Hi @pseudonym_303, thank you for submitting this request.
A couple of elements that could be added to the description:
Bitwig has the Key Filter device (formerly named Diatonic Transposer, no wonder they renamed it). It doesn’t provide this feature as requested but it helps achieving the same results: stay on key no matter what you do in the editor panel / piano roll. It could be mentioned in the section about alternative ways.
There is a related feature request that would help users stay in key: Introduce chords as musical units. I will edit the descriptions of both requests to link to each other.
Some tips related to Writing a good feature request, to make this request more “standard” and something that others can feel as theirs as you.
Please avoid first person.
Let’s suggest one specific way to solve the problem (i.e. FL’s implementation). Or more, but then explaining how it would work. Vague statements like “some kind of” make your proposal sound vague, when in fact you are offering a clear default plan.
The “problem” section should focus explaining the problem, there you are explaining the solution (and that text is food for the first section above). The idea of this section is to be clear about the problem, so that other solutions can be imagined as long as they address the problem identified.
After addressing these points, this request will likely be good to go.
These video published today shows a couple of workarounds related to this request, and I have added them to the description:
Mattias Holmgren - Awesome Piano Roll Scale Tricks // Scale Guide in Bitwig Studio
About the implementation details, the comments above make me think that, if the Bitwig team is interested, probably they will have an opinion about this.
Certain devices affecting the piano roll… sounds fragile, and right now we don’t have anything like this, do we? Also, devices are placed at the track level, and usually you want a scale across all tracks at the same time. And you can change the scale in the middle of a song, but then you want all tracks to follow the new scale.
The Key Filter device offers already a good UI to select scales. It could be reused (just the scale selector) wherever the scale could be defined.
Because I don’t think we will nail this down here and now and the description itself seems to be fine, I will move the draft to Features.
It doesn’t provide this feature as requested but it helps achieving the same results: stay on key no matter what you do in the editor panel / piano roll. It could be mentioned in the section about alternative ways.
