Bitwig

The DAW I hate least

November 26, 2016 — November 22, 2019

computers are awful
generative art
music

Bitwig is much like Ableton Live, but rebooted, and with many annoyances removed (and some other ones added of course, but ones that are generally not as annoying to my own tastes). Thoroughly recommended. Bitwig has such features as thoughtfully redesigned workflow, microtuning support, in-built modular synths, and linux support.

1 Scripting Bitwig control

Bitwig has a javascript API and a java API for fancy controller mapping The documentation is a non-linkable PDF, but you can find tutorials online.

and examples

For more elaborate uses, see

Irritatingly, the controller scripts go in different places for different platforms and there is no easy way to harmonise them:

Windows
%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Bitwig Studio\Controller Scripts\
OS X
~/Documents/Bitwig Studio/Controller Scripts/
Linux
~/Bitwig Studio/Controller Scripts/

Anyway, could be worse.

The actually-functioning Keith McMillen scripts are on github.

2 Content

Cristian Vogel Lab II is a masterclass in fun automation tricks.

3 Controllers

The controller API is, as mentioned, open and (somewhat) easy and all the controllers I have tried so far have been well supported. I use the KMI Quneo; Not documented clearly in the control script in the is that I need preset number 16 to get stuff working intuitively.

4 Tips

Alt gives you gridded automation drawing. There is a lot more fancy automation.

Figure 1

5 Ubuntu tips

5.1 Audio setup

🏗 See Linux audio for now.

5.2 UI quirks

Horizontal scrolling seems broken but on certain window managers you can do Alt+vertical scroll.

6 Operators

Ollie Psy Music thinks Bitwig’s operators are awesome for drum sequences, here’s how I use them and why I think they’re that good