Exactly. But it’s not the “win” you think it is. BW devs are all over the place like some crazy ADHD teenagers, starting lots of shit and either never finishing it to completion (e.g. basic piano roll, comping, bounce-in-place, follow actions, operators, sampler, the mythic on-line collaboration feature, etc.), or milking it to death (e.g. modulators with so much overlap & filler, then I still don’t know which one of the 4+ LFOs I need in a given situation).
But I understand some people like the playground / sandbox approach, where you’re supposed to build stuff from bits & pieces.
I don’t. At least not when the basics aren’t taken of.
I tried it, i’ve play around in it and really loved all the options in the beginning. I came for the modulators, the grid and the fresh and really stable workflow. I stayed a while thanks to the great script of mossgrabber and the endless macropages, which really helps you turn the Push controller into an instrument with endless possibilities.
But now i’m back at Ableton again, cause it’s approach is just clicking better for me. It makes me want to make music more than bitwig does. But that’s mostly my fault i have to admit. I just get paralysed from all the possibilities that bitwig has.
That is the main thing I would like to see in updates. To start with, containers in the Grid, custom panel elements, and a preset system within Grid patches. Also, a way to select different views (like stacked macros in Reaktor) would be very cool. That would probably improve cpu usage on large Grid patches too. Because, I’ve noticed when Grid windows are open, on large patches, they use a lot more cpu than when they are closed, even when audio is still playing. So, being able to put all the elements that don’t need to be seen into containers would probably improve the CPU load.
It’s a bit sad to read the criticism here, but I feel that few points aren’t off the mark… Bitwig is already a great music production tool, but could have been better in some areas or be focused better (mind the thread title “has Bitwig lost its focus?”). I like the new devices (new devices are always welcome), but honestly have no idea where they are coming from, what’s the direction of travel here.
I am trying to look at this from another angle. As a product, it’s already a super complex thing with myriads of parameters and dimensions. At some point every software inevitably becomes a sort of bloatware. When I think about managing a project like this from a holistic standpoint, honestly, I don’t know how I’d handle it if I were a software manager. And on top of that, they still have to stay competitive and keep attracting new users (and not every one of them wants to be an advanced soundscape designer, rather a user who just would like to throw some beats and loops or any other kind of regular users that just want their stuff to be done…)
It’s worth remembering no music ever waited for the perfect tools to exist before being composed. Every artist has taken what’s available and done something expected or unexpected with it. And Bitwig is a great tool for doing the expected and the unexpected.
There are no perfect tools, so of course it doesn’t do everything. But arguing over a tool’s deficiencies (or not) creates nothing. Use a tool and fill its gaps with your creativity. Or switch to a tool with gaps that fit you better. Or dedicate your time to create tools in shapes that please you.
But compiling lists of “if only”s is just procrastination. Yelling about what “should be” is a dodge. It’s easy to forget, but if we’d prefer to be creating we should get back to it.
Of course, we’d all like some extra toys to play with but it just becomes an excuse “if it only had this, I’d be able to make better music” which is just bullshit.
Also, the idea that software like this is ever missing “the basics” is phoney as well. If you can record/sequence and edit MIDI and audio then that’s the basics. If “the basics” is always shifting every time another DAW adds some supposedly necessary tiny feature then you’re just chasing the horizon.
I say this in full knowledge that I make excuses for my non-existent output all day long, but I don’t blame the DAW developers! Truth is, they never promised me anything. I knew what I was buying on day one.
I think it’s fine to be critical to pressure BW to improve, nobody’s music is at risk. I agree that there are straw man posts but that is also a way to express a different point of view, albeit with assumptions about your argument mixed in. I agree that BW could have used their time much better and I’d rather see a fully implemented device that is finished and has the developer’s intention baked in. It should be self evident how it fits in with the rest of BW for most people. Maybe this is a straw or steel man but it’s an attempt to root out what’s different in what you and the rest are after.
@antic604 it wasn’t aimed at you specifically. I don’t know what a strawman is.
I’ve been using music software since the early 90s and I’ve been on KVR and other music forums since 2003 or even earlier. All I’m saying is that everybody (including me) always wants one more thing.
Given that people were able to successfully make music with software 20+ years ago with the relatively primitive tools they had then, we can’t rationally say that what we have now somehow doesn’t cover “the basics”.
I’ve said it before, the world needs folks like you to make a bit of noise and hustle the developers to stay on their toes. I just think we can’t all be forever saying we haven’t got enough or there is still something missing that we need.
We might want those extra things, we certainly don’t need them.
@everyone What do you think about “Nice Drums” introduced in Bitwig 5.3 especially if you are accustomed to Real 909 and 808 ? Does the synthesis clone are interesting ? Are they sound design with “the Grid” ? Can we access those module in the Grid and modified them (like Reaktor module but for The Grid) ?
@William_WiLD They aren’t grid devices, they’re “regular” Bitwig devices.
I can’t speak for authenticity with real 808 or 909.
Personally I think these drum devices sound decent and cover a wide range of sounds. In terms of reducing reliance on drum samples or avoiding complex DIY drum synth design, they fit the bill.
Frankly, there aren’t that many great drum soft synths on the market so I think they’re a nice addition.
I like them. I don’t think they’re circuit-level clones of the 808/909 or anything, but reaching for them when I’d usually reach for an 808/909 has been successful for me.
They have interesting parameters. And, of course, Bitwig is all about modulating parameters which can make everything more interesting. It’s doesn’t get too wild — everything still sounds like percussion — but it keeps me from getting bored and stops me from endless auditioning of lists of samples (which I, in particular, do not enjoy)
Maybe? But not in any way that we can access them. There’s no button to press that turns the v9 Snare into a bunch of modules and wires, for example.
Yeah, I also like them. Sound good in their own right but really nice for layering up with samples.
In general I’m in kinda a weird spot with Bitwig at the moment, which I think is less to do with the software itself and more about the Ableton shaped elephant in the room. Definitely was drifting towards Bitwig a couple of years ago, but the launch of Push 3 and the leap that Ableton made in version 12 mean that I’m just not really using it any more. It’s not that it’s deficient - don’t really get what basics are supposed to be missing. It’s just that the process of working with Push and Ableton is so slick that it’s hard to justify going into another DAW.
Comparing vanilla versions, I feel Bitwig is superior for experimentation and creating sounds, generally better designed in a lot of ways. But Ableton has Max which has an answer for most of this and then some. One of my reasons for getting into Bitwig was that I didn’t think I could or wanted to learn Max so the grid etc. seemed like a more musician friendly way of getting to these places. Except I’ve found the grid pretty difficult to pick up, where it turns out that Max is much easier to work with than I’d assumed and seems like a more valuable place to put the effort in.
Anyway, bit of a ramble - I guess this thread popping up reminded me that I’ve been neglecting Bitwig with all the action that’s been happening with Live. I still really like its overall approach of providing a toolkit to build from, and it nail integration with hardware better than anything else I’ve tried, especially modular. Possibly for me it would make more sense for Bitwig to lean even further into that experimental niche. But mainly I guess it’s down to recalibrating where Live and Bitwig fit in my own process given how much Live has improved recently.
