living and or make money from it) versus Logic. As well a larger percentage of them consider themselves "complete beginners" than Logic. Kind of defeats the purpose of citing more users when a lot of those user don't use the software professionally, or don't actually know who to use the software.

That article doesn't necessarily say anything that helps you with your argument. Logic is really popular in the composing world so we have no idea how many of the votes are from composers.

[apoclypse]

Ableton doesn't inherently make "bass music" easier, it's just a tool. Saying that "bass music" or more generally electronic music makers don't want to use traditional DAWs is an over generalization at best and a clueless statement at worst.

Agree, sort of.

Because the more interesting question is if we would even have "bass music" if there was no Ableton? Because to some extent the tools dictate - or at least inspire - certain workflows and techniques. Sure you can do multi-instruments or parallel effect chains in Cubase, but it's not as easy, fast and flexible. Likewise, the availability of easily assignable LFOs or envelopes to virtually any parameter in Ableton Suite or FL opened the door for wub-wub type sounds, whereas Simpler's sample chopping or Beat Repeat facilitated the "glitch" genres and aesthetic. And so on, and so forth...

So while I agree you can make "bass music" or "glitch" in Studio One or Cubase, it's definitely easier to do it in Bitwig, Live or FL. And the opposite is true for recording a band or scoring a movie.

And there's nothing wrong with that, just like we have different coats for different weather, different cars for different terrain or different screwdrivers for different screws

Considering "bass music" (still have to work out what that means), existed before Ableton became a major force as a DAW, my answer is yes. The advent of "bass music" as we know it, the most pivotal software has got to be Massive. The crazy modulation, the wub wub all of that is trademark Massive and Massive doesn't need Ableton to do that. All of its modulation are done internal to the plugin. For a long time Logic and Acid were the defacto DAWs for Drum and Bass (I'm assuming you can consider that "bass music"). Logic is still used heavily in that genre.

Maybe I'd give you Trap. FLStudio did have a huge influence on that genre simply because the way FLStudio handles samples. So a pitched 808 is much easier to do (every sampled instrument up to and including audio tracks as treated as a sampler in FLStudio), but its not exactly hard in any other DAW either.

Anyway my issue isn't that you can or cannot do whatever in one DAW or another but Yokai's assertion that no electronic music producer uses a traditional DAW, which is just silly.

[stash98]

And that's just in my small circle. If you think anyone you see on the summer festival stages "just uses presets out of Serum (etc.) and stops there", you're sorely mistaken. There's a hella lotta sound design going on after all the synth tracks have been flattened to audio.

Yes. Are there any good tutorials you have done or recommend on doing this in Bitwig? I am going to print a song from my sequencer into Bitwig soon (waiting on my ERM to show up) and I'd love to learn some Bitwig tricks on audio file modulation.

[Yokai]

And that's just in my small circle. If you think anyone you see on the summer festival stages "just uses presets out of Serum (etc.) and stops there", you're sorely mistaken. There's a hella lotta sound design going on after all the synth tracks have been flattened to audio.

Yes. Are there any good tutorials you have done or recommend on doing this in Bitwig? I am going to print a song from my sequencer into Bitwig soon (waiting on my ERM to show up) and I'd love to learn some Bitwig tricks on audio file modulation.

That's a really excellent question/request. I'll be honest--I don't want to go into that territory too much (although I certainly could--and also about the subjects of self-mixing and self-mastering to a competitve "pro" level) because I'm standing on the shoulders of giants and those giants are still out there to teach directly.

In short, I don't want to reinvent the wheel on sound design, mixing, and mastering because great stuff already exists and great teachers and mentors are already out there. And I don't want to undercut my OWN mentors and teachers, most of whom earn at least part of their income from teaching/mentoring in production skills. And I don't want to be another producer doing sound design tutorials, etc.

So my niche is largely "Bitwig vs Ableton" and "Fast workflow tips in Bitwig". Almost nobody else is doing that, so I fill the gap. And, lol, I'm tempting the large circle of producers I work with to jump ship and move from Ableton to Bitwig. I have about 6 notches on my gun so far and still adding notches... I've even got my prize heavyweight friend and mentor who has been a LONG time Ableton-based educator thinking seriously about jumping ship.

[Yokai]

Hey Stash, look for a PM by me. Small followup to your question there.

[fold4]

I don't know about 'bass music' (mostly because I'm not sure if people understand the term the same way I do) but we'd certainly have 'glitch' without Ableton Live, since it preceded the release of Live 1 by at least a few years. If 'bass music' is what I think it is it also started in the 90s.

Do certain things about Live and Bitwig make certain styles easier? Possibly. But that's not to say that these are necessarily the preferred tools - we can't draw any conclusion about what musicians in specific styles are more likely to use.

[telecode]

I don't know about 'bass music' (mostly because I'm not sure if people understand the term the same way I do) but we'd certainly have 'glitch' without Ableton Live, since it preceded the release of Live 1 by at least a few years. If 'bass music' is what I think it is it also started in the 90s.

Do certain things about Live and Bitwig make certain styles easier? Possibly. But that's not to say that these are necessarily the preferred tools - we can't draw any conclusion about what musicians in specific styles are more likely to use.

I think certain musical tools make certain styles of music easier to make. For example Grooveboxes and the obvious creating dance music.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groovebox

[SpaceCadetOnLeave]

we can't draw any conclusion about what musicians in specific styles are more likely to use.

You can, and some do, but it's severely short-sighted, it reminds me of the times where groups of wannabe's would state one only could make dancemusic with Roland machines. Or only electronic music with walls of Moogs. Boring nonsense.
A modern musician will not (and doesn't have to) let his creativity held back by the choice of a DAW.
When I look around me I only see producers and studios owning more than one DAW and system.
The price of an item matters, but not that much if you're passionate.

I think certain musical tools make certain styles of music easier to make. For example Grooveboxes and the obvious creating dance music.

The old ones maybe, although I made hour long scores for modern-classical dance performances on a Roland W30 and a MC-808. The new ones are just a box with dedicated sequencer-software (DAW) with build in samplers and synths, very capable of doing any music created by your creative and original brain. Which should be the topic, not a tool.

[Tj Shredder]

The new tools as well. Just listen to the majority of pieces made with a certain tool. I cannot tell for any piece made with Live, but the more boring ones I can tell, just by listening...; - )

[craigtumps]

I almost bought Bitwig in the last sale,my reason for not going ahead was purely pragmatic. If I decided after X number of months that I did not want it, I would have to list it as --- "Bitwig for sale, X number of months remaining"----

The error of all these pricing experiments is that it assumes someone is going to stick with the product.

Pricing bitwig to help the secondhand license market is probably the last thing they care about.