The Bitwig Handbook

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Reference Links
● Baphometrix’s full set of video tutorials for Bitwig
● Official Bitwig forums on KVR
● Jurgen Mossgraber’s Push/2 controller scripts
● The big KVR thread of Bitwig tips and tricks
● Submit bugs and feature requests HERE
● Admiral Bumblebee’s reviews of modulators and devices (and other stuff)
● Baphy’s Thoughts About Loudness and Dithering
● Baphy’s Clip-To-Zero Production Strategy
● MF Twister Control Template Layout

Does Bitwig work with Push and Push 2? YES

I still get occasional comments to the effect of “Yeah but I can’t use Push (or Push 2), so Ableton is still best for
me.”

Except…. The Push and Push 2 work just dandy with Bitwig. Thanks to the amazing work of Jurgen Mosgraber
(aka “Moss”). He creates and maintains custom Bitwig controller scripts for all manner of hardware, including
the Push and Push 2.

To be honest, I never used my Push 2 with Ableton all that much except for testing/recording melody and chord
lines. All the other features? Mostly too confusing and too messy and half of them weren’t applicable to my
core workflow. I found most things easier to just do onscreen with mouse and keyboard.

But for Bitwig? I use my Push 2 literally all the time. It’s always fired up and active when I’m working in
Bitwig, and I reach for the hardware knobs and controls FAR more often than I ever did with Ableton. Why?
Mainly because Ableton crammed too much into the Push 2, so it’s a confusing mess much like the Maschine
hardware. By contrast, Moss is IMO a brilliant usability designer and his scripts for the Push and Push 2 have
all the stuff you need all the time and none of the fluff that isn’t necessary to core production workflow.
Everything is more straightforward and intuitive to find and use, compared to the native Ableton functionality
for Push/2.

See for yourself by checking out this YouTube playlist that Moss put together. Scroll to the bottom and start
with the latest announcement about the most recent updates, and then skim the rest that look interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqRWeSPiYQ67N0AzNAD84hD9HngDDKF3s

If you want to take his controller script for a spin yourself with a Demo copy of Bitwig, just go to this link to
If you want to take his controller script for a spin yourself with a Demo copy of Bitwig, just go to this link to
grab the latest DrivenByMoss download. Unzip it and put the single DrivenByMoss.bwextension in your
Bitwig Extensions folder. Turn on your Push/2 and fire up Bitwig and there ya go!

Changing Rec button behavior on the Push2

The Rec button can be toggled to either do “Global Arm” for the Arranger (up in the transport section), or to do
“Clip Overdub” for the Launcher. However, the setup option that controls this is confusing named. Here’s how:
● To make the Rec button toggle Global Arm on/off:
Settings > Controllers > Ableton Push 2 > Transport, then set Flip Arranger and clip/record
automation to OFF.
● To make the Rec button toggle Clip Overdub on/off:
Settings > Controllers > Ableton Push 2 > Transport, then set Flip Arranger and clip/record
automation to ON.

When you’re working in the Launcher and want to practice a riff a few times and then hit one button to start
recording in time with the loop start/end of the Launcher clip, set the Rec button to toggle Clip Overdub on/off.
Press Play, practice your riff in time with everything else playing, and when you’re ready to start recording,
press the Rec button to put that clip into Clip Overdub mode. When you want to stop recording, press the Rec
button one more time.

MIDI Mapping (to hardware controllers)

Most of the MIDI mapping behavior is straightforward and similar to how it works in Ableton. There are two
nonintuitive differences, though:

● The Mapping panel is one of the small buttons on the lower left, in the same grouping as the
Browser, File Manager, Studio IO, etc. You’ll need this panel to make specific adjustments or to
see in one view everything that is MIDI mapped in the project.
● Trying to MIDI map the track record arm button and the track solo button will drive you crazy
until you email Support thinking there’s a bug, and they tell you that you cannot map CCs to
control those two buttons, but must instead map specific MIDI notes to those two buttons. Which
personally strikes me as rather lame. o.O

My Bitwig custom shortcuts

I find these to be useful shortcuts to add to the default shortcuts in Bitwig. Experiment to see what they do--I
find they speed my workflow considerably. Note that some of them (like 0 for Toggle Active) are meant to give
me some of the same shortcuts I used frequently in Ableton.
General > ​ ​ ​Toggle Adaptive Beat Grid ​ ​ ​Shift-G
​ ​ ​ ​Bounce ​ ​ ​ ​ ​Ctrl-B
​ ​ ​ ​Bounce in Place ​ ​ ​ ​Alt-B
Double Content ​ ​ ​ ​Shift-]
Focus/Toggle Browser Panel ​ ​ ​Shift-B
Insert from Library (popup Browser) ​ ​B
Scale 200% ​ ​ ​ ​ ​]
Scale 50% ​ ​ ​ ​ ​[
​ ​ ​ ​Toggle Device Window (its big GUI) ​ ​Shift-D
Editing > ​ ​ ​Toggle Active ​ ​ ​ ​ ​0
Toggle On / Off ​ ​ ​ ​X
Zooming > ​ ​ ​Zoom to Fit Selection or Previous ​ ​Shift-Z
Help > ​ ​ ​ ​User Guide (English) ​ ​ ​ ​Shift-U
Project > ​ ​ ​Follow Playhead ​ ​ ​ ​/
​ ​ ​ ​Fold/Unfold All Group Tracks ​ ​ ​Alt-G
​ ​ ​ ​Fold/Unfold Top Level Group Tracks ​ ​G
Global Arm Off ​ ​ ​ ​`
 Global Arm Off ​ ​ ​ ​`
​ ​ ​ ​Global Mute Off ​ ​ ​ ​Ctrl-`
​ ​ ​ ​Global Solo Off ​ ​ ​ ​Shift-`
​ ​ ​ ​Stop Transport ​ ​ ​ ​H
​ ​ ​ ​Toggle Arranger Loop ​ ​ ​ ​Shift-L
Clip Launcher > ​ ​Toggle Clip Launcher Overdub ​ ​NumPad-0
Panel Management > ​ ​Focus Track Header Area ​ ​ ​T
​ ​ ​ ​Toggle Mappings Browser Panel ​ ​Shift-M
Focus/Toggle Project Panel ​ ​ ​Shift-P
Focus/Toggle Studio I/O Panel ​ ​Shift-I
Arranger > ​ ​ ​Launch Arranger Cue Marker 1-10 ​ ​Shift-1 through 0
​ ​ ​ ​Launch Arranger Cue Marker 11-19 ​ ​Shift-Ctrl-1 through 9
​ ​ ​ ​Toggle Automation Shown for all Tracks ​Shift-A
​ ​ ​ ​Toggle Large Track Height ​ ​ ​Shift-T
​ ​ ​ ​Jump to Beginning of Next Bar ​ ​Alt-]
​ ​ ​ ​Jump to Beginning of Previous Bar ​ ​Alt-[
​ ​ ​ ​Jump Forward 8 Bars ​ ​ ​ ​Ctrl-]
​ ​ ​ ​Jump Backward 8 Bars ​ ​ ​ trl-[
C

Useful Bitwig key combos (gestures)

Many of these are quite similar to Ableton, which makes the learning curve nice and short.

● Z - Zooms to selection, then zooms out to show everything in current editor or Arranger
● Ctrl-ScrollWheel - Zooms arranger/clip timeline at cursor position
● Alt-ScrollWheel - Scrolls arranger/clip timeline and mixer channels left or right
● Pen (3) tool > Alt-click and drag in automation lane - cuts square automation notches
● Double-tap O in Arrangement view - flips over to Clip Launcher view
● Double-tap L in Clip Launcher view - flips over to Arranger view
● Shift-click and drag an arranger clip - ignores grid snapping
● Alt-space - Play the arrangement from beginning (1:0:0)
● Ctrl-space - Play the arrangement from where you stopped playback
● Space - Play the arrangement from where you last set the playhead
● (custom) Shift-1 through Shift-0 - Play the arrangement from specific cue points
● comma (,) - Exits Automatic grid mode and makes the grid size smaller (e.g., 16ths to 32nds)
● period (.) - Exits Automatic grid mode and makes the grid size larger (e.g., 16ths to 8ths)
● Alt-comma - Makes the grid’s beat subdivision larger (e.g. pentole to triole to straight)
● Alt-period - Makes the grid’s beat subdivision smaller (e.g., straight to triole to pentole)
● Insert - Opens up the big “popup browser” window without needing to click or double-click in the
Device panel. (This is a reassignable shortcut.)
● DownArrow - Moves you from the Search field in either browser to the list of results
● Ctrl-RightArrow and Ctrl-LeftArrow - (when in list of browser results) moves through the main
browser “tabs” (categories) at the top, switching out the results.

Superlooping and arranging in Bitwig

Watch a video of this entire section! (no narration but easy to follow anyway)

I do Phase 1 superlooping (and the early part of Phase 2 arranging) entirely in Bitwig’s clip launcher. This is
easy and natural in in Bitwig (much more so than in Ableton), because:

● Bitwig’s clip launcher sequencer (the launcher) matches the horizontal track layout of the
arrangement sequencer (the arranger).
● You can select any combination of clips across multiple scenes to test out a new combination of
sounds, and then simply multi-select those clips and drag them in one go to a new scene column.
This copies all the selected clips automatically into a new scene, which is a super fast way to
 This copies all the selected clips automatically into a new scene, which is a super fast way to
compose different sections and line them up in linear order as scenes that you can play through
sequentially for testing.
● Best of all, you can simply drag the scene headers from the launcher into the arranger to create
your initial arrangement sequence for the song. Shorter clips are automatically looped out to
match the full length of each scene, and you have a full linear song arrangement in 2 minutes or
less!
Basically, superlooping and arranging in Bitwig is a lot like doing it in Maschine. Only way more intuitive and
simple compared to wrestling with Maschine’s odd button combos and other quirks. In fact, the next section
explains how easy it is to bring Maschine patterns over into Bitwig’s launcher and bypass all the arranging
hassle in Maschine entirely.

Using Sonarworks with Bitwig

1. Create an Effect track and name it "Control Room".
2. Add an Audio Receiver in the Effect track, setting the source to "Master (POST)".
3. Set the audio output to "Studio" (that's the main output).
4. Add Sonarworks on the effect track after the Audio Receiver. What you hear in your
monitors/headphones will come out of this effect track, but Sonarworks won't affect any exports
or bounces from the Master track.
5. On the Master track, set its audio output to something else. It could be "Headphones" or "No
output" -- doesn't really matter much. Other tracks are still routed to Master as usual. All the
master bus effects are also put here as usual. Also, exports are done from the Master.

Using Maschine with Bitwig

Importing Maschine patterns into Bitwig’s clip launcher
The general idea is to use the first 6-9 columns in Bitwig’s clip launcher (the launcher) to stem out the patterns
from all your Maschine groups in a way that puts all the closely-related sounds from each group together into
separate Bitwig clips. For example, say a group comprises a full drumkit, some bass sounds, a sub sound, some
atmospheric sounds, and some lead sounds. In this case, you don’t really want to export each group pattern into
a single clip that combines all those very different 16 sounds together! Instead, for each pattern you might want
one clip that’s just the kicks from the pattern, another that’s just the snares from the pattern, another that’s the
cymbals from the pattern, and so on.

The result would be one column (scene) in the launcher for each pattern from Maschine. The track rows in the
launcher would be the stemmed-out clips. For example, say I am starting a song with 3 groups that each have 4-
6 patterns I’ve developed in Maschine. Now my goal is to stem out the clips from all these patterns and bring
them into Bitwig’s launcher so I can mix and match them into different sections of my arrangement. In this case,
my Pattern 1 column would have three different track rows just for kick sounds. One stemmed clip for the
kicks from pattern 1 in group 1, another stemmed clip beneath that for the kicks from pattern1 in group 2, and a
3rd stemmed clip beneath that for the kicks in pattern 1 from group 3. You can see a short, un-narrated video
here that demonstrates this outcome.

1. For every group in Maschine, create a corresponding track in Bitwig’s launcher. Name each track
Kick (groupName), then multi-select them and make them all the same color. Then group them
and name their group KICKS.
2. Repeat Step 1 for every typical type of stem you want to export from Maschine (and which is
present in at least some of the groups): kick, snare, hat, perc, toms, atmos, bass, sub, synth.
3. Now name the first column in the launcher PAT 1, the next column PAT 2, and so on until you
have enough columns to fit all the patterns from Maschine.
4. In Maschine, solo the first group, make sure you’re in PAD MODE, then select Pattern 1 for that
group.
5. Solo the first kick sound in the group, then unmute all other kick sounds so that only the kick
 5. Solo the first kick sound in the group, then unmute all other kick sounds so that only the kick
sounds will play from the pattern.
6. Drag the audio export button up into the corresponding Kick (groupName) slot in the PAT 1
column of Bitwig’s launcher, then rename the clip as Kick 1 (which means “the kick stem from
Maschine’s Pattern 1”)
7. In Bitwig, select the clip and focus the Events panel at the bottom. Over in the inspector, enable
Loop for the clip and set the Length to match the original pattern length over in Maschine. Also
click and drag upward on Stop to set the stop point of the clip to match the loop length. Also
consider making the Audio Event > Length shorter to match the loop length, if there’s no
rendered audio tail (from the export) that you want to preserve.
8. Now select Pattern 2 for the group and repeat this process. Continue for all the remaining
patterns in the group until you’ve extracted the kick stems from every pattern.
NOTE: If the kick sequencing is identical in several groups, don’t drag out duplicate stems!
Instead, just Ctrl-click and drag (or dupe with Ctrl-D
Ctrl-D) some clip you’ve already made into
the next column. For example, if the same exact kick sequence is used in all 6 patterns, you’ll
only drag a Kick 1 stem from Maschine’s Pattern 1 into the PAT 1 column of Bitwig. Then
you’ll dupe out (Ctrl-D
Ctrl-D) that same Kick 1 clip into the remaining 5 columns.
9. Repeat this process for every stem type present in the first group, starting next with the snare
sounds.
10. Then repeat this process over again for the second and remaining groups.

Dealing with clip loops that cut a tail short

Some clip stems that you bring over from Maschine into Bitwig’s Clip Launcher will have their tails cut short
by the obvious loop point. For example, a crash sound at the 3.2 mark in a 4-bar pattern will have its tail ring
out over start of the next loop when played in Maschine. But in Bitwig when you edit that stem to loop right at
the 4.0.0 mark, the tail will be cut off.

This is no big deal, because it’s easy to fix when the clip (or its parent scene) is dragged from Bitwig’s launcher
into the arrangement timeline. At first, the tail will be cut off there too, but if you use the Knife (5) tool to split
the looped arrangement clips right at the loop points, you can then:

1. Using the Pointer (1) tool, drag out the end of each split clip into the start of the next split clip.
2. Hover over the dotted loop point marker in each clip and drag it to the right until the full tail is
visible.

Point being, the tail is really still there in the looped clip, and it’s easy to bring out the tail once the clip has been
moved into the arrangement timeline. So live with the funky cut-short tails while you’re superlooping in
Bitwig’s launcher, because it’s easy to fix these rare cases when you start working on the full arrangement.

Bitwig browser usage and library organization

Watch a video about this entire section!

Setting default “context states” for the Popup Browser

There are several different context states in the big Popup Browser
● ...when adding to empty instrument track
● ...when adding to empty audio track
● ...when inserting Note FX or Instrument (empty hybrid tracks, 1st slot in hybrid tracks)
● ...when inserting Note FX (1st slot in instrument track)
● ...when inserting Audio FX (all slots in audio tracks, 2nd+ slots in instrument and hybrid tracks)
● Clicking the “presets” folder on a device (any track type)

Search syntax for tighter search results

Search syntax for tighter search results
Note that you can use either = or : somewhat interchangeably. For example, creator:Baphometrix and
creator=Baphometrix work exactly the same.
● Single-string searches will match only instances where that string appears in camelcase or is
preceding by an obvious delimiter such as a space character, an underline character, a dash
character, and so on. For example, searching for wub will find _wub or ambient wub or _Wubz
or Wubble or BassWub, but won’t find Basswub or deepwub.
● Multiple words with no quotes (and no special keywords) = Boolean AND among all the entered
words, but the AND also searches through other metadata, such as in ancestor folder names,
creator names, tags, and so on.
○ For example, 808 tape would return every sample in a folder named Tape808 samples
○ If you wanted to limit the AND behavior to only words in a sample name, you’d instead
need to search for name:acid name:bass.
● Phrases in quotes = exact phrase (case insenstive)
○ “808 tape” would not return every sample in the above folder, but instead only those
files/folders with that exact phrase including the space between 808 and tape.
● Special search keywords:
○ name:string - string must appear in the filename, not in any ancestor folders or metadata
tags.
○ type:string - string matches a file extension, such as mp3, wav, aif, bwpreset, etc.
○ tag:string - string matches a custom or standard tag. Typically useful only for devices,
presets, and multisamples. Tip: use an underscore (or camelCase) when you are adding
your own custom multi-word tags to things like user presets, such as instrument_rack or
audioRack. This especially comes in handy when building smart collections to organize
all your user presets, as described below.
○ category:string - string matches a standard category.
○ creator:string - string matches a creator name.
● Add -exclusion words to narrow down the search results by filtering out the exclusions
○ 808 tape -orig -loop would return every sample in a folder named Tape808, but the results
would exclude any file with the strings orig OR loop in the file name.

Manual collections versus smart collections

A manual Collection is independent of any other automated filter in a Bitwig browser category, such as the
Creator or Location filters. A manual collection is basically just a hand-built filter. When you right-click a
manual collection and choose Set as target collection, then clicking the button for any sample listed in any
other filtered result set adds that sample to the target collection.

By contrast, a Smart Collection more more like an alias for various boolean AND combinations of other
filters, such as:

● The result set of collection Growls and collection 2Best

○ in_collection=Growls in_collection=2Best
● The result set of creator Baphometrix and tag 97s
○ creator=Baphometrix tag=97s
● The result set of creator Baphometrix or creator Polarity
○ creator:Baphometrix or creator:Polarity
● The result set of creator Baphometrix but excluding the tag audio_rack
○ creator:Baphometrix -tag:audio_rack
● The result set of location SampleLib\Baphometrix\Snowflake\Unused\Faces
○ folder:"G:\\SampleLib\\Baphometrix\\Snowflake\\Unused\\Faces"
Note here how you must escape backslashes

Again, notice that I interchangeably used both = and : in the above examples.

Keeping my presets and multisamples easy to find and understand

Keeping my presets and multisamples easy to find and understand
Give my presets verbose descriptions and tags, and create smart collections in both the Presets and
Multisamples categories of the Bitwig browser:
● creator=Baphometrix
● creator=Baphometrix tag=audio_rack
● creator=Baphometrix tag=instrument_rack
● And so on...

Saving groups, tracks, and clips in the browser library

In Ableton, you can literally drag a track or group header into the User Library section of the browser and it will
create an ALC file with everything in the track or group.

In Bitwig, you cannot directly drag track/group headers into the browser. Instead, you do this by saving track
clips and group meta clips.
● The striped clips shown on group tracks are meta clips. When you drag a meta clip into the bottom
half of the browser (or right-click it and choose Save scene to library, it’s saved into the Clips
section of the browser with a stripey icon to indicate that it’s a meta clip. When you add that
meta clip to a project track, the entire group is re-created, with all its tracks, track clips, track
devices, and track/group routings. You can even audition the content of these meta clips while
they’re still in the browser!
● Regular track clips look and work like saving Ableton clips does. They have a different icon in the
Clips section of the browser. Drag them into the bottom half of the browser or right-click and
choose Save clip to library. You can audition the content of clips while they’re still in the
browser.

GOTCHA! - Where things can be confusing at first is when you have multiple clips on a track (or multiple
meta clips) and want to save all of them along with the track and its routing/devices!

To save a track and ALL of its multiple clips on the track

1. Use the Time (4) tool to select a region of time on the track, spanning from the start of the first
clip to the end of the last clip.
2. Use Time > Consolidate to consolidate the selected chunk of time into a single clip.
3. Drag the new consolidated clip into the bottom half of the browser and fill out the save dialog.

You can also consolidate only some clips on the track if you don’t want everything on the track.

To save a group and ALL of its meta clips (and therefore ALL of the track clips in the group)

1. Use the Time (4) tool to select a region of time on the GROUP track, spanning from the start of
the first meta clip to the end of the last meta clip.
2. Use Time > Consolidate to consolidate the selected chunk of time into a single meta clip.
3. Drag the new consolidated meta clip into the bottom half of the browser and fill out the save
dialog.

You can also consolidate only some meta clips on the GROUP track if you don’t want everything from the
group.

A BETTER way to copy groups and tracks around to different projects

A huge strength of Bitwig is its ability to have multiple projects open at the same time. Also, the Files tab of the
browser is really powerful, because it always shows the groups and tracks of every project listed in the Recent
Projects section of the Browser’s left-most user tab.
These features make it dirt easy to copy tracks and groups from other projects into your current project, without
needing to first consolidate clips and save them to the Clips section of the browser!. There are two basic ways
you can approach copying tracks/groups from project to project:

● You can open up the other project with the track/group you want, then in that project tab just click
and drag (and keep holding the mouse button down) the track header or group header up to very
top project tabs area and hover over the project tab that you want to copy the track/group into.
When focus switches to the target project, just move your cursor to where you want to insert the
track/group and let go of the mouse button.
● You can alternatively go to the Files tab of the browser and scroll down to the Recent Projects
smart folder near the bottom. Then drill into the projects listed there and drag out the groups or
tracks you want right into your project like you would for any other sample. If the project you
want isn’t listed there, you can go digging through your file system and drill into any Bitwig
project folder. You’ll see the same obvious group and track icons and can drag them directly into
your project.

Building Robot collections and filtering out “weak” samples

We need to build a set of Robot_* collections that comprise our better samples, organized into robot sample
categories per the Ill Methodology. More importantly, we want to be able to easily make temporary smart
collections to see a “best of” subset of any one robot category.

We do this by creating a series of successively more selective good-better-best manual collections like so:

● 1Bae = all the best-of-best Robot samples from the total set of _2 Best samples
● 2Best = all the best Robot samples from the total set of _3 Better samples
● 3Better = all the better Robot samples from the total set of _4 Good samples
● 4Good = all the “not shit” samples of any type

Then, we methodically build up these manual collections and also build up our Robot_* manual collections at
the same time, in the following order:

1. Define our total set of 4Good samples (everything that isn’t a shitty sample).
a. Set target collection = 4Good.
b. Sweep through one sample folder at a time by using the Locations filter, and click the
button for every sample that doesn’t sound like cheap shit.
c. Do not proceed to Step 2 until you’ve filtered out all the shitty samples this way.
2. Define our total set of Robot_* collections.
a. Create a new robot collection such as Robot_Buildup_Riser and set this as the target
collection.
b. Clear all filters and select the 4Good collection. Leave this selected throughout the
remaining substeps, so that you are choosing only from among the “not shit” samples.
c. Use a keyword search like Riser and/or use the Locations filter to sweep through the
sample folders that obviously contain samples of the desired robot type, and click the
button for every sample that obviously fits the robot category.
d. Repeat this process for every desired robot category. Do not proceed to Step 3 until you’ve
built up all your robot categories.
3. Define our 3Better subset in each Robot_* collection.
a. Set target collection = 3Better.
b. Select the first Robot_* collection.
c. Now sweep through all the samples in the selected Robot_* collection and click the
button for the better-sounding samples that “jump out at you” among all the samples.
d. Review the total set of starred samples for that collection and make sure there aren’t too
many or too few. You want roughly 25% to 33% of the samples in that collection to be
starred as “Better”.
e. Repeat this process for every defined Robot_* collection. Do not proceed to Step 4 until
finished.
 finished.
4. Define our 2Best subset in each Robot_* collection.
a. Set target collection = 2Best.
b. Select the first Robot_* collection and create a new Temp smart collection from it.
c. Edit the Temp smart collection and add in_collection=3Better to the front of the query.
d. Clear all filters and select the Temp smart collection.
e. Now sweep through the Temp smart collection and click the button for the better-
sounding samples that “jump out at you” among all the samples.
f. Review the total set of starred samples for that collection and make sure there aren’t too
many or too few. You want roughly 25% to 33% of the samples in that collection to be
starred as “Best”.
g. Delete the Temp smart collection.
h. Repeat this process for every defined Robot_* collection. Do not proceed to Step 5 until
finished.
5. Define our 1Bae subset in each Robot_* collection.
a. Set target collection = 1Bae.
b. Select the first Robot_* collection and create a new Temp smart collection from it.
c. Edit the Temp smart collection and add in_collection=2Best to the front of the query.
d. Clear all filters and select the Temp smart collection.
e. Now sweep through the Temp smart collection and click the button for the better-
sounding samples that “jump out at you” among all the samples.
f. Review the total set of starred samples for that collection and make sure there aren’t too
many or too few. You want roughly 25% to 33% of the samples in that collection to be
starred as “Bae”.
g. Delete the Temp smart collection.
h. Repeat this process for every defined Robot_* collection.

Filtering any collection type down to “good-better-best” result sets

Because we have a standard set of 4Good, 3Better, 2Best, and 1Bae manual collections, we can quickly and
easily create ad hoc smart collections that filter pretty much anything down to only the samples that are also in
one of these special good-better-best collections.

This trick works because of the way that smart collections do a boolean AND across all the filters specified in
the query for the smart collection!

Example 1: You want to see only the 1Bae kick samples in your entire library:
1. Select the 1Bae collection.
2. Search for kick

Example 2: You want to see only the 2Best and 1Bae impact samples among your Robot_Buildup_Impact
collection:
1. Select the Robot_Buildup_Impact collection
2. Create a new Temp smart collection from it.
3. Edit the Temp smart collection and add in_collection=2Best to the front of the query.
4. Clear all filters and select the Temp smart collection.

Example 3: You want to see only the 3Better, 2Best, and 1Bae samples from the NI Expansion pack Astral
Flutter:
1. Use the Locations filter category to drill into the Astral Flutter\Samples folder.
2. Create a new Temp smart collection from it.
3. Edit the Temp smart collection and add in_collection=3Better to the front of the query.
4. Clear all filters and select the Temp smart collection.

Ability to use a Random button for selecting among a result set

For this we must use the plugin Sample Manager from ADSR. Note that this robs us of access to all our
For this we must use the plugin Sample Manager from ADSR. Note that this robs us of access to all our
manual collections and smart collections in Bitwig, so we’re limited to broad boolean OR tag searches and
location searches. (Sample Manager doesn’t seem to support boolean AND yet.)

Note that this will also potentially choose “shit” samples unless you first go through an entire extra step (long
and arduous) of physically separating out all the shit samples into their own G:\ShitLib folder structure so that
Sample Manager can ignore that folder entirely. This is probably more trouble than it’s worth if we can
convince Bitwig to someday give us their own “Random” button.

Browsing samples by tag name

While you can search for any string (tag name) in Bitwig’s browser, you have to remember likely tag names to
do this. Sometimes you just want to browse already-made tag lists for all your samples.

For this we must use the plugin Sample Manager from ADSR because it automatically creates tags from every
useful category keyword found in sample names, and you can manually add other tags as desired.

Creating smart collections of unused Snowflake sample types

The challenge here is to make used snowflake samples be automatically hidden from view so that I don’t
accidentally reuse them in a different song. We can do this by making Bitwig smart collections for snowflake
sample folders.

1. Make a Snowflake_Faces smart folder pointing at

SampleLib\Baphometrix\Snowflake\Unused\Snowflake.
2. Make a Snowflake_PurpleCow smart folder pointing at
SampleLib\Baphometrix\Snowflake\Unused\Snowflake.
3. Make a Snowflake_Sparks smart folder pointing at
SampleLib\Baphometrix\Snowflake\Unused\Snowflake.

Then make a …\used\... version of each of the above three folders. When archiving a finished MASTER
project, go find the snowflakes I used and move them from their original unused folder into their corresponding
used folder. This makes the smart collections update to no longer list the used snowflakes.

Note that good-better-best categorization makes no sense for snowflake samples, since these are volatile and
new ones arrive all the time, and used ones get moved into folders that make them essentially invisible to the
Collections filters.

Automation
Watch a video about this entire section!

Bitwig can effectively do ALL the same automation moves as in Ableton, but in a different way, and in some
cases faster and easier. Bitwig also has a few automation drawing tricks that Ableton doesn’t have!

The Ctrl and Shift modifiers are effectively worthless for automation drawing in Bitwig. It’s all about the Alt
modifier and the 5 different editing tools, especially the Pen (3) tool. All the common editing moves and the
best way to accomplish them in Bitwig are listed below.

● Use only the Pointer (1) and Pen (3) tool to do most of the bread and butter automation drawing
you’ll need. The Eraser (4) tool can be useful for some things, mainly for taking a certain
existing value and scrub-duplicating that specific value across to the right in a perfectly
horizontal line. The Time-Select (2) and Knife (5) tools are worthless for automation editing.
● Don’t ever bother with the Add this lane below button (+), because the Show all automation
lanes button (★) does the same thing only way better. Just click the ★ when you want to see
everything that’s been automated for a track.
● To delete an automation lane, click the Delete this lane and all its automation (x) button.
 ● To delete an automation lane, click the Delete this lane and all its automation (x) button.
● To clear all automation points off a lane but leave the lane open, click any single point in the lane,
then Ctrl-A to select all the points, then press either the Del key or the Backspace key.
● To make a curved automation line, hover the Pointer (1) tool near a line, then hold down the Alt
modifier and drag up or down.
● To make a symmetrical curve on both sides of an automation point (something Ableton can’t do),
hover the Pointer (1) tool over an automation point, then hold down the Alt modifer and drag up
or down. The line on both sides of the point will curve exactly the same amount.
● To create a vertical cutout (like Ableton’s time-select > drag the line inside the time selection
either up or down), use the Pen (3) tool PLUS the Alt modifier to click-drag down/up to the
extreme top/bottom boundary of the lane to make a perfectly square “notch” exactly the width of
one grid space. Then drag left or right below or above the boundary of the automation lane to
extend that notch into a larger cutout. When you let go, you’ll have a perfect vertical cutout made
of four simple points, just like in Ableton.
○ You can then use the techniques in the following bullets to adjust the left or right vertical
pairs of the cutout to snap to the exact bar/beat you want. And to adjust the top or bottom
horizontal pairs to snap to the exact upper and lower values you want.
■ First, multi-select the pair of points bounding a vertical or horizontal line in a
cutout section by using the Pointer (1) tool to click one point to select it, then
shift-clicking the second point to add that point to the multi-selection. Or you can
use the Pointer (1) tool to simply click-drag a selection box around the two
points.
■ To adjust a multi-selected vertical pair of automation points to the nearest grid snap,
either shift-drag inside the Position box in the Inspector panel, or double-click
the current Position value and enter a new value.
● For example, just double-click and enter 32 to snap the vertical pair exactly
onto the grid marker for bar 32:1.1.00. Or enter 32.3 to snap exactly to
32.3.1.00, and so on.
● TIP: Zoom the grid to the time resolution you want, then click the specific
grid line you want to snap to. Look at the blue transport display to see the
exact play position value. This value is what you want to enter into the
Position box.
■ To adjust a multi-selected horizontal pair of automation points up or down to a
specific value, either shift-drag inside the Value box in the Inspector panel, or
double-click the current Value value and enter a new value.
● TIP: To view the effect of this new value on the device you’re automating
without de-selecting the pair, click up in the Beat Ruler at a position
between the horizontal pair, and you’ll see the device “snap” to that value
setting.

Modulation
Opening detail panels for multiple modulators at the same time
You can have the detail panels for more than one modulator open at the same time! Use any of the following
methods:

● After opening the first modulator’s detail panel, hold Ctrl while clicking others to open them too.
● After opening the first modulator’s detail panel, hold Shift and click some other modulator to also
open the detail panels for it and everything else between it and the first one.
● Or just hold Alt and click and drag a selection rectangle through any number of modulators. When
you let go of the mouse button, all of their device panels will open up.

Keytracking on modulators, plus notes about “Timebase” and “Rate” controls on

several modulator types
several modulator types
Some modulators have adjustable Rate (speed) controls that are based on some Timebase subdivision. For
example, you’ll find these Rate and Timebase controls in the LFO and ParSeq-8 modulators, among others.

Most of the Timebase options are based on the project tempo, and the Rate control additively (or
multiplicatively?) slows down or speeds up the modulator relative to the chosen Timebase subdivision.

There is one special Timebase option called Pitch. This is essentially a keytracking response, making the speed
change to match the frequency (pitch) of every incoming MIDI note. So:

● If you’re using the Pitch timebase option, you should not also use a Keytracking modulator to
adjust the Rate of the modulator.
● For all the other Timebase options other than Pitch
Pitch, if you also want keytracking behavior then
you must use a Keytracking modulator and assign it to the Rate control with a value of 1.0.

How to keytrack Bitwig frequency/cutoff knobs

This is super easy. When you double-click pretty much any frequency/cutoff knob in any Bitwig device, you’ll
set that frequency/cutoff to its default C3 (262 Hz) position.

Then just add Bitwig’s keytrack modulator to that device, and assign it to the frequency cutoff knob with a
value of 64.00. Perfect frequency keytracking.

How to keytrack most Kilohearts modules (like Resonator)

Kilohearts’ native keytracking is based on an A3 note (440 Hz) in Bitwig’s understanding of “middle C”, which
presents a challenge because Bitwig keytracking is based on a C3 note (262 Hz).
So to use Bitwig’s Keytrack modulator on any Kilohearts frequency parameter (such as the “Pitch” value in
Khs Resonator or the “Cutoff” value in Khs Comb Filter, etc.):
1. Add the Bitwig Keytrack modulator to the Khs device. In the Keytrack modulator, set the Root
note to A4, but leave all other settings at their defaults (Relative mode and a Spread of 64.00).
2. On the Khs module, find the Pitch/Cutoff/Hz etc. value that you want to modulate and double-
click it. This sets it to its default A4 440 Hz value and also brings its parameter knob to the top in
Bitwig.
3. Connect the Bitwig Keytrack modulator to the Khs parameter knob with some small positive
amount.
4. Over in Bitwig’s inspector, double-click the modulation amount and manually enter a value of
.5334. Don't do this with the mouse dragging up or down! Ctrl-click the modulation amount and
manually enter .5534, then hit Enter.

You should now have perfect keytracking control of the Khs device.

(Don’t ask me how I figured this out. I can’t explain the math. I simply brute-forced the solution with trial and
error.)

How to keytrack modulate anything based on incoming AUDIO pitch

Want actual audio frequency tracking and corresponding keytracked modulation? For free? Here's how:

1. Go download "MTuner" from Melda Productions. (It's FREE)

2. Set up a track like shown in the following screenshot. It works perfectly, and is based on MTuner
detecting the fundamental pitch of the incoming audio, then generating an outgoing MIDI note
closest to that fundamental pitch. From there, the Keytrack modulator (with default settings) can
use that MIDI note generated by MTuner to modulate any EQ point (or anything) you like in a
keytracked way with precise jumps. The trick is to enable the MIDI OUTPUT button in MTuner,
and of course to set the amount of modulation performed by the Keytrack modulator to a value
of exactly 64 on whatever you want to modulate with it.
 of exactly 64 on whatever you want to modulate with it.

For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that I played a C2 into Serum on track 1. Then down in track
2, Audio Receiver pulls in the audio from Serum on track 1, feeds it to MTuner (who sees it as 129.8 Hz and
therefore spits out a C2 MIDI note value), and then the Keytracking modulator in the EQ-5 sees that incoming
C2 and modulates Filter 2 from it's original 400 Hz setting to 200 Hz (exactly one octave lower), because the
Keytracking modulator is rooted at C3 (MIDI Note 60). Note the modulation range value of exactly 64 over in
the Inspector panel (for the Keytracking modulator assignment to Filter 2 in the EQ-5)

This simple chain should work anywhere for audio frequency-based keytrack modulation.

Making an Ableton-style AM/FM Sine LFO like in Ableton’s Sampler

Watch a video about this entire section! ​Download this preset!

(Coming soon--meanwhile just watch the video, download the preset, and check it out for yourself!)

Making circular XY crossfade modulation

Watch a video about this entire section! ​Download these presets!

Setting these up is too complex to easily describe in written form. Watch the linked video and download the
ready-made presets.

AUDIO Clip and Event Editing

ZOOMING
 ● Learn the Z key
○ Quick zoom to entire project length
○ Toggle between selection zoom and entire project length
● Map Shift-Z to Zooming > Zoom to Fit Selection or Previous
○ Toggle between new Zoom and previous Zoom

SYNCHING Arranger view with Event Editor view

● Double-click the CLIP header bar in Arranger to see entire clip in EE
● Double-click the CLIP header in EE panel to see entire clip in EE
● Select time in Arranger to zoom to that section of clip in EE
● Click to set playhead in Arranger to set playhead to that spot in EE
○ If zoomed in EE, the zoom will stay unchanged!

Play from position in Event Editor

● Click in EE ruler to set playhead start
● Shift + spacebar to resume playback from where stopped
● Alt + spacebar to playback from start of clip

Why TWO containers for audio?

● Bitwig has TWO containers for audio samples: CLIP and AUDIO EVENT
● Always understand whether you’re looking a CLIP or an EVENT
● What you think of an “an audio clip” in other DAWs is an “audio EVENT” in Bitwig
● Clips can have multiple different events, which opens a world of possibility
○ Example: Putting a reverse riser EVENT in front of a SNARE event inside the same clip, then
setting the clip start and end in a way that makes it easy to LOOP-DRAG the clip so that the
snare always hits on the 2 and 4 of every bar. You can also quickly adjust the fade or other
attributes of the reverse riser event without affecting the snare in any way.

Contextual GESTURES for audio editing:

● Every gesture has a distinct pointer shape
● Some gestures are POSITIONAL
● Some gestures are keyboard modifiers
● MOST gestures are explained in the status bar, but SOME are not

Arranger gestures and actions operate at the CLIP level

Event Editor gestures and actions can operate at the CLIP or EVENT level

Tip: Sometimes it's useful to use gestures in the Event Editor but WATCH the Arranger clip, and vice versa.
Especially when you have a different level of zoom each area.
● Example, Zoom WAY in at the start of a clip in the Arranger, but then use a Clip Stretch (longer)
gesture on the right edge of the clip in the EE.

ARRANGER actions and gestures

● Clip truncate (header bar edge gesture)
● CLIP looping (lower edge gesture)
● Clip fades (upper corner gesture)
 ● Clip fades (upper corner gesture)
● Clip crossfades (upper corner gesture)
● Time selection (drag over clip)
○ Drag again to split and move
○ Ctrl-E to split in place
● EVENT sliding within the CLIP container (Alt- gesture inside clip)
○ Also hold Shift- to snap slides to grid resolution

Confusing Arranger stuff

● No stretching actions possible in the Arranger
● Crossfades need additional EVENT "content" sitting out past the visible edge of the clip
● Loop bar shown in CLIP mode of EE won't update unless you drag Arranger looping gesture

Event Editor actions and gestures

Editor MODES
CLIP ​ ​= Is generally centric to LAUNCHER behavior of a clip
​ ​ One CLIP at a time
​ ​ Can create offsets (lead-ins) for the Launcher

TRACK ​= Is generally centric to the ARRANGER behavior of a clip

Editor BUTTONS
● Clips button ​ ​ ​= Fades/Crossfades/Event Sliding (basically just like in
Arranger area)
● Audio Events button ​ ​= Full-width Event stretching
● Stretch button ​ ​ ​= Surgical/partial stretching
● Onsets button ​ ​ ​= Creating/adjusting/deleting onsets
● Pitch and Formants buttons ​= Clip automation of Stretch mode parameters (won’t work in
Raw mode)

Clips button
● Essentially identical to working in the Arranger BUT NO EASY LOOPING
● Most actions/gestures from ARRANGER will work here

Audio Events button

● (CLIP only) Launcher Clip truncate (ruler triangles)
● (CLIP only) Launcher Clip loop start/end (ruler bar)
○ Bar turns highlighted when clip is actually looped
○ Easy to override with gestures up in the Arranger
● Event truncate (header bar gesture)
● Event fades (upper corner gesture)
● Event crossfades (upper corner gesture)
○ Crossfade NOT visible in the Arranger clip
○ WORKS ONLY when two events in the clip
● Time selection (drag over event)
● AUDIO sliding within the EVENT container (Alt- gesture inside Event)
○ Also hold Shift- to snap slides to grid resolution
● Snapped Full AUDIO stretching (edge gesture)
 ● Snapped Full AUDIO stretching (edge gesture)
○ Also hold Shift- to disable grid snapping
○ Can also do rightward stretch by Alt-Ctrl gesture INSIDE Event
■ Also hold Shift- to disable grid snapping

Confusing stuff:
● Can’t do any stretching if your clip is still in Raw mode

Stretch button
● Most actions/gestures from "Audio Events" will work here
● Red/Blue indicator line across bottom is unique to this mode
○ Red means section is SLOWER than RAW tempo of the audio event
○ Blue means section is FASTER than RAW tempo of the audio event
● Hover > Click > Drag BOTTOM EDGE near Onset line to place a stretch mark and move it
○ Also hold Alt- to ALSO automatically place Stretch markers at onsets on either side
● Double-click anywhere to place a Stretch marker
○ it will snap to nearby grid line or onset marker
● Drag stretch marker or lower half of line for snapped stretching to new grid positions
○ Also hold Shift- to disable grid snapping
● Drag upper half of stretch marker line to stretch audio AROUND the stretch marker
● Multi-select stretch markers by clicking and dragging crosshairs in lower half of Event
● Right-clicking a stretch marker and choosing Start Audio Event Here is a shortcut for starting the Event
at a specific onset

Confusing Stuff:
● Can’t place stretch markers or do any stretching if your clip is still in Raw mode
● Cannot select ONE stretch marker and do Ctrl-A to then multi-select ALL stretch markers. Instead,
you must select-drag to multi-select stretch markers
● Stretching is always anchored by the two nearest stretch markers on either side of the stretch
marker line you're dragging near

Onsets button
● Onsets are NOT based on Transients!
○ They’re based on detectable spectral shifts, not on sudden amplitude changes
○ They’re really more optimized for tonal material, such as where each syllable starts in a vocal
sample.
● Therefore, onsets often “miss” obvious transients OR look like they’re on a transient but really
aren’t
● Therefore, onsets are sometimes useless or annoying when you want to stretch per visible
Transients
○ Tip: First delete all visible onsets. Then place stretch markers at strategic grid points and then
stretch the waveform near each stretch marker to place the visible transient on the marker line.
● To delete all onsets, click ONE onset then press Ctrl-A to select all of them. Then press the Delete
key.

Tips for stretching Acapellas

Acapella samples are notoriously tricky to align to the grid, especially when stretching them to a different
project tempo. Why?
● Singing is very expressive and humanized, and therefore contains massive timing drift
● Singers typically only place one or two syllables in an entire bar “on the beat”
● Singers almost never start a phrase on the downbeat of a bar
Therefore there are several tricks to aligning and stretching acapella samples:
● ALWAYS determine the original Raw tempo first and set up the “full span” stretching first
○ If any interior stretch markers exist, you cannot do a “full span” stretch any more
● Don’t use a metronome click to judge the original raw tempo--use a common time drum track
instead with kick on the 1 and 3, snare on the 2 and 4, and a shaker on the 8th notes.
○ This enables you to feel the beat the way the singer feels the beat, and will make it MUCH
easier to feel the singer’s rhythm and flow against the down/back beats
○ Therefore, it’s MUCH easier to determine where each phrase starts in any given bar.
● Drag the entire acapella CLIP to align the very first phrase against the drum beat.
● Then DOUBLE-CHECK other downstream phrases that probably are meant to land on the
downbeat and make sure they’re sitting at an n.1 grid mark

Only AFTER you’ve fully grid-aligned the entire acapella CLIP at the project tempo should you start adding
interior stretch markers and doing surgical stretching adjustments.
● Tip: At this point, it might be easier to first slice up the full acapella sample into smaller clips

Crossfading Clips and Events

The first thing to remember about Bitwig is that unlike in Ableton, Audio clips can contain multiple audio
events. In plain English, this means that a Bitwig audio clip can contain multiple different samples inside of it,
or you can chop and re-combine/transform the clip’s original single sample into multiple sample chops.

When trying to crossfade

Making 128s
Watch a video about this entire section!

In Ableton, we talk about making and using “128s”, which is shorthand for a multisample full of different one-
shots. In Bitwig, they’re “97s”. The difference stems from the way the Bitwig Note Pitch Shifter device works
versus the way the Ableton Pitch device works. (The Bitwig version can only select up or down 4 octaves from
the central “0” position at C4.) This might seem like a loss or downside, but it’s really not because it is much
easier to create and edit and swap out multisamples in Bitwig.

You actually can load up a Bitwig multisample with 128 different one-shots but this makes the multisample
harder to use in a Drum Machine pad, so it’s better to make 97s that are universally usable.

1. Create a Sampler, then right-click in the waveform display area and choose Create Multisample.
2. Expand the device window for Sampler to show the big version of the multisample editor.
3. Multi-select and click-drag in samples from the browser to fill up the range from C0 to C8
○ Keep holding the left mouse down and move the cursor up closer to the top of the
multisample editor until the samples are as narrow-looking as possible. Drop the first
chunk starting at C0.
○ Do it in chunks if that’s more convenient, because it’s easy to place each chunk next to the
previous chunk.
○ C0 to B7 is 96 samples, and then adding one more sample to the C8 slot makes 97 total.
○ TIP: Don’t worry about all the samples having KEYTRACK enabled. It’s superfluous in
this type of multisample because the zone for each sample is exactly one note wide.
4. Click Save to Library in the upper left of the multisample editor, then name the file 97 -
(filename) and tag it up.
○ You don’t save the Sampler, you save the multisample. You can swap multisamples in and
out of existing Samplers anywhere. And you just drag a multisample to the device panel
on an instrument track to instantiate it in a Sampler.
○ The Category and Description are the only things you’ll see in the browser, but setting
 ○ The Category and Description are the only things you’ll see in the browser, but setting
good tags will really help with search results.

Wrangling that damn Select knob for melodic 128s

So, in 2.4, the Select knob makes melodic 128s possible, but they’re kinda unfriendly to use. Why? Because the
Select knob is not an indexed value from 0-127, but just a flat percentage knob from 0-100%. So visually, you
have no freaking idea which exact sample in a big multisample you’ve actually got selected with that knob.

The next big problem is that Bitwig currently has no keyboard shortcut for stepping through knob values in
small increments! In Ableton, you can map a macro knob to the SEL index selector in their Sampler, then if you
simply click that knob once with your mouse to select it, you can use arrow-up and arrow-down on your
keyboard to walk through the indexed values of that knob one sample at a time. It’s VERY friendly. Bitwig
can’t do this yet.

So sure, you can hold Shift while dragging any knob in Bitwig to slow it down and make it have more fine-
granular movement, right? Except that requires two hands. Where’s the 3rd hand available to press pads on
Push or keys on a keyboard to actually trigger the samples so you can audition which one you want? And even
then, the granularity of Shift + drag is not really granular enough, and it’s easy to jump over some samples as
you’re trying to move through the total set of 128 one by one.

So what are some adaptive techniques you can use until Bitwig makes that Select knob more user-friendly?

One way is to not load up a multisample with a full 128 samples. Fewer samples = more granularity for the
Select knob.

But the BEST way is to get your hands on a Midi Fighter Twister, and then go download the controller template
for it (from the KVR Bitwig > Controllers forum) made by Pawnbroker. (Link to forum post with the latest
download) They’ve got that template set up so that you can toggle the twister knobs assigned to the Sampler's
default remote control panel, so that any one knob assigned to the visible Remote Controls panel can flip into a
very granular and fine control mode.

So basically if you have a Twister, you can just press down on the knob assigned to Select (and let go--it’s a
toggle), and now you have to turn that knob by quite a bit to jump between each sample in a fully-packed 128
multisample! It makes it dirt easy to step through one-by-one while you're banging a pad on your Push (or
whatever) to audition each sample in the 128. Oh, and I have a nice graphic shortcut doc explaining the
mapping of Pawnbroker’s control scheme on the Twister that you can use for learning and reference.

Even Moss's great controller template for the Push/Push2 can't do this. There's a default mapping for the Select
knob there in any Sampler device you drill into, but it's not nearly granular enough and you’ll jump over
samples like crazy in a fully loaded melodic 128.

Recording arp note output from VPS-Avenger

1. Create a new Instrument track.
2. Set the input of the empty track to
TRACKS > origInstrumentTrack > VPS Avenger
3. Paint the loop marker over the section with the clip you want to resample the MIDI notes from.
4. Enable punch-in and punch-out AND turn off Loop transport.
5. Arm the empty track and press play.

Slicing to Multisamples
The magic number is 92:
 ● If the total number of slices is 1-92, the multisample zone will start at C1.
● If the total number of slices is 93-128, the multisample zone will start 3 octaves lower at C -2.

Slicing to Regions (Simpler style)

For making “loop menus” from a mudpie, it’s useful to take a long 2-7 minute sample and slice it to a
multisample (or drum rack) using an option not natively provided for by Bitwig: 64 equal regions of the original
sample. This enables you to use a Push controller (or any 64-pad controller) to “play” the regions and create
interesting chop grooves from the original mudpie. This is an easy process in Ableton’s Simpler instrument
because it has a handy “slice to regions by gate” feature, but Bitwig’s slice-to features does not have an “equal
regions” option. So here’s how to do it manually with a few steps in Bitwig.

1. Ensure your project is running at the tempo the mudpie was made in.
2. Drag the mudpie sample into a new Audio track.
3. Click the audio clip and choose the Stretch. This is a neutral operation at the sample’s original
tempo. We enable a warping mode to make the Onsets and Beat Markers available in the Event
Editor.
4. Double-click the clip to open it in the Event Editor, and make sure you’re in CLIP mode.
5. Zoom out the timeline in the Event Editor until you can see the entire clip/event.
6. Click the event header so that the interior event is selected.
7. Do Event > Scale 50% exactly 6 times (it helps to have this assigned to a shortcut key). This
reduces the clip length to exactly 1/64 of its original length. (Depending on the length of the
original mudpie, this will be roughly 2-6 bars long.)
8. Click the Onsets button and zoom in on the event until you see some blue onset markers.
9. Click any one marker to select it (turns white), and then press Ctrl-A to multi-select ALL the
onsets, and then press Del to delete ALL the onsets.
10. Zoom in on the very end of the clip super far, and note the exact bar:beat:tick value at the end of
the clip. This length is exactly 1/64 of the total clip length.
11. Click the event header and do Event > Scale 200% exactly 6 times to scale the event back out to
its original length. The timeline ruler should stay put near the bar:beat:tick value where the end
of the 1/64 clip was present.
12. Double-click at that bar:beat:tick value to place an onset marker there.
13. Resize the clip’s loop marker to start at the beginning of the clip and end at the onset marker.
This will be your “ruler” going forward to set the remaining onset markers.
14. Now resize the Event Editor timeline slightly so you can see both the start and end of the loop
marker AND the first onset you made. Then grab the middle of the loop marker and slide it to the
right and place the left edge of the loop marker on the first onset. Then scroll over to the right
side of the loop marker and place a new onset there. Repeat this process until you’ve placed 62
onset markers and the event is divided into 64 equal segments.
15. Now up in the Arranger timeline click the clip header and choose Slice to Multisample. (or
Slice to Drum Machine). Slice to 32-bit and choose to slice at Onset.
16. Now you have a playable multisample or Drum Machine that you can use for making chop
grooves (loop menus). You can adjust the sample start for each “slice” as desired after this point.

Sample Name Metadata Conventions

Bitwig will consider certain strings in a sample’s file name as “metadata”, and will automatically set certain
properties in the Sampler instrument accordingly. Bitwig will also automatically set audio clip stretching
behavior accordingly!

For Bitwig to recognize a sample’s Tempo and automatically set the original tempo for the clip, you must put
any of the following strings in the file name: (tempo)bpm, (tempo) bpm, (tempo)BPM, or (tempo) BPM. So for
example: 132bpm or 172 BPM, etc. It does not matter where in the sample name this string occurs.

For Bitwig to recognize a sample’s root note and automatically set that root note (and KEY zone distribution, if
you drag a set of samples into the Multisample Editor window at the same time), you must put a MIDI note
you drag a set of samples into the Multisample Editor window at the same time), you must put a MIDI note
value such as C3, Gb4, F1, A#2, and so on. It does not matter where in the sample name that the string occurs.

IMPORTANT: If the sample name does not have a MIDI note value specified somewhere in the file name, then
Bitwig will default that sample to a C3 root note when you drag it into the Sampler. (In Bitwig, “middle C”
(MIDI note 60) is C3.)

So for a sample name to both Stretch properly and to have the correct root key set in the Sampler’s KEY zone,
you could name the sample like any of the following examples:

● BassGrowl F1 140bpm
● 140 BPM Pluck F#2
● Ab3 97 bpm Grand Piano
● 80bpm Reese C5 Noisy

Converting Synths to Multisamples

Polarity made an excellent video about an extremely fast way to convert any synth to a multisample very fast.
There is one mistake in the video: Bitwig knows what to do with the note number in the file name, but not what
to do with the velocity number. There’s also a conflict with the way Bitwig interprets a whole integer number in
the file name as being “metadata” indicating the original tempo of the sample (for stretching purposes).

So keep this in mind as you watch the video. You can (and probably should) name the original MIDI clips as:

(vNN) (patchName) (midiNote) (TEMPObpm) (RRstring) --where (vNN) is the velocity

For example, v25 MySynthPatch C2 140bpm RR1

IMPORTANT: When dragging multiple samples at the same time into the Sampler, EVERY sample must have
midiNote metadata in the file name if you want Bitwig to correctly set up the KEY zone distribution as
expected. If even one sample doesn’t have a MIDI Note name specified in the sample name, Bitwig will get
confused and might not set up the KEY zone distribution correctly.

When you drag the resulting samples into the Sampler, Bitwig will still set up the multisample automatically as
shown in the video, but you’ll need to manually define the velocity for each sample. This can be made easy and
fast in two ways if you used the above naming convention:

● You can simply drag in one “velocity group” at a time, select them all, and manually set their
velocity to the indicated (vNN) value (use the Inspector panel to do this). Then drag in the next
“velocity group” and so on.
● Or you can drag everything in together and then use the “sort by” button (the hamburger button)
above the sample list to sort the samples by their vNN values, then multi-select each set of
related samples and manually set their velocity.

Here’s the video link: https://youtu.be/WOxo3Yseu7w

Using Serum wavetables in Sampler (Cycles)

The following details are based on doing this in a Grid device (Bitwig 3.0), because of the need to set up
quantized wavetable scanning precisely, which requires a math module in the Grid. I’m not sure you can do this
precise level of quantization outside of The Grid.

To use Serum wavetables in Bitwig's Sampler, the exact pitch for 2048 sample waveforms is F-1 and
23.4424138308938 cents. Once you have that set up in a Sampler, you can then use a Value module through a
Quantize module with a Constant (module) of the 1/(number of individual wave cycles) to have it jump between
waveforms discretely (I use Audacity to get the exact number of samples of the wavetable and then divide that
by 2048)
by 2048)

To make the Cycles playhead stop at the last frame (and not push past it into the middle of the last frame in the
wavetable), you need to add a macro to the POS knob when the sampler playhead is frozen, and set the max
value of the macro to 0.9697 instead of to 1.0

Rack Building
Watch a video about this entire section!

(content coming soon)

Drum Rack Stuff

Bitwig Drum racks don’t reveal the pad chains and note routing for each chain and the choke groups set for
each chain. You can set choke groups only at the pad level. So tricksy “Multi” pads like Ableton allows must be
done in a completely different way in Bitwig.

How to create a “DrumPad 97”

Watch a video demonstrating this “DrumPad 97” technique (video starts at specific timestamp)

Also watch this video showing a common use case for DrumPad 97s

A regular 97 is meant to be dropped on an instrument track and then the MIDI you compose for the track simply
triggers the various one-shots in the 97 at desired moments in the arrangement. There’s no need to create a
sample selector for the 97 because you’re using the MIDI clip to trigger what you want.

In a Drum Machine, however, each drum pad only ever plays one MIDI note, so you need to build a way to
easily twist a knob to scroll through all 97 one-shots and select the specific one you want to be triggered by that
drum pad. This requires using some Note Pitch Shifter devices and a Keytracking modulator as follows.
TIP: After building this, save it to your User Library and you can then just drag it onto a drum pad and swap
out the multisample inside it as desired.

1. Start with a Chain container, and name it something like DrumPad 97.
2. Load a Sampler into the chain.
3. In the Sampler’s Note container, load TWO Note Pitch Shifter devices.
4. In the Sampler’s shortcut panel, add a custom shortcut panel and map one of the knobs to the
Semitones control in the SECOND of the two Note Pitch Shifters, then name the shortcut knob
“Selector”.
○ Because all “97” multisamples are populated from C0 through C8, the full range of the
Selector knob will scroll through all the samples.
○ If you want to copy any default shortcut controls from the default sets for Sampler devices,
just drag them up one by one into the remaining 7 slots of the custom shortcut control.
5. Now go to the FIRST Note Pitch Shifter and toggle the +3 Octave button.
○ What you’re doing here is taking the C1 note sent by the first Drum Machine pad and
transposing up to C4 before sending it on to the SECOND Note Pitch Shifter. (which is
shifting that C4 up or down by 48 semitones to trigger any of the samples in the
multisample).
○ But what happens when you play other drum pads? Each of those incoming MIDI notes
will be transposed to C#4, D4, and so on, which throws the SECOND Sampler’s Note
Pitch Shifter range out of whack. How do we fix this? Next step!
6. Open the FIRST Note Pitch Shifter’s modulators panel and add a Keytrack modulator.
7. Expand the Keytrack modulator and set it to Relative mode, with a Root value of 36 and a
 7. Expand the Keytrack modulator and set it to Relative mode, with a Root value of 36 and a
Spread value of 16.
○ Root 36 = MIDI note number 36, which is C1, which is the first default pad in a Drum
Machine.
○ Spread 16 means that the 16 notes from C1 to D#2 will be affected by the Keytrack
modulation.
8. Now we make the Keytrack modulator shift the notes sent by the Drum Machine downward by
exactly the same number of semitones above C1 each note is! We do this by mapping the
Keytrack modulator to the Semitones control of the FIRST Note Pitch Shifter, dragging
downward to set a modulation range of -16.
○ Spread 16 plus this modulation range of -16 means that the Keytrack modulator will track
C1 and the 15 notes above it, which is the entire default 16-pad grid in a Drum Machine.
When C1 comes in, it sends C1 out. When C#1 comes, it shifts down one semitone and
sends C1 out. When E1 comes in (4 semitones up from C1), it shifts down 4 semitones
and sends C1 out, and so on. The entire idea is to make every pad of the drum machine
send only C1 on to the Sampler, which allows the SECOND Note Pitch Shifter to
always stay in the proper range to select one of the 97 samples in the multisample.
9. Load a 97 multisample into the Sampler and test it out. Then Save the entire chain as a preset
called something like DrumPad 97.

From this point on, when you want to use a 97 in a Drum Machine pad, just drag your DrumPad 97 onto the
pad, then use the Replace button in the chain’s Sampler to swap in the desired 97 multisample. Then you can
use the Selector knob in the Sampler’s shortcut panel to scrub through all of the one shots in the 97. Easy!

How to do “Breaks Layer” multi pads in Bitwig

A “breaks layer” multi pad in Ableton is hard to describe architecturally, but you can see an example in the
original ill.Gates Studio Template. What it sounds like is easy to describe, though. A breakbeat loop is layered
on top of the kick, and a different breakbeat loop is layered on top of the snare. The snare and kick don’t choke
each other (allowing, for example, a snare tail to ring out even while new kicks are happening), but the two
breakbeat loops DO choke each other. The result of this setup is a kick with a lush, “rhythmic tail”, and the tail
is choked and restarted by each new kick. When the snare hits, it not only chokes the kick’s rhythmic tail, but it
triggers its own rhythmic tail, which is choked by the next kick, and so on.

In Ableton, this type of multi pad is a confusing PITA to build and requires careful note mapping, chain nesting,
and setting of choke groups. In Bitwig, it’s actually super easy to set these up. The basic idea is that instead of
trying to set all this up inside of one single drum rack like you might do in Ableton, you instead layer two
Drum Maschine instruments in a single track and do the kick and snare in one drum machine, and put their
respective breakbeat loops on the same exact pads in the second drum machine.

The tricky part in Bitwig is warping the breakbeat loops to match the tempo of the project. In Ableton, the
breakbeat loops are usually put into a Simpler instrument so that you can use Simpler’s Warp button to
automatically warp the loop to the project tempo. Bitwig’s Sampler has no similar feature, so you need to
manually warp the loop first, bounce it to a new clip, and then load the warped sample into the drum machine
pad. This manual warping is done most easily if you have Serato Sample.

1. Add Serato Sample to an instrument track. You’ll be using this to quickly determine the tempo of
breakbeat loops and make your time-stretching painless and fast.
2. Add an Instrument Layer container to the “Meat” track, then stack two Drum Machine
instruments into it. Name the first layer Meat, and name the second layer Breaks. Also name the
track itself as Drums - Meat.
3. Add your chosen kick and snare to pads in the Meat layer. (If you need to fatten these up with
more layers later, you can easily add an Instrument Layer in each pad’s chain, move the
original kick and snare samplers into the pad’s internal instrument layer, and then add other
samples or e-Drum instruments to those instrument layers.)
4. Create a MIDI clip to trigger the kick and snare pads, and Ctrl-L the clip to set the arrangement
loop to match.
 loop to match.
5. Find a breakbeat loop that seems to mesh well with the kick. Tempo will not match at first━just
focus on timbre and content.
6. When you find a loop that seems promising, drag it into Serato Sample to find its tempo.
7. Now drag the loop into a new track in your arrangement view, set the audio clip’s stretch mode to
Elastique, and set the clips original Tempo to the exact value (e.g., 175.17) that Serato gave
you. Be sure to include any decimal point values like that.
○ Leave the clip name at its default value (the original sample name), because it will help
you find that original sample later if you ever need to. However, rename the track as
Breaks loop for Kick. You’re going to deactivate this track and keep it in the project in
case you need to fine-tune or change the stretching timbre for any reason later in the
project’s lifecycle.
○ Depending how the breakbeat loop was recorded (e.g., ripped quickly from a old song and
not processed to be a perfect loop in the original song’s tempo), you might need to trim
the end of the clip and then Consolidate the clip to make a good loop.
8. Now solo the Drums - Meat track AND the new, warped Breaks loop for Kick track, then play
your arrangement loop. At this point, you probably want to switch the breaks clip to the
Elastique Pro stretching mode, and play around with that mode’s Formant and Resolution
settings to find a timbre that meshes really well with the Kick.
○ Spectral stretching often adds gain to the sample and can make it clip the track over 0 dB.
Carefully double-check the track meter to ensure it’s not flashing red at any point. If it
does, take the clip’s Gain down enough to prevent it clipping over 0 dB.
○ You probably want to warm up the loop and take its bite down a bit by trying negative
Formant values and larger-than-default Resolution values to focus on the low frequency
energy in the loop.
○ You can also click-drag the clip’s original Tempo value while watching the clip’s
waveform in the arrangement view, to try out other beat resolutions. For example, if your
meat pattern is in half-time feel (snare on the .3 of every bar), but your breakbeat sample
has the snare on the .2 of every bar, you can click-drag the Tempo until the loop’s snare
hits are landing on the .3 of every bar.
9. Once your audio clip is sounding exactly how you want it, Bounce the clip to a new track, then
Save the project to put the bounced clip inside the project folder. Do not rename the bounced clip
because it’s named to match the original clip name, which helps you understand what’s what in
the Project’s total set of collected samples.
10. Flip to the Project Panel, then view its Files tab, and then drag the new bounced sample into the
Breaks layer of your “Meat” track, onto the same exact pad as the kick over in the Meat layer.
11. Solo only the Drums - Meat track and play your arrangement loop while you switch focus to the
Breaks layer pad where you just dragged the bounced sample. Expand the device window for
that pad’s Sampler, then set the Voices to Monophonic so that each kick note self-chokes and
retriggers the breaks loop from the start.
12. Repeat Steps 5–11 to create a breakbeat loop that meshes well with your snare.
○ To get a better feel for the snare’s “tail”, You’ll probably need to drag the clip to line up the
first snare hit in the clip with the first snare hit in your MIDI clip for the Drums - Meat
track, and then temporarily loop the arrangement on the breakbeat clip.
○ During this part, you’ll probably want to mute the entire Breaks layer and also mute the
kick pad on the Meat layer. The idea is to hear just your main “meat” snare plus the
breakbeat loop you’re testing.
13. After you have good breakbeat loops sitting in the Breaks layer (on the same pads as their
matching kick and snare samples in the Meat layer, you can play with the yellow loop-start-
brace in each of the Samplers in the Breaks layer to find the best-sounding starting point for each
loop.
○ What you’re looking for is the nicest-sounding segment to serve as the “tail” for the kick
and the snare. You should be looping the entire MIDI pattern and hearing the choking and
triggering in context along with each kick and snare hit in the full context of your drum
pattern.
○ Now you can play with the relative levels of each breaks loop against its matching kick or
snare.
14. Now level the combined Kick and Snare sounds to your gain-staging target for these important
 14. Now level the combined Kick and Snare sounds to your gain-staging target for these important
framework sounds in your mix.
○ First switch to MIX view, then expand the Meat and Breaks instrument layers inside the
Drums - Meat track, and then further expand each of the layers into their component
drum maschine pads.
○ Make sure the track fader on the Drums - Meat track is set at 0.
○ Now solo the Kick pad and its corresponding breaks loop pad.
○ Play the drum pattern and adjust the track fader on the Drums - Meat track itself until its
reading -12 dB max peak.
○ Look at the fader value on the Drums - Meat track and note the new value.
○ Subtract this same amount from both the kick pad’s fader and its corresponding breakbeat
loop pad’s fader. For example, if the fader value in Step 14.e was -6.8, you’ll set both of
these pad faders to -6.8 too.
○ Reset the fader on the Drums - Meat track back to 0, then repeat this process for the snare
(so that the combined snare sounds also peak at -12 dB).
○ Reset the fader on the Drums - Meat track back to 0. Your Drums - Meat track is now
fully set up and gain-staged properly for the rest of the mix to build up into.
15. Your final step is to collect and save all the original samples into the project, and then Deactivate
the Break loops for kick and Break loops for snare tracks.
○ You want to keep those original tracks on ice, with all their current warp settings that you
used to make the bounces in your Breaks instrument layer. This enables you to easily go
back and tweak the sound of those breaks loops if you find that necessary later in the
project and you find your breaks loops aren’t cutting through the full mix well enough.
You can simply re-activate the track, dupe it, play with different settings in the dupe,
bounce out that dupe, and replace the original bounce with the new bounce down in the
Breaks layer of your Drums - Meat rack.
○ You can safely delete the two bounced tracks you made during this process, because the
bounced samples are safely tucked away inside two Sampler instances in the project.

The Grid (Tips and Tricks)

Various “how do I…?” tips and tricks for building Grid devices

Creating feedback loops

You can create feedback loops by putting a Long Delay module in the loop, set to the fastest possible delay,
which is .02 ms. In a 44100 project, this is roughly the length of 1 sample, so it’s effectively instantaneous to
our ears, while also respecting Bitwig’s design goal to prevent runaway feedback from instantaneous loops.

Building a simple delay with a feedback tail

Because the feedback loop has a gain reduction before being mixed in with the dry signal, you get the classic
feedback tail.
(More soon)

Mixing Stuff
Routing (track-to-track)
Routing at the TRACK level can be confusing until you wrap your head around Bitwig’s idiosyncratic way of
doing it. In many cases, it’s easier to simply use their fabulous Audio Reciever and Note Receiver devices as
virtual patch cables to pull audio or MIDI data to the exact insert point you want in any track insert chain.

But if you want to do it the traditional track-to-track way like in Live and other DAWs, the main concept to
understand is that setting only the INPUT on the target track does NOT feed the signal through the target track’s
device inserts! If you do this, you can record the MIDI/Audio output of the source track into clips on the target
track, but that’s it!

And setting only the OUTPUT on the source track will bypass the clip-recording on the target track, and instead
simply pass the audio/MIDI output from the source track through the target track’s device inserts!

To get the typical behavior you’d expect, you must set the OUTPUT of the source track and also set the input of
the target track. Yes, it’s weird and counter-intuitive, so skip the whole confusing mess and just use those two
great virtual patch cables. The following diagram shows what I’ve tried to describe with words above.
Sidechaining
Sidechaining is a dream in Bitwig.
● Every VST that has sidechain input channels has a dedicated “down arrow” button near the upper
left of the device container. Click it and choose any signal from anywhere to feed into the
sidechain input.
● There are three specific sidechain modulators that enable you to create positive or negative
(inverted) sidechain modulation on ANY device or plugin control: Audio Sidechain, Audio Rate,
and Note Sidechain.

But oddly, the basic Compressor doesn’t have a sidechain input. All the basic compressor-style sidechain
ducking that you’ll want to do requires some 3rd-party compressor.

Also oddly, the basic Gate has a sidechain input, but not an inverted gating style. So all the sidechain input can
do is open the gate. It can’t be used to duck the gate. Again, if you want inverted ducking style gating, you’re
stuck using a 3rd-party compressor.

Fake panning vs true panning

Just like in Ableton, Bitwig’s Pan control on every channel is a pseudo-pan that is really more of a mix blend
between the left and right outputs of a stereo track. It will not actually hard-pan the signals on either track.

Ableton gives you a right-click option to display some dual-pan controls that do true panning, but Bitwig does it
differently. If you need to do true panning in Bitwig, just drop the Dual Pan FX device into the track.

VST multi-output routing

VST multi-output routing
Watch a video about this!

Bitwig makes it super easy to work with VSTs that have multi-channel outputs of some sort. For example,
Native Instruments’ Maschine or Vengeance Sound’s VPS-Avenger synth both have internal routing to special
bus output channels. Bitwig makes it super easy to set up the routing so that you can have individual channels
in Bitwig’s mixer for full control over the leveling, pan, solo/mute, etc. of various sounds coming from the VST.
Bitwig also exposes independent device insert channels so that you can perform any desired audio processing
on the various output channels coming from the VST.

This can be a huge workflow time-saver, because you can leverage the useful features of the VST for your
sound design or arrangement and not feel compelled to some how export individual tracks/stems out of the VST
and into Bitwig just so that you can have the granular control during mixdown that you typically need.

The basic process is simple, and I demonstrate it in a mercifully short video (ha ha) linked just above.

1. Look for the little double arrows in the top left of the VST container in the device chain. These
indicate a VST that has multi-output channels.

2. Click the double arrows to open the output-chain routing configuration.

 3. Click Add Missing Chains. It’s faster to add all available chains in one go, and then later you can
delete the output chains you don’t need.
4. Now in the VST itself, configure its internal routing so that its various channels are being sent to
its various available output channels instead of all being routed up to the VST’s own master bus.
5. If you ended up not using some of the available output channels from the VST, you can go back to
the configuration window from Step 2, then select each unused chain and press Delete.

Bouncing - Bitwig’s equivalent to Ableton’s “Freeze” and “Flatten”

Watch a video about this!

Also watch this video!

Although Bitwig has many features and workflow patterns that are very similar to those in Ableton, it takes a
distinct and deliberate departure from Ableton’s practice of freezing/unfreezing tracks, or freezing then
flattening tracks. At first this difference might seem annoying. I felt that way myself at first, and I’ve certainly
seen multiple feature requests from (usually newer) Bitwig users asking Bitwig devs to provide a basic
“freeze/unfreeze” feature like in Ableton.

However, once you wrap your head around this deliberately different approach that the Bitwig devs
implemented, you start to appreciate the genius and flexiblity of the Bitwig way all this is done. I’m going to
keep this section pretty short and simple even though there are a ton of different goals you can accomplish with
Bitwig’s various bouncing features. Instead, I think the two videos linked just above can do the best job of
demonstrating why you’ll come to love the Bitwig way of doing things.

TL;DR - I do not miss the “freeze” feature at all. In fact, I’ve come to greatly prefer the Bitwig way of doing
things.

Notes about Ableton’s Freeze | Flatten

● Freeze and Flatten are all or nothing. They affect an entire track.
● You cannot change any of the devices and plugins on a frozen track. You must first unfreeze it,
make your changes, and then freeze it again.
● When you Freeze and then Flatten a track, this is a totally destructive operation and the original
MIDI track--and all the devices and plugins on that track--are deleted. You simply end up with
one audio clip on the same track that was formerly frozen.

Notes about Bitwig’s Bounce | Bounce In Place | Deactivate

● Bounce (and Bounce in Place) are clip-specific or time-specific. To bounce an entire track or
group, you would first need to select the entire timespan of that track/group, consolidate the
selected things, and then bounce the consolidated clip.
● When you Bounce in Place, all of the devices and plugins on the track are still active and usable.
Even the synths!
● When you Bounce a track, this is 100% non-destructive. The bounced audio clip is placed onto an
entirely new audio track immediately beneath the original track. The original track, and all its
MIDI clips, and all its devices and plugins, is still intact and untouched.
● If you want to do the same thing as Freeze > Flatten in Bitwig, you simply Bounce the entire
track, and then select the original MIDI track and Deactivate it. There is a toggle button in the
UI that will automatically hide all deactivated tracks and groups. Out of sight, out of mind. Also,
deactivated tracks incur no CPU hit.
 deactivated tracks incur no CPU hit.
● The real power of Bitwig’s approach to bouncing comes when you start using it surgically at the
individual clip level, and when you use it in conjuction with Bitwig’s hybrid tracks that can have
both audio and MIDI clips on them! Any audio clips on the track simply bypass any MIDI
devices/plugins that are on the track. But MIDI clips on the track still run through the full device
chain from end to end. Watch both of the above videos linked at the start of this section to see all
the ways this can be useful!

Mouse bouncing with Alt-dragging

Starting with Bitwig 2.4 you can now also mouse bounce any single or multiple clips:

● Click and start dragging the header bar of any clip but don’t move it very far. Then press and hold
the Alt key while you keep holding the left mouse button. You’ll see a “bouncing” dialog in the
upper right of the Bitwig window. When the bounce is finished, you can continue moving the
now bounced audio clip anywhere you want in the project and let go. You can even drop it over
in the Clip launcher. (Or start by bouncing clips from the clip launcher and drop them into the
Arranger timeline.
● You can do this same action to multiple clips at a time. Regardless of how you multi-selected
them.

Pros and Cons of Bitwig (vs Ableton)

Watch a video about this entire section!

Feature Pros Cons

Top 12 1. Browser is a powerful librarian 1. No support for AU
that greatly speeds up sample- and plugins.
preset-digging. 2. No time-stretching
2. Incredibly powerful and modular algorithm quite as creatively nice
system for creating sophisticated as Ableton’s Texture and Tones
instrument and audio “racks”. warping types. (But the creative
3. Tons of fast QOL workflow warping in Bitwig’s Sampler
shortcuts not available in Ableton. makes up for this.)
4. Ability to specify exact values for 3. No MP3 export.
automation points. 4. Only one dithering option
5. Ability to have multiple projects (Triangular).
open at the same time and easily 5. Nothing like Simpler with
copy/move clips/tracks/groups/devices its built-in warping
between them. 6. Nothing quite like the ease
6. Unique architecture provides very of use seen in Simpler’s Slicing
fast startup and project loading times. mode. You can slice to
And it’s nearly impossible to crash the multisample with a lot of very
main project window because the audio useful and granular control of the
engine and plugins all run inside of slices, but it’s not as visual and
sandboxes. immediate as in Simpler.
7. Sidechain routing is very simple 7. Nothing at all like
and straightforward, and some special Convert
modulators enable you to literally Harmony/Melody/Drums to
sidechain anything to anything. New MIDI Track.
8. Warm, attractive, readable, high- 8. Not easy to collect external
contrast UI compared to Ableton’s samples from other folders and
washed-out ugly eye-blurring mess. projects while at the same time
9. Tight integration between the excluding external samples that
Arranger and Launcher sequencers come from 128s and other
enables some workflows that are Sampler/Simpler presets like
 enables some workflows that are Sampler/Simpler presets like
impossible in Ableton. Ableton allows.
10. VST 3 support, and can point at 9. Default track meters make
multiple plugin folder locations and can it a little harder to get a solid
run any combination of older 32-bit and reading on RMS and Peak
newer 64-bit plugins. values. You might find a need to
11. Project management is MUCH run 3rd party metering plugs
simpler and easier than in Ableton. None during mixing and mastering and
of that confusing mess that Ableton’s careful gain-staging.
automated backups tend to create.
12. Automatic, easily-accessed
routing and mixing features for multi-
output Plugins. No need to manually
create special tracks and chains and set
up complex routings.
Automation Can set specific values for any automation point Some very common muscle memory
or for multiple automation points all at the same automation drawing moves in
time Ableton━especially those related to
drawing vertical cutout moves━don’t
Can “humanize” automation points so they have work or only kinda work, and often with
some natural drift from their original snapped or unexpected side-effects. So at first you’ll
values think “automation sucks!”, when in fact
it’s really more powerful and easier than
Automatically cleans up recorded or pen-drawn in Ableton. You must learn different
automation to the fewest points possible that still ways of doing the exact same drawing
maintains the same shape moves.

Simple, uncluttered expand to show all You absolutely can perform all the same
automation on only a single track. (Unlike common drawing moves as fast or
Ableton that always expands automation lanes nearly as fast as in Ableton, but some of
for all tracks--even those with no automation.) A these rely on multi-selecting pairs of
key combo can also expand all tracks just like points and then using the Time and
Ableton. Value boxes in the Inspector panel to
adjust the line segment between those
No need to create pinned lanes to remember or two points.
hunt for what you automated, because there’s a
great “show all automation lanes” button that
will toggle all of a track’s automation lanes into
view.
Export Export dialog warns you visually if you’re about No dithering options. So if you want
to overwrite previously exported tracks. anything more than simple Triangular
dithering with some unknown type of
Several different and useful file naming and noise-shaping, you must use a 3rd party
folder creation patterns during export. dithering plugin or the dithering features
of your mastering limiters.

No MP3 export.

Rack building Bitwig’s unique and powerful set of Setting a range for each of the device
modulators, plus the ability to create multiple values that a single macro knob controls
shortcut panels for the same rack, enable is MUCH less straight-forward and more
extremely powerful and sophisticated racks fiddly than in Ableton. Ableton’s “mod
matrix” (the Mapping button for a
FAR more control types than just macro knobs. macro panel) allows you to set both Min
The design options are massive. The special and Max values. Bitwig’s mod matrix
modulator types are usually far more dependable only sets the Max value. You must
 modulator types are usually far more dependable only sets the Max value. You must
and consistent than using M4L devices in manually set the min value on the device
Ableton, and far less CPU overhead for each. knob/etc. itself. The upside is that you
M4L is a pig, and a lot of M4L devices are have unlimited macro knobs to play
buggy AF. with, and the total set of things you can
pull off with the Bitwig Macro
Can design racks with far more than Ableton’s modulators in combination with other
max 8 macro knobs modulators interacting with the Macro
runs circles around the things you can do
Macro knobs can have bi-polar behavior, with Ableton Macro knobs.
centered on any starting value in the original
device knob/etc. Ableton macros are always full With great power and flexibility comes a
linear through the assigned min/max range. steeper learning curve and more
experimentation when building a rack to
Can build multiple custom shortcut panels for a get the crazy thing you’re envisioning in
rack and easily select any of them while using your head. Really sophisticated and
the rack smooth racks are possible to build, but it
can take more time to puzzle them out
Can add long, useful descriptions that explain and test that they are behaving properly.
what the rack does and how to use it
The meat and potatoes LFO modulator
Any control can affect other controls--not just does not make it simple to visualize
device parameters. For example, macro knob A what actual the LFO shape looks like.
can control Macro knob B. You must learn how to “see” the actual
LFO shape and swell in your head. The
The Polynom modulator enables non-linear tradeoff is that the Bitwig LFO
macro knob movement through a value range. modulator runs circles around the tiny
Ableton macros are always linear through their set of things that Ableton’s M4L LFO
mix/max range. device can do.

The Qua modulator enables stepped macro knob

movement through a value range. Ableton
macros are always linear through their min/max
range.
Browser AMAZING tagging and categorization features, With flexibility and power comes a
even for samples. Bitwig basically has it’s own steeper learning curve
built-in library management
application━there’s no need for a 3rd party
sample library organizer.

You can make very sophisticated and deep

collection tagging hierarchies for your sample
library without ever needing to create physical
folders and move samples around (thereby
breaking your older projects and also creating
many duplicate samples)

Ableton has 7 generic collections with very

short names. By contrast, Bitwig has no limit to
the number of collections you can create, and
the names can be much longer. Also, every
browser category has its own independent set of
collections. For example, “Devices” vs
“Presets” vs “Samples” can be categorized with
totally different collection heirarchies.

Bitwig has “smart collections” (based on filter

 Bitwig has “smart collections” (based on filter
criteria) that automatically update themselves
Warping The “clean” stretch modes in Bitwig (Elastique There’s nothing quite like Ableton’s
and Elastique Pro) sound slightly better than Tones and Texture warping modes.
Ableton’s cleanest modes (Beats, Complex, and Bitwig’s Cycling stretch mode comes
Complex Pro) as you stretch a sample towards close to the Texture mode, but it doesn’t
its practical limits. They also have practically no have quite the same range and subtlety.
CPU impact.
So if you’re fond of the “throw Texture
on an audio clip and set the tempo to
999” trick for making great glitchy
cutouts, you still need to export a stem
over to Ableton to do that, then bring an
exported stem from Ableton back into
Bitwig.

That said, the new 2.4 Sampler has a

Textures mode that is essentially
Ableton’s Texture warping mode, but
inside of Sampler. This opens up some
fantastic possibilities you cannot achieve
with Ableton’s Texture warping for
audio clips, and you can simply bounce
out an audio clip from Sampler for
chopping and interjections.
128s You can build 128s chunk by chunk, edit them No cons
and easily replace specific samples in the 128,
start building one with 10 samples in it, save it,
come back days later and add 30 more samples
to it, save it, and so on. Ableton forces you to fill
up its Sampler with 128 or more samples before
you do “Distribute ranges equally” for the very
first time. After that, it’s very difficult to edit or
modify the 128’s total set of samples.

128s are saved to the User Library as a single

.multisample file type. This is really great for
several reasons:

● You can tag and categorize each

.multisample file, and give them long,
verbose descriptions. This makes it far
easier to search through your total set of
128s and choose the best “palette” for
your needs.
● You can easily swap out the current
multisample loaded into a Sampler
instance with another multisample from
your user library. For example, if you
have twenty different 128s full of “spice”
noises in your user library, you can
easily swap those out into an existing
track that already has MIDI, a Sampler,
and audio processing.
● When looking at the total set of
samples in the Project Panel (or in your
 samples in the Project Panel (or in your
OS file browser), you see only one
single .multisample file for the entire
128. (Ableton instead lists all the 128’s
individual samples.) This makes
understanding the total set of samples in
your project much easier.
Sampler and The Bitwig modulators can make Bitwig’s There is no analogue to Ableton’s
Simpler Sampler behave in some very tricksy ways that Simpler device. If you love Simpler and
Ableton can’t match. use it all the time, you will feel the loss
in Bitwig. That said, you CAN easily
And yes, you can easily make both one-shot take any sample clip and instantly Slice
128s and melodic 128s. Easier than in Ableton, to Multisample or Slice to Drum Rack,
because you can build them up a chunk at a which gives you back some of the lost
time, edit them later and add more samples or functionality from Simpler.
replace other samples, and so on.
The Bitwig Sampler at first glance looks
By contrast, in Ableton you have to be careful very barebones and missing many
about how many total samples you drag into the important features you use all the time in
Sampler because there’s no easy way to tell Ableton’s Sampler. However, these
whether you have too many or too few samples. features are ALL there in Bitwig
too━but you accomplish them by
adding Bitwig’s many powerful
modulators to the Sampler.

TL;DR - Bitwig’s Sampler can do

everything the Ableton sampler does,
but you have to learn the Bitwig
approach to modulating devices and
instruments.
Project/File Simple Project Panel interface that is one “External files” does not distinguish
Management keystroke away at all times. between those in the User Library versus
those in other project folders or in your
No crazy confusion about the difference custom sample library. This makes
between the set’s files and the project’s files like exclusion of samples in 128s and other
in Ableton Sampler presets more difficult than in
Ableton.
No ridiculous automatic backup bloat that
makes the above confusion even worse Basically, if you’re used to NOT
collecting samples from 128s when
wrapping up and archiving a finished
project (to minimize the total project
size), you must develop a different
project management workflow to
compensate for this Bitwig shortcoming:

● A - You can stop caring

how large your Bitwig project
folders might be and just collect
all those big multisamples from
the User Library each and every
time.
● B - You can learn to have
multiple different project folders
that each represent different
stages of a project. Mainly, you
can have one or more “before
 can have one or more “before
flattening to audio” project
folders and then a set of “after
flattening to audio” project
folders. This way, only your
early “before flattening” project
folders are bloated with copies of
the 128 multisamples from your
User Library, while your “after
flattening” folders are lean and
mean.
Plugin support Can read multiple plugin folders. Ableton forces No cons
you to choose only one.

When plugin crashes, the DAW itself does not.

Recovery is as simple as restarting the Audio
Engine for the project.

Can use both 32-and 64-bit plugins, and also

both VST2 and VST3 plugins. Ableton forces
you to use either 32- or 64-bit, and does not
support VST 3
Mixing Big huge beautiful track meters in the mixing Drum rack chains can be expanded only
view. Can totally remove the clip launchers from in the Mixer view, not also in the
the mixing view. Arrangement view
Background Always shows when the indexer has found No cons
Indexer something new and is indexing it, instead of
being totally invisible like in Ableton
Grid zooming A few more shortcut keys than Ableton for No cons
and scrolling quickly returning to the 1:0:0 playhead, zooming
out to see full project, focusing the zoom on the
entirety of one clip, etc.
Amp and Really powerful combined Amp device that Less “visual” than Ableton’s two
Cabinet covers all the same bases as Ableton’s Amp and devices.
Cabinet devices. Video
Multi-output All VSTs that have multiple output channels No cons
VSTs (more than just one main stereo out) are handled
brilliantly and seamlessly by Bitwig.
● No need to manually create rack
chains and manually set routing. One
button click automatically does it all, and
you can then remove any output chains
you don’t want.
● All processing devices and
modulators you add to any output chains
are automatically included when you
save a new preset for that multi-output
VST in your Bitwig User Library.
● The Mixer view can easily
show/hide the individual chains for
internal leveling, etc.
● All VSTs and devices that accept
sidechain inputs have easy menu options
to select a specific output chain as the
sidechain trigger.
 sidechain trigger.

Ableton has nothing like this. You can do all

this, but you must manually set up your chains
and routing.

Video
Sidechaining Bitwig’s approach to sidechaining is superb. On None
any device or VST, there’s a little “down arrow”
button on the Bitwig container that lets you
choose the source track (and multi-output VST
chain or specific device in the track’s insert
chain) that should be the trigger sent to the
device/VST.

In Ableton, by contrast, you must use a “push”

routing from the trigger track, and you must
think carefully about the routing and sometimes
make difficult tactical decisions.

Bitwig counterparts to Ableton devices

There are some really cool devices and modulators that Bitwig has but Ableton doesn’t. And vice-versa. And
there are a lot of devices that are essentially the same in both DAWs, and serve the same function.

Cool Bitwig features that don’t have an Ableton counterpart

Instruments listed first. Then Operations. Then Devices.

Bitwig has 2 instruments, 37 devices and 32 modulators that Ableton does not.

Device/Modulator/Instrument or Operation Notes

Organ A basic tonewheel/drawbar organ synth.
Phase 4 The starting oscillators in Phase 4 are fairly unique and
based on phase distortion, which in practical terms is an
additive synthesis process that adds harmonics without
reducing the energy of the fundamental.

Then you can have all the 4 oscillators modulate each

other through phase modulation, which is similar to
frequency modulation (FM), but subtly different.
Audio Receiver Plop this device anywhere in a channel’s signal chain and
pull in audio from any other track or device channel.
Blur Comb-filter diffusion. Does what the name implies.
Comb A standard comb filter. You know, that cool filter type
from Serum or VPS-Avenger that is integral to so many
“metallic” mid bass sounds? Now imagine using all of
Bitwig’s crazy modulators on the filter frequency and
bipolar feedback controls. A hidden gem for sound
design of sample-based tracks.
DC Offset Literally pushes positive or negative current to your
speaker cones to push them in or out. Modulate this with
an LFO at musical frequencies and you have an
 an LFO at musical frequencies and you have an
oscillator. Yes, you can build an entire Eurorack synth
inside of Bitwig using only its own devices and
modulators.
De-Esser A standard de-esser
Dynamics A very flexible compressor that does both upward and
downward compression simultaneously and
independently on both the loud parts and quiet parts of a
signal.

Imagine ONE of the compressor channels in Ableton’s

Multiband Dynamics device (or OTT). That’s what this
is, only more flexible. MBD and OTT can only do
upward compression on the quiet parts of the signal and
downward compression on the loud parts of the signal.
But Bitwig’s Dynamics can do either upward or
downward compression on both parts of the signal.

Toss one of these in each channel of the Multiband FX-3

device and you have a more flexible version of OTT
right there inside Bitwig.
FX Layer Two first class container devices that are essentially like
FX Selector adding multiple chains to an Ableton Audio Effect
Rack. The FX Layer gives you parallel processing of
multiple audio processing devices/plugs. The FX
Selector toggles among the various channels in the
container. Each channel has a unique index number and
you can create automation lanes that toggle among the
various indexed channels during arrangement playback.

Granted, the SEL control that’s hidden deep in Ableton

rack chains can do the same basic thing, but Bitwig does
it waaaaayyyy better in two important ways.

First, as you toggle to a new chain, any audio “tails” from

the previous chain continue to ring out! Ableton simply
cuts all audio from the previous chain short!

Second, the automation points on the automation lane

clearly display the index number and even the custom
name you gave to each channel in the container. By
contrast, Ableton only displays the index number and the
lines are very close together and hard to snap onto. So
setting up automation for chain-toggling in Ableton is a
really slow PITA.
HW Clock Out Bitwig is designed to interface with--and control--and
HW CV Instrument receive--signal from modular eurorack devices. Bitwig
HW CV Out even has their own proprietary hardware interface to
integrate Bitwig into a rack system. These three devices
are part of that integration.
Instrument Layer Same deal as above, only these are for MIDI instruments.
Instrument Selector Ableton’s analogue is the Instrument Rack, but again,
automation is a PITA to set up and the “tail” of the
previous synth preset is cut short the moment you toggle
to a different synth preset.
Ladder An emulation of the classic Moog “ladder filter”, but on
Ladder An emulation of the classic Moog “ladder filter”, but on
steroids. It has a built in ADSR envelope that can be
triggered from a MIDI sidechain input, a built in LFO,
and a built in audio envelope follower. Even better, any
combination of these three internal modulators can be
used to modulate the filter frequency, and you can blend
the relative strength of modulation from each one.
MIDI CC Mostly useful in conjunction with the HW Instrument
MIDI Program Change device for sending these common MIDI messages to
MIDI Song Select external hardware synths.

Ableton can send these messages too, but typically only

at the launch of a MIDI clip. Having these first class
devices be independent like this enables a lot more
flexibility with external hardware control!
Mid-Side Split A standard (and very useful) mid-side signal splitter, with
independent processing chains for both signals, which are
summed together again on the output of the device. To
accomplish the same thing in Ableton you have to build a
fairly complex rack.
MODULATORS!!! One of the two “killer features” of Bitwig. Too many of
MODULATORS!!!! these to describe in detail here. Basically, you can
MODULATORS!!!!! modulate nearly anything in any device--even in 3rd
party plugins. It’s INSANE. If you like distinguishing
your sound design with a lot of subtle (and not so subtle)
movement and dynamic behavior, then Bitwig is a
CANDY STORE for your sound design.

Admiral Bumblebee does a decent job of explaining all

the modulators in plain English, so no sense in my
reinventing the wheel here.

http://www.admiralbumblebee.com/music/2017/06/23/Bit
wig-Modulators.html
Multiband FX-2 A 2-band and 3-band frequency splitter, with independent
Multiband FX-3 processing chains for all two or three signals, which are
summed together again on the output of the device. To
accomplish the same thing in Ableton, you have to use a
mostly-deactivated version of Ableton’s Multiband
Dynamics or EQ Three, or you have to use an M4L
device like Invisible Frequency Splitter.

Of course, ALL of these Ableton and Bitwig devices

(except for Invisible Frequency Splitter) use minimum
phase high/low-pass filters to accomplish the frequency
splitting, so they’re all prone to creating phase issues and
need to be used with care on full mixes or bus groups.
(But they’re perfectly fine for sound design of individual
tracks!)

The Invisible Frequency Splitter device doesn’t have

significant phase issues (hence the “invisible” moniker),
but it does use extremely gentle filter slopes (like -12 dB
or less), so there is more spectral bleed through across the
three bands.
 If you want to surgically split frequency bands AND also
minimize phase issues (for use on the mix bus and on
group busses), you need to build a custom rack in both
Ableton and Bitwig, that uses high-quality linear-phase
EQs to apply the high/low-pass filters. With the downside
being possible transient smearing issues.
Note Echo A single-tap delay for each MIDI note that goes through
it. Polyphonic (each new incoming note is delayed based
on its trigger time and duration). CRAZY.
Note Filter You set a range of MIDI notes and a range of velocity
values. Any note number or velocity value outside that
range is stopped cold and doesn’t get passed through the
filter to the other side.
Note Harmonizer This is kinda/sorta like a vocoder for MIDI notes! Or you
can think of it as “autotune for melodies”. You send in a
sidechain of MIDI notes from another track (preferably
chords). You can think of these as a harmonic carrier
signal. Meanwhile, the “modulator” notes passing
through the device are constrained to specific chord tones
that match the chordal notes currently running through
the sidechain input.

So…. stuck for a melody? It’s a cheap trick, but you can
just bang out a bunch of random up-then-down “motif”
notes in a rhythmic pattern you like and plop them into a
MIDI clip. Then toss this device on the track and feed
one of your “chords” tracks as the sidechain. Instant
melody based on your chord tones!
Note Latch An interesting device that will latch (hold) notes in
various ways until the next note from the underlying
MIDI signal path appears. Useful to combine with the
Arpeggiator or Note Harmonizer device.
Note Receiver Plop this device anywhere in a channel’s signal chain and
pull in the MIDI stream from any other track or device
channel.
Note Velocity A device that constrains the incoming MIDI note
velocities to a 2-part segmented range of velocities.
There’s also a “Randomize” knob that can be used to
humanize the incoming velocities.
Oscilloscope Not just a single-trace scope, but a dual-trace scope that
can superimpose the waveforms for two different signal
sources!
Replacer Listens to the audio signal flowing through the audio
channel it’s placed on, and generates a single, specific
MIDI note whenever the amplitude (transients) in that
audio signal pass above a threshold. The longer the
amplitude stays above the threshold, the longer the
generated MIDI note is.

This MIDI note is then passed to an internal MIDI chain

inside the Replacer device, where you can place a MIDI
instrument and any number of Note Effects.

The most obvious use for Replacer is to beef up a

 The most obvious use for Replacer is to beef up a
specific drum sound in a drum loop. For example, if the
kick in the loop is weak sounding, you can place a drum
rack or E-Kick device in the Replacer’s MIDI chain and
have that new kick sound layered into the drum loop
automatically every time the original kick hits.

BTW tricks like this are possible because of Bitwig’s

Hybrid Tracks that play audio and MIDI on the same
track!
Ring-Mod A standard ring modulator. Ableton has a super-basic ring
modulator in its Frequency Shifter device, but the
Bitwig version is more flexible and powerful.

As you’ll see, Bitwig is heavy on ring modulator devices,

so it’s important to understand that a ring modulator is
similar to a vocoder, in that both devices blend two
signals: a carrier and a modulator. The carrier is
typically a sound with harmonic/melodic content, and the
modulator is typically a sound with a clear rhythmic
character like drums or speech.

So, in a vocoder, the carrier and modulator both remain

somewhat distinct, so the modulated speech or drums still
sound like drums, but also like the melodic or harmonic
sound in the carrier signal.

In a ring modulator, by contrast, the carrier signal is

usually a simple (or slightly complex) sine wave, and the
carrier and modulator are truly blended and become one
new sound in which it’s hard to distinguish either the
original carrier or modulator.
Rotary A standard “leslie” speaker emulation. Ableton’s Auto
Pan can emulate this one to some degree, but not with
the same level of realism.
Step MOD A very basic step sequencer (with a max of 16 steps) that
you can put various audio devices inside of and then
modulate any parameters in those devices with the
bipolar value of each step in the sequence.

This device has a lot of overlap with the Steps

modulator, and the Parseq-8 modulator, but the main
strength of this specific step sequencer is the ability to
quickly add dotted or triplet timing to the beat value
driving the sequence, plus the ability to apply the Global
Groove feel to the beat value driving the sequence.
Neither of the other two step-sequencer modulators can
do this.
Test Tone Outputs a sine wave test tone at any frequency and gain.
Too bad it can’t also output a pink noise test tone.
Time Shift Shifts the incoming audio or MIDI signal earlier or later.
You can specify the shift in either milliseconds or in
samples.

This is a fantastic improvement over Ableton’s global

timeshifting that is set only at the track level itself. So
 timeshifting that is set only at the track level itself. So
you can not only use this to create more humanized and
“in the pocket” timing of different drum tracks (or
individual channels in a drum machine), but you can also
use this to surgically correct phase alignment issues.

The dual-tap Oscilloscope is perfect in tandem with this

amazing device. You can see two low frequency waves
superimposed and just line them up while shifting one of
the signals in sample increments of 1. Mind blowing!

This device also nicely informs you if the time shift is

affecting the latency of only this track or is causing all
other tracks in the project to be delayed to compensate
for this one being pushed earlier than everything else..
Transient Control A very capable transient shaper, but with a sidechain
input that can trigger an internal FX post-processing
output from the transient shaper. Interesting possibilities!
Treemonster A crazy ring modulator where the carrier sine wave can
be filtered to match any pitch in the modulation signal
and to only trigger when the modulation signal passes
above a certain threshold. Then you have knobs that
affect the pitch and speed of that basic sine wave, and a
third knob that affects the total amount of ring
modulation of the two signals.

By attaching any of Bitwig’s crazy modulators to the

Pitch, Speed, and Ring knobs, you can create some truly
spooky/weird/twisted sounds. Or you can use them subtly
to give drums (for example) a degree of intensity and
“bite” similar in ways to Ableton’s Drum Bus device.
Tremolo A really cool and useful “vibrato on anything” device. In
Ableton, you have to build a fairly complex rack to
achieve this effect, but it’s a simple, first-class device in
Bitwig.
XY FX This is an incredibly cool device! It’s basically an FX
Layer with exactly 4 different audio channels you can
place any string of audio processing you like into.

But then you can cross-fade in an XY fashion among the

outputs of all 4 channels.

Best of all, you can use any of Bitwig’s crazy modulators

to do the XY cross-fading! Note that you have to click
the little “settings” gear in the lower left of the device to
expose an X knob and a Y knob that you can attach the
modulators to.
XY Instrument Another incredibly cool device. It’s exactly like the XY
FX, but with all four channels containing MIDI
instruments (and associated Note FX and Audio FX).

Cool Ableton features that don’t have a Bitwig counterpart

Instruments listed first. Then Operations. Then Devices.
Ableton has 5 instruments, 3 operations, and 17 devices that Bitwig does not have.

Device/Instrument or Operation Notes

Collision Who actually uses this? Most 3rd-party mallet instrument
plugins are better.
Electric Who actually uses this? Most 3rd-party piano/keyboard
plugins are better.
Impulse Who actually uses this? Most producers use Drum Rack.
Tension Who actually uses this? Most 3rd-party guitar plugins are
better.
Wavetable Who actually uses this? Most producers have and use
Serum (or other 3rd party wavetable synths) instead.
Convert Harmony to new MIDI Track These are very cool. I wish Bitwig had a similar feature.
Convert Melody to New MIDI Track
Convert Drums to New MIDI Track
Auto Pan Bitwig’s Rotary device can emulate the softer “leslie”
style auto-panning behavior, but not the harder “gating”
behavior you can get out of Auto Pan. You’ll need to rely
on 3rd party gating plugins or build racks with Bitwig’s
various “step sequencer” modulators to achieve the same
hard gating effects.
Beat Repeat 3rd party plugs can fill this gap, such as Replica 2 from
Audio Damage.
Corpus No Bitwig analogue.
Drum Bus Bitwig’s TreeMonster covers some of these bases, and
arguably some 3rd party plugs like Beatformer or
Scheps Parallel Particles, etc. do an equal or better job
than Drum Bus
Dynamic Tube No Bitwig analogue.
Glue Compressor The SSL-G Master Bus Compressor from Waves is
frequently on sale for only $29 and is functionally the
same and arguably better sounding.
Grain Delay No Bitwig analogue.
Looper 3rd party plugs can help fill this gap, such as Augustus
Loop by Expert Sleepers.
Overdrive Bitwig’s closest analog is Distortion, which more of an
extreme hard clipper.
Pedal Bitwig overlaps here a bit with Distortion and Bit-8.
Ping Pong Delay You can get some ping-pong like sounds out of Bitwig’s
Delay-2 and Delay-4, but they’re not strictly the same as
a true ping-pong delay.
Resonators Bitwig’s Resonator Bank is nearly identical
Saturator No Bitwig analogue. You’ll really miss this one, and
you’ll need a 3rd party Saturator plug to make up for the
loss.
Tuner Need a 3rd party VST like GVST - GTune (Windows
only) or bx_Tuner (Windows and OSX).
Vinyl Distortion No Bitwig analogue.
Vocoder No Bitwig analogue, although some users have built
fairly sophisticated FX racks that do a passable job of
being a vocoder. One such rack made by user Taika-Kim
 being a vocoder. One such rack made by user Taika-Kim
is even available in a free, featured FX device pack you
can download directly from inside of Bitwig.
Wavetable No Bitwig analogue, but honestly why did Ableton even
bother? Serum is the gold standard for wavetable
synthesis, and everyone (should) has it.

Features that exist in both DAWs and are essentially the same
Instruments listed first. Then Operations. Then Devices.

There are (roughly) 11 instruments, 4 operations, and (roughly) 29 devices that serve identical purposes in both
Bitwig and Ableton.

Ableton Bitwig Notes

Analog Polysynth
Drum Rack Drum Machine
DS Kick E-Kick Basically the same, but Ableton has
DS Snare E-Snare a few more such instruments than
DS Clap E-Clap Bitwig.
DS Tom E-Tom
etc. etc.
External Instrument HW Instrument
Instrument Rack Chain Bitwig runs circles around Ableton
Instrument Layer here.
Instrument Selector
Note FX Layer
XY Instrument
Operator FM-4 blah
Sampler Sampler Both rhythmic 128s and melodic
128s are possible in Bitwig’s
sampler too. The Bitwig Sampler
has some creative warping modes
that Ableton cannot match.
Simpler Sampler Simpler’s Slicing mode cannot be
done on the fly inside of Bitwig’s
Sampler. Instead, you must use
Slice to Multisample on an audio
clip, and this is not quite as flexible
and tweakable as Simpler’s Slicing
mode, but still very powerful.

If you want a very close analog to

the capabilities and user workflow
of Simpler’s Slicing mode, just pick
up a copy of Serato Sample. It’s
great and has other uses besides as a
(in some ways better than)
replacement for Simpler’s Slicing
mode.

Also, there is no clean warping

feature in Sampler that achieves the
 feature in Sampler that achieves the
same results as Simpler’s Warp
button. But it’s very easy to drag a
sample out onto a track, use the
great clip warping modes as needed,
and then drag the warped clip back
into Sampler. And it’s also very
easy to use Serato Sample for super
clean and super easy warping and
pitch changing in a Sampler context.
Freeze Bounce in Place Bitwig’s Bounce in Place is not
Freeze + Flatten Bounce exactly identical to Ableton’s
Freeze, but doing Bounce and then
deactivating the original track has a
very similar outcome. You simply
reactivate the original track if you
ever need to tweak the original
MIDI, presets, and audio
processing, then re-do the Bounce
and deactivate the original track
again.

This might seem like a PITA and

“too many steps”, but the amazing
flexibility of Bitwig’s two bouncing
operations plus the flexibility of
using hybrid tracks in Bitwig far
outweigh any downsides.
Slice to new MIDI track Slice to Drum Machine Nearly identical
Slice to Multisample
Amp Amp Bitwig’s Amp device is the
functionality of Ableton’s Amp and
Cabinet devices baked into one
device.
Arpeggiator Arpeggiator Nearly identical
Audio Rack Chain Bitwig runs circles around Ableton
FX Layer here
FX Selector
XY FX
Auto Filter Filter
-plus-
LFO modulator (or any
modulator)
Cabinet Amp Bitwig’s Amp device is the
functionality of Ableton’s Amp and
Cabinet devices baked into one
device.
Chord Multi-Note Nearly identical
Chorus Chorus
Compressor Compressor Bitwig’s Compressor is an analog-
modeled version of the UREI 1176
FET-style compressor, so it’s bright
and punchy and very suited for
Drums.
 Confusingly, though, Bitwig’s
Compressor does not have
sidechain input! This is because this
is essentially an 1176 (which never
has sidechain inputs in any modeled
emulation).

For sidechaining, you need to use

the more “digital” Dynamics
device.
Echo Delay-2 Echo is simply a 2-tap delay with
some creative modulators built into
it, plus a nice visualization of the
delay spacing and decay.

Bitwig has 3 different delay devices

and you can add any of Bitwig’s
crazy modulators to each one.
Therefore, you can build racks that
emulate some or all of the features
of Echo, but as with many things in
Bitwig, you have to be comfortable
building racks and understanding all
the various ways you can use
modulators for creative processing.
Erosion Delay-1 Similar to Echo, this is simply a
single-tap delay with three specific
built-in modulators to create
interesting bitcrushing-like effects.
You could easily build racks in
Bitwig to simulate the same basic
effects.
EQ Eight EQ-5
EQ Three EQ-2
EQ-DJ
External Audio Effect HW FX
Filter Delay Delay-3 Similar to Echo, this is simply a 3-
tap delay with high- and low-pass
filters in front of each tap. Easy to
build a rack like this in Bitwig.
Flanger Flanger
Frequency Shifter Freq Shifter
-also-
Ring-Mod
Gate Gate
Limiter Peak Limiter
Multiband Dynamics (OTT) Multiband FX-3 (or FX-2) Super easy to build a rack preset
-plus- that duplicates the behavior of
Dynamics Ableton’s Multiband Dynamics
exactly.

Bitwig’s approach also allows

downward compression (gating) of
the quieter part of the signal, and
 the quieter part of the signal, and
allows upward compression of the
louder part of the signal. Ableton
can do neither.
Note Length Note Length Ableton’s version can optionally
alter the note length in a “key
tracking” manner, but Bitwig’s
cannot.
Phaser Phaser
Pitch Note Pitch Shifter Nearly identical, but the “Pitch”
knob itself has a 128-note range in
Ableton’s version, but only a 97-
note range in the Bitwig version.
Redux Bit-8 Bitwig’s Bit-8 is way more
powerful and flexible.
Reverb Reverb Every digital reverb out there is
very idiosyncratic. Both of these
reverbs serve the same function but
they’re totally different in their
modeling and configuration. You
can’t transfer much of what you
know about the Ableton Reverb to
the Bitwig Reverb. (And vice-
versa.)
Resonators Resonator Bank Nearly identical
Scale Diatonic Transposer Bitwig’s Transposition Map is
Transposition Map nearly identical to Ableton’s Scale,
except that Bitwig’s device is a lot
less confusing to use and set up.

Bitwig’s Diatonic Transposer is

even more user friendly, lets you
simply pick a scale or mode by
name, instead of having to
remember the exact intervals in the
desired scale/mode.
Simple Delay Delay-2
Spectrum Spectrum Analyzer Both of them suck. There are 3rd
party spectrum analyzers that run
circles around both of these.
Utility Tool The Pan knob in Bitwig’s Tool is a
pseudo-panning “LR balance”
control like the default behavior of
Ableton’s Utility.

However, while in Ableton you can

toggle Utility to provide additional
knobs that can perform a true stereo
field panorama, you can’t do this in
Bitwig’s Tool. Instead, you simply
use a first-class Bitwig device called
Dual Pan to perform true stereo
field panorama.