Groove Pattern / Quantize Grid Template

General
,
1

I’ve made a lot of music where I use odd rhythms that do not follow the classic european / western-world rhythms offered in Bitwig’s “Play” menu. When using Bitwig I really miss this ability.

Basically, Bitwig’s current support for rhythms seems very culturally specific, and very centered around a 4/4 rhythm, with only some support for triplets and such. Several other DAWs offer custom grids. This concept has many names, but the idea is the same: Allowing any rhythm, not just 4/4, triplets, and such. Here’s a screenshot of Samplitude showing a custom made rhythm pattern:

image
image681×292 18.4 KB

Notice how both the visual grid as well as the actual quantize function and input qualitization all follow this. It would be super cool if the custom rhythm pattern could be selected as the fundamental rhythm for the whole song, causing it to be the default for any new stems that you record.

To clarify what I am hoping for with this feature quest: It is not just applied destructively like in Reaper. Also, it’s not just hacked on top of a 4/4 or 3/4 rhytm using NoteFX. What I think would be the better solution is to have these custom rhythm patterns be fully supported by Bitwig itself as an alternative to the current selection of rhythms for the song, the one at the bottom of the “Play” menu.

Like, imagine if the selection was: [ Off ] [ Custom ] [ 1/32 ] [ 1/16 ] [ 1/8 ] [ 1/4 ]

Where “custom” means a groove pattern that the user can somehow make or give to bitwig. This could be a .mid file containing one bar of notes, or even just a simple .json or .ini file or something.

I hope this explanation makes sense. It’s really one of the things I miss the most when working with Bitwig.

2

currently you can kinda hack your way through it using automation clips in v6, since you can place time signature change markers in automation clip and just loop it through arrangement (until you need a different clip with different spacings). this approach does affect the gridline of arranger, but for note clips you have to edit them in track mode to see this grid.
image

image
image1121×247 8.86 KB

but I agree that we need more direct way of doing this as well as perhaps groove pool implementation that shapes the arranger Grid as you said. per clip or per project also.

3

There are certainly ways to hack around this, and none of them are perfect. I wrote this feature request hoping not having to use work-arounds in the future.

PS: I forgot to explain a detail about the screenshot posted: The label that says “Cumbia II” is where you would usually see stuff like “1/8” or “1/16” or whatever grid / quantization subdivision chosen – unless you pick a custom groove pattern.