Bitwig 5.3 and previous featured robust tools for doing orchestration-style work across multiple midi tracks in the note editor. Bitwig 6 removed those features, and according to support they do not currently have plans to restore them.
I would like to have a mode for the note editor bringing back the full hierarchical track list with pin and lock functionaity similar to Bitwig 5.3; ideally with pin/lock at the group level as well.
What problem(s) would this feature resolve?
Bitwig 6 makes working with midi as a cohesive track nearly impossible. This involves juxtaposing the information in one midi clip with information in other midi clips at the same timepoint or in neighboring timepoints.
In Bitwig 5.3’s note editor in “track” view, there is a hierarchical list of tracks along the left-hand side. Each track has pin and lock icons; pinning a track keeps it visible, locking a track prevents one from editing it, regardless of what one does in the arranger view, such as moving a clip, joining two clips (so a note can extend between them), changing up the track structure, etc.
In Bitwig 6 this has changed such that, if you want a track to be visible in the note editor, it has to be selected in the arranger. If you go to the arranger for any reason: moving or resizing a clip, joining clips, changing up the track structure, etc, your working state in the note editor changes to reflect the new active track(s)/clip(s).
There are features for restoring this via history, but this feels like a weak cop-out: history is limited to ten states, there is no way to bookmark or otherwise preserve a state, that view history is unpredictable if the track structure has changed.
You can’t “pin” trakcs to keep them visible like you can in 5.3. There is a very naive “lock” facility with the filter icon, but this makes it so only the active track is editable, instead of keeping one group locked while editing another group. The track list is no longer hierarchical reflecting the track structure, and if you have mutliple tracks with the same name and color, there is now no way to distinguish them in that list.
Building up complex selections is difficult: One modifier is a “range” selector, including everything between the last selection and the new one; one is a toggle selector, adding or removing something from the selection. If I have 30+ tracks and want to get a set of 12 of those which aren’t just a single branch in the track hierarchy in the note editor view, it’s 10-20 seconds of fiddly work, which I have to repeat every time I need to join two clips because I want a note to span the clips Bitwig created automatically when I just drew notes into the editor.
Futhermore, selecting a group which includes MIDI and audio tracks now puts one into the hybrid editor instead of the note editor, and the hybrid editor separates out note lanes per-track into what I think of as “the drum editor”. I never want this; but I also do not want to have to strucutre my busses such that audio and midi are in separate groups.
Finally, the note editor now colors portions of its background to reflect a clip in-place. This makes it much more difficult to see low-velocity or locked notes in comparison to the visuals for the note editor in previous versions.
How does this feature fit in Bitwig as a product?
It would restore feature parity with Bitwig 5.3 as the best piano roll editors for orchestration work with MPE or CV instruments.
Is there already an alternative way to achieve this on Bitwig?
Keep using Bitwig 5.3 instead of 6.
Could it be implemented using Bitwig components or APIs, without Bitwig team’s support?
No.
Could it be provided by a VST or something else reasonably integrated with Bitwig?
Lol no.
Are there other products that offer this feature?
I am told by people in the film scoring community that Cubase, Reaper, Logic, and Studio One all feature robust tools for managing midi across multiple tracks. I have considered switching, but those programs do not however feature many of the other things I value in Bitwig:
- robust MPE support
- easy modulation for nodes in the audio graph
- first-class support for external equiment including CV-based synths over DC-coupled interfaces
- support for multiple monitors
- a more-or-less unified user interface; it doesn’t feel like a product with corners that haven’t been touched in 10-20 years
- Linux support