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DJ Chien

Anyone using Bitwig ? (production software)

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Hello people,

 

Was just wondering if anyone here uses Bitwig for production ?

 

I just quickly checked what's the stuff about on their official website. Outfit kinda looks like Ableton (since Bitwig developers are former guys froms the Ableton team...) but there are very interesting extra features like :

 

- possibility to work on several Bitwig sessions at the same time

 

- possibility to work online with another Bitwig producer (this part is work in progress if I remember well) !

 

 

 

so if there's any user on the forum, I would gladly listen to some feedback !

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I switched from Ableton a while back.. bitwig is great, i miss a few things from ableton (the delays for example) but bitwig is really powerful.. the universal modulation system alone is a reason to get on it.

 

can you develop more about advantages of this software vs ableton or studio 1 ?

i am interested also.

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can you develop more about advantages of this software vs ableton or studio 1 ?

i am interested also.

 

So in bitwig you can modulate any knob.  So, you could create an LFO, and attach it to a parameter on any VST.  you could then create an audio follower using your kick drum as the source, and attach that to the LFO speed, so that every time the kick drum happens, the LFO speed increases on the VST knob you assigned the LFO to.

 

It had a note mode too, so you can get it to follow some MIDI data, like a melody, then use the note trigger as another signal to attach to anything else you like, this has an envelope so you can change the ADSR of the modulation.  I made a MIDI gater with this which surpasses any VST MIDI gater I have ever used

 

Bitwig encourages you to make your own instruments.  It doesn't even come with a phaser, it gives you a  comb filter, and you can attach that to a LFO to turn it into a phaser.  This kind of control and customisation on everything is very powerful, you will finding yourself building your own effects and presets, I've made a complex filter that splits the audio into left and right and subtly modulates the cuttoff on both chanells differently so it gently undulates also as you sweep up and down, you can then attach the LFO amount and speed to macro controls, which could then be linked to another LFO or audio follower etc, the possibilities are endless.

 

Another great feature is how you can easily copy and paste stuff between different projects, that you can both have open at the same time

Say I have built a massive drum kit that uses 10 instances of kontact and loads of effects and uses as lot of memory and CPU, I can just bounce the audio, then cut and paste the channels intoa  separate track and save it.  I can then, if I want to change it further down the line you can just copy and paste it back into your original track..  this whole thing allows you to cannibalise stuff from failed tracks or easily grab things you want to resuse.

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Wow. That sounds pretty complex.

 

Iacchus, would you say it is better for making creative sounds than the full production part of finishing off tracks?

 

I'd intend to use it for everything, it does all the normal things a DAW can do...  I think it will be great for mixdowns too because it supports groups within groups.. Ableton only has one level of grouping.. so you had to carefully think about what to group, or manually route lots of audio

 

In this you can group all your squelchy noises together into a 'squelches' track, put effects on that, group it together with pads into a 'synths' channel, put more plugins on that, then eventually group the whole track into 'top' and 'bottom' for example.  In fact I've been doing this as I go along just for organisation, so if I want to find a noise I expand them by category. 

 

Although I understand some other DAWs have groups withing groups, like reaper, so this functionality isn't especially novel.

 

Is there any particular functionality of your DAW that you rely on for the full production part of finishing off tracks?

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I love the idea of group within a group. :-)

 

I use Logic so I wouldn;t say that it does anything in particular that say Cubase or Ableton couldn't do.  But I do have a particular set up for my production workflow which I find helpful for that last 30% of the finishing the track..

 

Basically I try to condense my workflow into 8 main group busses which I set up something like this.  To access this I have this window set to a screen/window which I can bring up by pressing a keypad number.

 

Bus 17 - Fx  Returns -  I output my reverb and delays buses directly into into here

Bus 18 - SFX and Upper reg samps

bus 19 - Pads

Bus 20 - Synths

Bus 21 - Rhythmic Samples / audio

bus 22 - Percussion

Bus 23 - Main Drums

Bus 24 Bass

 

In the arrangement page I will stack the tracks from top to bottom so that they reflect this set up.  i.e. SFX at the top of the page and Drums an bass at the bottom.  I also colour my parts within that arrangement structure to keep things tidy.  e.g. pads are yellow, bass is blue, SFX white, Drums orange.  Otherwise I have so many parts that it just becomes unworkable and you spend half your time searching for tracks within the arrangement.

 

Btw.  Loving chatting with you guys about production.

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I love the idea of group within a group. :-)

 

I use Logic so I wouldn;t say that it does anything in particular that say Cubase or Ableton couldn't do.  But I do have a particular set up for my production workflow which I find helpful for that last 30% of the finishing the track..

 

Basically I try to condense my workflow into 8 main group busses which I set up something like this.  To access this I have this window set to a screen/window which I can bring up by pressing a keypad number.

 

Bus 17 - Fx  Returns -  I output my reverb and delays buses directly into into here

Bus 18 - SFX and Upper reg samps

bus 19 - Pads

Bus 20 - Synths

Bus 21 - Rhythmic Samples / audio

bus 22 - Percussion

Bus 23 - Main Drums

Bus 24 Bass

 

In the arrangement page I will stack the tracks from top to bottom so that they reflect this set up.  i.e. SFX at the top of the page and Drums an bass at the bottom.  I also colour my parts within that arrangement structure to keep things tidy.  e.g. pads are yellow, bass is blue, SFX white, Drums orange.  Otherwise I have so many parts that it just becomes unworkable and you spend half your time searching for tracks within the arrangement.

 

Btw.  Loving chatting with you guys about production.

 likewise :)

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I absolutely love bitwig! Made the switch from ableton about 6 months ago and haven't looked back. Switch was near seamless and I feel that bitwig has such a better workflow, especially when you like to bounce out midi and manipulate the audio. Very happy with it

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As a DAW I am using Maschine software, because... I simply got it with my controller, it's original and I am too lazy to learn new program ;) Probably there is some better solution, but I am really into it and don't need to use other, maybe in the future when my tracks and skills will be better I will try something else, but now I am focusing on composing.

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It looks very decent, that's for sure. However, I'm not convinced it's worth the jump from Ableton. Modularity is more than covered with Max4Live nowadays anyway (and you can always turn to Reaktor as well). The only DAW I'm really curious to learn right now is Renoise, because of its tracker heritage. Out of all the different solutions, its the one that looks alien to me, and I really want to warp my head around it. I also have love and respect for Reason, the hardware rack & patchng mentality is very exciting. These two are different enough to be worth the time spent on learning their approach. 

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Reaktor is self contained, although it is powerful AFAIK you can't use it to modulate other plugins and the rest of the DAW

 

You can indeed do just about anything in Max4Live.. easier said than done though!  That's not going to happen out of the box you need to learn the language and build it.. .you are in danger of spending all your time programming instead of writing music if you go down that road.  I dabbled with it and tried a few off the shelf max4live patches from around the web to try and duplicate the bitwig modularity before I completely jumped ship but didn't have any luck. I'd be interested to see if anything new has emerged that can just be instantly applied as I still have a lot of love for Ableton.  TBH I expect them to copy bitwigs modularity in a future release.. they'd be mad not to.

 

Renoise do a VST plugin now so you can access the tracker functionality from within another DAW if that takes your fancy.  I wish Reason would do the same.. as it's cool but really limited by being standalone and not having VST support

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