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 features such as a 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.
- Thomas Helzele did a good one
- Keith McMillen did one too
- Or rip off one of the simple Keith McMillen Softstep scripts
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 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.
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