Page 3: Bitwig Studio 3

Zoning In

Amidst all the options for sample mangling and manipulation that have arrived in Bitwig Studio 3, it's easy to forget that Sampler is essentially designed for playing back samples from a keyboard, which implies support for multiple zones according to pitch and velocity. Everything we've described about Cycles and Textures can be applied to a setup of multiple zones. Parameters such as sample source, play start and end, loop mode and location are zone-specific; the play mode (Repitch, Cycles or Textures), freeze setting, filter and envelope settings are common across all zones.

Zone editing in the list view, showing some pitch and select crossfades in a single zone group.

Previous versions of Sampler supported zones for pitch and velocity, but in a rudimentary manner: a simple jump from one zone to another without any overlap or fading. (You could overlap zones visually, but only one would be active in the overlap area.) Version 3 brings a much more sophisticated zoning scheme. Zones can overlap, and the 'expanded device view', where you set up the zones, has been improved: there's a sample drop area to the left, zones can be dragged around in the pitch/velocity space, and there's now an inspector pane for zones which allows fine-tuning of parameters.

The zone inspector pane provides easy access to some of the most important sample parameters, such as playback and looping boundaries and tuning, but there are some new parameters here as well. At the top of the pane is a group selection menu: zones can be collected into groups for editing, so that a single parameter edit can be applied to all zones in the group: useful, for example, to nudge a related set of zones up or down together in the MIDI pitch range. Below are parameter boxes for key and velocity, as a substitute for graphically dragging the edges of the zone boxes, and parameters for fade amount: this is where you'd set up your pitch and velocity crossfades. And there's an additional zoning parameter called 'select', accessed by a knob in the main Sampler panel (and amenable to MIDI or automation control or modulation); you can arrange your zones to fall into areas of the select range, so that the select value dictates which zone is played on Note On. And just to add some more zone selection options, zones can play 'round-robin', so that in any area of zone overlap the zones are triggered sequentially per note rather than all at once.

If you want to see the crossfade areas, you have to switch to a second view of the zones called the 'list view'. Here the zones are laid out from top to bottom, with one column for key range and one column switchable between velocity and select. The fade regions are shown in place. (Fade values can be edited in the inspector, or graphically by Alt-dragging in the column area.)

And just when you thought the Sampler modulation scheme couldn't get any more sophisticated, enter zone parameters. Three modulation sources (labelled P1, P2 and P3) can be applied to the Sampler voice architecture (including its modulators). Then each zone can set its own values for these parameters, so that different zones can have individual voice variations. With zone parameters, stacking parameters and round-robin triggering, the potential to animate a sample set is immense. (Much as I'd hate to complicate things further, it would be good to also have modulation sources representing position-in-zone by key, velocity or select in order to create a spread of parameter values across an entire zone.)

I've spent a lot of time describing Sampler, but in Studio 3 it really has been transformed into a truly sophisticated instrument, with myriad modulation and performance options. While some of these features are found in third-party instruments such as Native Instruments' Kontakt, the way that Sampler integrates into Bitwig Studio makes it a compelling environment, even for users (like me) who don't generally work with sample libraries.

Count Me In

Since Bitwig Studio is so strong on modulation, it makes sense that some new modulators should arrive as part of this upgrade. Note Counter counts upwards as notes are played, resetting to zero when the count reaches a configurable limit, and the output modulation amount is a measure of how far the count is towards the limit. It is a polyphonic modulator, affecting instrument voices individually. I tested this by applying it to position offset in a Sampler instrument, and was rather confused to see the position marker jumping around in a fairly random manner, until I realised that this was Bitwig switching its visual sample display between the different voices as they triggered and expired. (I should have trusted my ears, which were telling me that everything was working as expected!) I should also emphasise that Note Counter actually appears to count voices rather than notes, so if you are stacking voices the counter will advance quicker than you might expect.

Step-sequencing lots of parameters at once with ParSeq-8.A more complex newcomer is a modulator called ParSeq-8, a parameter step sequencer. Bitwig Studio already has Steps, a step sequencer which can control a single modulation parameter. ParSeq-8 is a more complex proposition: each step (up to a maximum of eight) is its own modulation source, and can be applied to any number of parameters in the modulator's device (or for that matter in other modulators). By default, each step is independent: when the step begins, all of its modulations are applied, to an amount specified by a slider for the step; when the step finishes, all modulations are reset to zero, and the next step takes over. Steps can be disabled, and each step has a 'hold' switch which holds the modulations of the previous step unless the new step is applied to any of the same parameters. There's a control for shifting the phase of the entire sequence, and another for smoothing the modulation changes. And, again, aspects of the steps (on/off, hold, modulation amount) can also themselves be modulated. I found ParSeq-8 to be an immensely powerful way to generate new rhythmic ideas: find an instrument preset with a full set of remote control knobs (FM-4 or Phase-4 are good choices, since the controls tend to make drastic timbral changes, and if there are embedded audio effects, so much the better), create a clip with a simple repeating MIDI pattern, and then start arbitrarily modulating the remote controls with steps until something compelling emerges.

Lost In Actions

Clips in the clip launcher (as opposed to the linear arrangement) now support 'next actions' to allow playback to transfer between clips in the same track. After a set period of time once the clip launches, specified in bars, beats and ticks, the specified action fires. Actions include Stop (stop the current clip), Return to last Clip (return to the clip playing immediately before this one), Return to Arrangement (return control to the linear arrangement) as well as selection of first, last, previous, next or random actions. As well as actions which take place within the same contiguous block of clips in a track, actions can 'jump the gap' and target other contiguous blocks. However, there's no probabilistic selection of actions: each clip has one possible action at a fixed time. (I wouldn't be surprised to see a selection feature in a future release.)

A clutch of interface improvements have also made their way into Studio 3. Tracks and scenes now have variable width (though scenes have to be viewed horizontally for resizing), and scenes now support custom colours. In the arranger view, audio can be 'slid' back and forth without moving the enclosing clip. Support has been added for new controllers from Novation, Sensel and others. Textual hints for mouse actions are now provided in a footer area at the bottom of the application window, and if you have an external controller with knobs or sliders that can send control change messages, the state of these controls is also shown in the footer, colour-coded and labelled with the names of the parameters they are bound to. And a handful of existing devices have been given minor improvements.

Of course, there are invariably one or two niggles. In the standard vertically stacked launcher view, the scene column itself cannot be resized, so you can only see the first few characters of the scene name. (When working in theatre, I put dialogue cues into scene names, so they need to be long.) Audio files cannot be renamed. Remote control knobs cannot have their target range scaled (you have to use a modulator for that). And projects are completely independent, so if you make backup copies or distinct versions they all end up with a complete copy of all the audio assets. (But at least you can have multiple projects open at the same time to move material between them.) None of these is a show-stopper, more a reminder that every DAW has its own ways of working and its own interface trade-offs.

All in all, Bitwig Studio continues to advance by leaps and bounds. Version 1 was respectable, but version 2 brought the modulation system centre-stage and, in my opinion, repositioned Bitwig Studio as both DAW and fledgling modular synthesis engine. With 2.4, the Sampler instrument was reworked and enhanced, delivering granular and wavetable synthesis, and leveraging the modulation system to radically expand the program's sound design potential.

With the arrival of The Grid in Studio 3, Bitwig have knocked the ball out of the park. While it may not be the most powerful software modular in the world, the integration between The Grid and the rest of the DAW is deep and thorough, opening up creative possibilities and realising the full potential of the modulation system which arrived in version 2. Whether you approach Bitwig Studio as a DAW with a modular synthesizer at its core, or an extensible modular environment with multitrack recording and processing on the side — or both — this is an exciting hybrid design philosophy that calls out for new imaginative ways of working in response, and finally sets the application truly apart from the pack.

Checkout the SOS Tutorials video on Bitwig Grid.