614

The browser still feels kind of unfinished and beta-ish, but I think I have it mostly working like before. I need to do some maintenance on my custom collections though.

Quick Sources being “customizable by drag and drop” is news to me… I can’t drag collections into it, or snapshots, or locations, or individual items, or anything else that I’ve tried.

[edit: it’s worth reading the documentation for it on Bitwig’s site. While it still feels kind of unpolished and needlessly complex, I now have it set up a little nicer than the previous browser.]

“Modulate anything” doesn’t seem to work the way I thought it might – I figured any modulator anywhere could target anything else. It’s more that there are some specific locations for modulators that can reach anything else, and that does not include the Grid. So it’s better than before but not perfect.

The new MSEG stuff in its various forms is pretty fun though, way more so than I thought it’d be :slight_smile:

615

This video certainly takes a while, but basically he covers off how you could do FM, additive, phase modulation, and vector synthesis with the basic idea that you have a Polymer set to 0:1 and modulate its phase with a custom wavetable that sweeps from -1 to 1 like modulating a DC Offset device, then set the index to modulate at note rate.

Lots of food for thought. So far I can only really think of this stuff as worthwhile (if at all) for big pads, but it’s quite fun anyway.

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616

What controller do you use? I am looking for something knobby to quickly control a device/synth/sampler but also automate and jam with. I feel like Akai/Novation solutions may be more than enough here, but I am curious what others suggest.

617

Recording audio clips in this way (with a curves mseg modulating the BPM), along with re-pitch globally enabled is insane… yet very interesting.

After recording, disable the modulator. :exploding_head:

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618

I used a Beringer BCF faderbox for a few years… it was great. As you selected different devices the faders would snap into position to reflect the remote panel.

Last few months I’ve been using a MIDI FIghter Twister instead. It also snaps to reflect the state of the remotes. I love it. I have buttons assigned to scroll through devices, different buttons assigned to scroll through remote pages, and different buttons assigned to scroll through tracks. You can get things to the point that you can operate pretty much mouse-free.

The way that I use Bitwig is that I set up remote pages for everything that I use, even special remote pages per preset. This way as soon as I load a preset it is all there. All my music is improvised and this lets me learn how to control things the way that I like them to be.

The only thing that I wish it did was high resolution control… it doesn’t, so I have to do some workarounds to do things like control filter cutoffs and oscillator pitch.

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619

As far as I know the MIDI Fighter does have a high resolution mode you can switch faders into using their assignment software.

620

sadly not really: Midi Fighter Twister - High Resolutiom mode

High res mode spaces the 7bit/128 step values out over 360 degrees vs 270 degrees.

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621

This vid’s a bit chaotic, but as well as demoing a way to make massive voice stacks in the grid, there’s this bit around 10 minutes where he shows how you can use the new Curves MSEGs as a way of progressively fading from 1 to 5 voices in a Voice Stack modulator

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622

That guy is awesome. I love this one:

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623

as a recent convert after 7 years in ableton… oh my this is so sick. being able to setup several octatrack style scenes at once is so satisfying.

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624

This sounds good. What scripts are you using to do this? I’d like to have one that automatically maps to the selected plugin but also has a user mode that lets me quickly map to macro knobs as well.

Your setup sounds rather cool, something I could build up over time as I add remotes to saved presets.

Also does the lack of detail impact filter cutoff modulation and if so how do you work around this? For studio work is there a way to highlight all automation points and smooth them out for example?

Timely post right above mine - the way he is controlling BW in the video is something I want to do. I see he uses a faderfox for it, but thats a little rich for me, hence considering the MidiFighter.

Additionally this is another great video that shows some other techniques I’d like to have knobs for:

625

drivenbymoss’s generic flexi. worth all the time it takes to read the docs and figure it out. Focus carefully on the part of the docs detailing how to save your configs properly so you don’t lose your work.

I’ve got the bottom 8 of the midifighter’s first page mapped to remotes 1-8. Generic Flexi will do 2-way MIDI so it keeps the lights up to date for whatever remote page is selected. I mapped push buttons to remote page left and right, device left and right and track left and right. I mapped the top 8 to volume for tracks 1-7 and master.

I use the other three pages as normal midi maps. A page for my four sends, a page for my custom looper setup and a page for ad hoc mapping.

I haven’t really started messing with the track and project level remotes. I feel like that’s going to end up being a pretty big upgrade.

But as it stands I usually get things set up the way that I want for a session and then never touch the computer.

Now, the thing that I really want to do is this: get drivenbymoss’s OSC stuff going with touchosc. This shold be able to get me to the point that I can use an old ipad mini as a display for the remote mappings. I’ll be able to see labels on the ipad for the current track, the current device, the current device page and then labels for the 8 remotes that the midifighter is currently mapped to. If I can get this working then I’ll be able to work without the screen, keyboard and mouse entirely (unless I want to do some ad hoc reconfiguration in which case it is right there for it.)

I also have my Komplete Kontrol 88 set up with drivenbymoss’s driver for it. This means that I can have mixer stuff going there at the same time as the remote stuff on the midifighter, which is ideal. Lastly I have a Launchpad mini set to do clip operations and a Torso T1 for fancy arps and euclidian sequances.

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626

I plan to dig into the OSC documentation. I plan to be building bespoke tools into BitWig for my Monome gear and am interested in direct compatibility. Absolutely phenomenal that these tools have been developed.

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627

Re: how to have the needed resolution for smooth filter cutoff modulation, oscillator pitch modulation, etc.

Here’s what I do for filters: I make a macro modulator and assign it to the filter cutoff in something, say Volcano. This is a high resolution modulator. I Then make a second macro modulator and make it bipolar. I then assign modulation from this second macro knob to the first but limit the depth of the modulation to be small… maybe 5-10% of the full sweep. I then assign both macros to remotes on the remote page and call them something like fltr freq and fine fltr freq.

The first knob can do the big filter moves, the second knob does the smaller ones. Once you get the feel of it it works pretty well. For Volcano, which is the filter plugin I generally use, I have also set up a third control with allows me to control the depth of the fine tuning control.

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628

Thats pretty great. Lots to dig in here. I got the MFT and loaded it up with a script called twister4btwig. It lets you press to fine tune but I know what you are doing is actually a finer sweep. So I will definitely try this method out as well.

Bitwig with a MFT feels like the greatest hardware groove box ever. It’s crazy how much can be done without touching the keys. And the LEDs make it pretty easy to figure out where I am in each mapping. I also can do custom mapping on one page, so that will be perfect for project macros, which I am very interested in messing with.

629

Would you mind sharing what you did here?

EDIT:

While I’m at it, I’m scratching my head at how best to do something.

I’d like to set up two matrices. The inputs will be MIDI notes triggered from an electronic drum kit.

Matrix 1 would output those notes to other notes. The idea would be to have 8 inputs and 4 outputs, all of which are unvarying, and then to be able to select as many “nodes” in the matrix as I like so I can vary the routing.

EG:

Inputs: C1/24 (kick), D1/25 (snare), C#2/17 (crash), D#2/19 (ride), etc up to 8 inputs

Outputs: C-2(?) 1, 3, 5, 7 (MIDI note numbers)

Matrix 2 would be the same except that I’d be using it to trigger gates that would go various places (hardware or software).

Inputs: same

Outputs: gate A, gate B, gate C, gate D

I assume there’s a way to do this in the Grid?

Obviously, if I wanted fixed routings, this is what a Drum Machine is for, but since I want to be able to vary the outputs, I’m having a hard time figuring out how to do this.

The ultimate goal is to have an 8x4 button matrix that I can MIDI map to control, or that I can sequence.

Thanks for any suggestions you might have.

630

Do you find Bitwig litghter in terms of performance and cpu resources compared to Ableton Live?

631

I haven’t compared the two closely, but i have noticed less audio glitches using Bitwig on my lower powered PC. Less crashes as well, due to the plugin isolation.

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632

Only crash I get is with the audio engine. And it appears what causes it to shutdown is the korg legacy synths. The synths always reset their volume to 0 after it. A mild annoyance that typically just reminds me to bounce in place after.

633

Hey there’s no way to set a default preset on a device, right?

I guess I could fave one, add it to a collection or similar… I’d just have to train myself out of going to devices instead of presets