Bitwig Studio 5.1

Bitwig goes from strength to strength as v5.1 introduces a host of new features.

It must be pretty close to 10 years since I first visited Bitwig in their top‑floor offices in Berlin, where they were showing off the first version of their Studio DAW. In the intervening time the software has acquired a powerful modulation system, a modular grid‑based synthesis and effects environment, and much more besides. We are now at version 5.1 of Bitwig Studio, itself quite a step beyond version 5, so where has the modular music making program got to one decade on?

Curves & Segments

Let’s jump straight into modulation. Bitwig 5.1 sports a new set of modulators, and modules for the Grid environment, that are built around an extensible library of freeform curves. Overall these components are referred to as MSEGs (Multi‑Segment Envelope Generators). There’s a browser for selecting curve shapes, and edited shapes can be added to the library at any time. (We’ll look at editing shortly.) These curves are truly generic: they can be used as waveforms, waveshapers, LFOs, sequencers, envelopes or even keyboard tracking functions (should you think linear pitch‑tracking is a little passé). The curves are categorised (envelope, lookup, sequence, etc) but these tags are purely advisory.

Hedgehogs to holy stupas: some of Bitwig’s library curves.

Let’s look at the modulators first. Segments is an envelope supporting one‑shot triggering, single‑point hold or two‑point looping (forward or ping‑pong). The hold or loop points can be anywhere in the curve, though they do have to be edit points: you can’t arbitrarily loop part of a segment. (You can add more points to a segment if you need them.) As with many modulators, Segments can be per‑voice or monophonic, in which case an instance can retrigger per note‑on, or trigger only for a new note when none is already held. There’s a smoothing parameter, with variable time, to take the hard edge off any shapes with sharp corners, or to create more gradual movement.

Curves is an LFO with tempo or Hertz timing, mono or polyphonic as per Segments, with sync’able phase, or the ability to randomise phase per note. Keytrack+ is probably the oddest of the bunch, using a curve to map incoming note pitch to a modulation value. There’s already a relative keytrack modulator, which is fairly sophisticated, allowing a multi‑break‑point transfer function to be set up by MIDI note and level: this remains as a legacy feature. Keytrack+ allows arbitrary curves to be used instead. I’m not sure I’d need this instead of the existing keytracker, but some possibility may still come to mind, maybe involving some radical kind of modulation by distinct keyboard zone.

Segments and Curves are both available as modules in the Grid modular environment, and Segments works as a drop‑in envelope generator in the Polymer synth. Keytrack+ isn’t provided directly in the Grid, but there’s a curve‑based waveshaping module called Transfer, which you can certainly attach to incoming pitch to achieve the same end. Transfer has a drive parameter calibrated in dB and an anti‑aliasing option, suggesting that it’s really intended for use in audio processing.

The Segments modulator and the pop‑up editing interface for MSEG curves.

The Grid also uses MSEG curves to provide Scrawl, an oscillator module that plays a curve as a single‑cycle waveform — again available in Polymer also — and Slopes, a data sequencer that locks to the phase of the Grid device (specified in bars or beats). Slopes isn’t available as a modulator outside the Grid, but the Curves LFO modulator can be tempo‑synchronised, and since it uses the same curve shapes it can serve the same purpose.

All modules and modulators based on MSEGs share a common editing interface. Click on any curve displayed in any of these modules or modulators, and a pop‑up window appears showing the curve with its control points and a set of editing tools. Top‑left are icons for selecting a curve from the library, and for saving an edited curve back into the library with a new name and metadata. (Each curve is saved in Bitwig’s library in BWCURVE format, which at present is undocumented; it would be great to see third‑party curve libraries, or tools to generate new sets of curves algorithmically from scratch.) Each curve sits in an editing grid which can be resized, and there are tools for altering curve segments in this grid as triangle or block‑shaped elements, or you can turn the grid off for completely freeform editing. Alt‑drag adds curvature to segments. If you’re editing a Scrawl oscillator then the waveform you’re hearing will change even as you drag points to edit, which is a nice touch.

The overall naming is a little confusing (Slopes, Segments and Curves are similar names for similar features, while Scrawl is the oscillator). The Grid also has a ‘Curve’ module for shaping, which is distinct from Curves. However, the Grid’s default colour coding helps differentiate between the variants.

Track & Project Modulation

Every device in a Bitwig project has two sets of control inputs: the modulators and the remote controls. The modulators can be thought of as enhancements to a device, adding automation‑like behaviours that might take effect note by note (for example, envelopes) or for the device as a whole (for example, traditional MIDI controller inputs or on‑screen X/Y pads). The remote controls section supports individual pages of up to eight controls; each control is really just a convenient duplicate of a parameter in the device or one of its modulators. Because the controls in a page are in one place they can be conveniently mapped as a group to a physical MIDI controller (such as my cheap but trusty eight‑knob Akai LPD8). A device instance can sport multiple pages of controls, and by default the live mapping of physical MIDI knobs to on‑screen controls follows the currently selected device and page.

So far, nothing new: Bitwig has had modulators and remote controls for a while, although Bitwig 5 now gives most device modulators their own remote control pages alongside those of the device or the specific preset. The major enhancement in this area is that tracks themselves, and a project as a whole, can sport modulators and remote control pages. Group tracks can also have their own modulators and remote controls, targeting the group itself or the tracks within the groups.

Remote controls at the device, track and project level.

Whether or not you have a physical MIDI controller that you are using to operate the remotes, it’s a bit of an inconvenience to have to click between tracks and devices to navigate between control pages. Now it’s possible to show a panel of controls directly in the mixer’s track view. Do this with the controls set up at track level, and you can see them across all the tracks at a single glance. As you navigate between tracks (using the computer’s arrow keys, perhaps), by default the MIDI controller assignment will follow the panel of the selected track. Set up your control mappings correctly, and you can probably lay out all the control points for an entire live set across the track view, all visible and reachable at once. As an aside, it’s possible to MIDI‑map the selection of the pages within a remote control panel for a device or track, and the pages do indeed change in the mixer section as well. One feature request: some kind of textual indication of the actual controls page currently showing in the mixer.

Remote control pages reformatted and slotted into the mixer view.

This is all very well for remote controls at the track or project level (the project controls are associated with the master track), but you’re equally likely to want access to instrument and effect parameters from the mixer. You can do this manually by assigning a mapping from a track control page to a device control page. The track control panel will also display some device pages directly, as ‘aliases’. Quite which pages are available is a bit of a mystery, but the target usually seems to be the last instrument in a device chain; effects devices aren’t included. (Bitwig have since confirmed that instrument preset pages are made available as aliases, for one instrument at most per track; global instrument and effects pages are not.)

Back to modulators. The modulators at the track level cannot operate polyphonically as they are not attached to instruments, which can layer voices — so the voice stacking modulator, to pick a contrived example, is disabled. LFOs can be run in monophonic mode but not per voice. I was surprised to discover that the note‑counting modulator, which provides a stepped modulation output as it counts incoming notes, will actually work at track level, as will various MIDI‑in modulators like the mod‑wheel‑driven vibrato LFO.

Track modulators can target any device in the track, and in the case of a group track, any device in the tracks that are grouped. In addition, track modulators can affect the track themselves: level, effects sends, pan and mute status, and crossfade mode. The modulators at project level can affect all tracks including the master, plus global settings such as fill (used to control the note triggering operators) and tempo. Tempo modulation has no visual feedback (there’s no readout of the current effective tempo), and, as fun as it might be, I’d recommend steering clear of this: the ramifications to things like audio warping in recorded clips are unclear, at least to me. (Examining a Bitwig session with an LFO affecting tempo, I saw the real‑time position indication in minutes and seconds was also changing speed, which was slightly disconcerting.)

Filters, Waveshapers & Bite

There are four new filters and six waveshapers added to Bitwig’s audio toolbox. These are implemented at the level of the modular Grid environment, so can be used directly if you’re building or modifying Grid instruments or audio effects. The filters can be swapped into Polymer, the Grid‑built synth, and both filters and waveshapers can be swapped into Filter+ and Sweep, two new effects devices we’ll look at shortly.

Waveshaper and filter sit side by side in the Filter+ effect.

There are now sufficiently many filters and waveshapers (10 and 14 respectively, by my count) that they are divided into categories. Filters are now ‘structural’ for the basics, ‘inspired’ for those that nod towards classic hardware, or ‘character’ for something new (in concept, and new in Bitwig 5). Waveshapers are ‘one knob’, which speaks for itself (although these ones also have an anti‑aliasing switch), ‘parametric’ for more sophistication or, again, ‘character’ for something new.

I used a basic preset for Polymer to work through the new filters. ‘Vowels’ is a newcomer in the ‘inspired’ category, dropping in alongside the existing Oberheim‑style XP and Moog‑style low‑pass MG. To say that Vowels is distinctive would, I think, be a bit of an understatement. It can dynamically blend across five slots, each of which carries one of 27 possible vowel sounds. Then there are selectable voice profiles: different variants of male, female and child. There’s a resonance control, detuning of the filter bank, and even a variable topology to rearrange the audio flow through the filters. To add to the potential for variation, all of these parameters can be modulated. The Vowels sound is rich and clean, but you might want to steer clear of the most obvious vocal‑like treatments, unless that’s really your thing: luckily, there are enough controls here to get into more interesting and synthetic, and much less vocal, territory.

The ‘character’ filters, called Fizz, Rasp and Ripple, are variations on a theme: there’s an internal feedback connection, and associated feedback gain or cutoff controls. The Ripple filter has a ‘Nature’ control with three settings: Earth, Wind and Fire. (Perhaps Water was too difficult to implement?) The documentation for these is a little bit inscrutable, but that really doesn’t matter: they sound wonderful, picking out and tickling the harmonics with some gentle distortion, without things getting out of control. Ripple, in particular, has a way of bringing out details in beat patterns, which I found particularly engaging.

Not being a modular synth hardware geek, I don’t spend a lot of time with waveshapers, so these new ‘character’ modules didn’t jump out at me, but the Howl and Shred variants seemed the most interesting in terms of pulling interesting things out of the frequency spectrum, and despite their names seemed eminently controllable and predictable. All of the waveshapers seemed to be good complements to wavetable oscillators, adding an extra dimension of continuous tonal exploration.

Outside the Grid, there are a couple of new audio effect devices that act as hosts for these filters and waveshapers — much like the Polymer synth, these are actually built using the Grid, so you can open them up and dive deeper into the details if you so wish. Filter+ has a slot for a waveshaper and one for a filter, the audio passing through them in that order. For good measure it also has a dedicated LFO, which can run at audio frequency for generating side‑band harmonics, and a modulator which tracks audio level. The LFO runs in stereo, with a phase offset between left and right channels: this is indicated in the LFO icon. It’s not immediately clear how this affects the operation of Filter+ — the presets didn’t present any obvious stereo behaviour — but if you convert the device into an FX Grid instance then you can use the stereo output from the LFO however you like. There’s no editing of the LFO phase or shape skew in the Filter+ panel, but the Grid view provides access to these.

If Filter+ isn’t sophisticated enough for your needs, a device called Sweep hosts two filters with a waveshaper in the middle, and has a morphing control to shift smoothly between different variants of serial and parallel routing through them.

While we’re on the topic of modules for the Grid (and for Polymer), there’s a new oscillator module called Bite. It’s a dual‑oscillator module: the identical oscillators come with a selection of wave shapes, most of them amenable to PWM. Oscillator B can be hard‑sync’ed to A, but more interesting (in my opinion) is that B can be frequency‑modulated from A, and the mixer output includes a level control for the ring‑modulation of A and B. In the context of the Grid, the two oscillators can be decoupled so that they can be modulated by the left and right components of a control signal (a reminder: the Grid runs end‑to‑end in stereo).

I found that Bite is indeed capable of biting, and it took me a while to get some engaging FM and ring‑modulated tones out of it (turning off hard sync helped!). In the end, I was more taken with the slow, sustained textures I was able to generate — helped a lot by the stereo detuning parameter, which sounds rather sweet. Bite doesn’t contain any internal modulation controls — there’s no dedicated LFO, for instance — so in the Grid you’d need to wire up your own, and in Polymer make use of the modulator slots.

The sheer selection of filters and waveshapers, and their parameters, did start to feel a little overwhelming, but Bitwig 5 comes with a new package called Wavescapes and Filter Shapes, which is packed full of instrument and effect presets showing off what can be achieved.

Voice Stacking & Control

A plethora of voice stacking distributions.The instrument voice stacking features have been expanded, shifting them from the category of cool into slightly mind‑bending. The voice stacking limit, which used to be five in Bitwig 4, is now 16. The Stack Spread modulator, which applies a distinct degree of fixed modulation to each of the layered voices, has been expanded with a range of distributions. The inspector panel for the modulator has a visual per‑voice visualisation indicator, which shows how much modulation has been applied to each voice: these indicators will be static for most distributions, but for the random distributions the indicators will jump to new positions for each note played. If you really feel that you need even more voice‑specific control, the new Voice Control modulator provides a distinct modulation source for each voice, so that each of the layered voices in a stack can modulate a completely different set of device parameters than any other voice. So, yes, the voices can be manually detuned or panned — or they can be playing different waves in a wavetable, have different filter algorithms (so yes, you presumably can get Earth, Wind and Fire from playing one note through the Ripple filter), different envelope shapes, and so on. I’m sure there are even more wild and bizarre possibilities that I’ve not thought of.

In the Grid, there is a Voice Stack Mix audio module offering per‑voice mixdown. I had to sit down and think about this one for a moment, and the documentation is a little terse, but my take is: drop this into the audio path of the Grid instrument at some stage, and it will apply level and pan on a voice‑by‑voice basis: there’s a control panel that lists the voices with their own volume and pan knobs, and mute and solo buttons. All the controls in this panel can also be modulated — this appears to be averaged from all stacked voices monophonically. There is also a simpler Voice Stack Tog module with buttons for enabling or disabling voices — and again, these buttons can be modulated.

New Grid Modules

Some mathematical processors in the Grid.A number of new modules have been added to the Grid, over and above the various MSEG modulators and shapers. There are some additions and updates to the maths modules, including exponent and root (the exponent can be negative to divide by a value), a pitch operator for imposing an S‑curve on a signal or phase, a signal amplifier, and converters between note pitch value and Hertz. There is also a wavetable LFO, index‑sweepable, using the same tables as the wavetable oscillator. It took me a while to find the modulation input for wavetable position: it’s towards the right of the panel, rather than along the left edge.

Clip Launching

The clip launching machinery has been upgraded, allowing more flexible performance options. The most basic clip launching method (‘Trigger from Start’) is, unsurprisingly, to launch from a clip’s start. Depending on the quantisation setting for the clip, this might be immediate (unquantised) or at some bar/beat interval in the future. ‘Legato from Clip (or Start)’ looks to see whether another clip in the track is playing, in which case playback ‘punches in’ at the corresponding position in the new clip. (The starting position seems to be the mathematically sensible point if the two clips are different lengths, wrapping the position if necessary.) ‘Legato from Clip (or Project)’ behaves the same, unless there’s no clip playing, in which case the punch‑in position is calculated from the transport position, wrapped round by the clip length. Another way to think about that is that you have the option to launch the clip immediately without quantising, but its playback position will be quantised according to its loop length. ‘Legato from Project’ does this punch‑in calculation from the transport regardless of whether any other clip is already playing.

The various clip launching modes.

It is now possible to perform an action on release of mouse or trackpad button (or controller pad). Apart from the default action of doing nothing (and letting the clip continue, if it hasn’t stopped already), there’s stopping the clip (which respects quantisation) returning to the previous playing clip (or the linear Arrangement), or triggering the clip’s Next Action.

A clip can have two completely different groups of settings for launch quantisation, play mode and release action. One (called Main) is the default, the other (referred to as Alt) is enabled by holding the Alt/Option key on the computer, or dedicated Shift key on a controller. The actions available for Main and Alt are the same, and you can even pull tricks like Main‑clicking a clip and then Alt‑releasing it, or vice versa.

All these settings are available on a clip‑by‑clip basis, but there is also a set of defaults at the project level if the settings need to be shared and managed more centrally. Also, these settings can be established for a scene, optionally overriding the settings for the clips in the scene. (Arguably, it would make sense to have defaults at the track level too.) I was rather pleased to discover that scene launching also respects release actions: ‘release’ a scene launch and the release actions of all of its clips are activated.

MIDI mappings for navigating scenes and tracks.

It’s possible to MIDI‑map clip and scene launching, and I can report that ‘release’ actions work as well: note‑off acts as release, and if a continuous controller is mapped, then a high value is a launch while a low value is a release. As I write this, there is no way to generically map a MIDI controller to select between Main and Alt actions; that action has be to supported in controller scripts for specific controllers (currently, Novation Launchpads and Akai APCs).

MIDI mappings can be set up for specific scenes, but there’s also a set of mappable controls for navigating the scene list as a whole: mapping targets to launch the previous or next scene, or to ‘cue’ the next scene to be launched. It’s also possible to MIDI‑launch a track: this launches the clip, or clip slot, for that track at the cued scene. Perhaps for simplicity’s sake, these controls don’t invoke release actions. It’s certainly nice to see more sophisticated scene launching options, which in combination with the remote control views in the mixer should make live performance more flexible and less onerous to set up.

More and more, Bitwig is feeling less like a DAW and more like a sophisticated modular toolbox for sound design and performance.

Conclusion

When I started working with Bitwig Studio 5, and then version 5.1, nothing really jumped out at me as the Big New Idea justifying the upgrade. Yes, the browser is markedly better, and the interface overall is cleaner and clearer. It took a somewhat closer look to get a sense of where the builders had been at work: Grid filters and waveshapers, modulators, clip launching, remote controls, track controls, and so on. A lot of effort has been applied here, removing pain points from the previous version, and really adding power and flexibility where it’s needed. More and more, Bitwig is feeling less like a DAW and more like a sophisticated modular toolbox for sound design and performance. The actual box hasn’t changed that much, but many of the tools have been improved, some replaced, and a whole bunch of new ones added. I spent a considerable period of time while Bitwig 5 was in beta going back to using the Bitwig 4 release for commercial projects, and I’m glad I can finally shift up to 5.1 and adopt the new ecosystem in anger.