Psst! Check the upcoming Bitwig Video Guide (an experiment)

About Bitwish
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Two days ago I had an idea and I saw no reason not to try it out: a Bitwig Video Guide.

I’m still building it, and this is just a silent announcement for whoever finds this post and is interested. :slight_smile: Documentation will come, for now we have this:

READ FIRST! How the unofficial Bitwig Video Guide works

If you have questions or feedback, please ask/share. I’m really curious to know what you think about this experiment insider the experiment that Bitwish already is.

Links to videos welcome!

If you or someone you know produces videos about Bitwig, the gate is open to link to them in their corresponding topics. Once the links to the video are posted, people can upvote them – as we do here in Bitwish. :sunglasses:

So looking forward to seeing what comes up out of this! Bitwig has an amazing community, and some of its members produce very informative videos with love and dedication. Most of what I know about Bitwig (and music production) comes from them,. and I hope this little experiment helps them a bit getting more viewers, commenters, and subscribers.

Important detail: muted categories

This Bitwig Video Guide is meant to be opt-in. Its categories are muted by default, to avoid flooding everybody’s timelines with posts that maybe they don’t care about because they came here to participate in a community wishlist.

If you want to opt-in to a category (or even a specific topic), click the bell icon that you always find on the right side of Bitwish pages, and select your preferred level of notifications.

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2 posts were split to a new topic: Please deactivate annoying notifications

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I am starting creating topic for devices, modulators and Grid modules, because this is where the specialized videos can be found, and they are not always easy to find when you search for them.

I have contacted several people publishing Bitwig videos on YouTube. I don’t even know whether GMail and friends will want to rely my emails (someone mention that Bitwish notifications were found in their spam folder). We’ll see.

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As part of the experiment, I have created one topic about the 4.1 release. There have been several videos from various authors giving an overview to this release. Let’s see if anyone wants to link to any of these videos.

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In fact, I didn’t work on the Modulators. Instead…

  • Came up with six subcategories for the guide: What’s New, Basis Concepts, Instruments, Devices, Modulators, and Grid Modules.
  • I have merged Audio and MIDI FX devices into Devices for simplicity.
  • The What’s New subcategory is updated through automatic posts coming from Bitwig’s YouTube account, via RSS. More experiments. :slight_smile:

I have contacted more people. So far there is a lot of silence. Maybe because it’s a weekend, maybe because it is too soon, too confusing, or… maybe because this is a terrible idea. We’ll see. Experiments are there to try and fail and learn. Sometimes they work out.

Still, if you are reading these lines even a silent emoji reaction would help. :blush:

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Very cool idea!
I definitely would be using this.

I don’t know about the voting though, some devices have so many use cases that the “usefulness” of a video can be very subjective. Most of these videos will be probably from YouTube, so this would be a kind of strange double rating system and might lead to some people not ever watching the least voted videos even if they’re perfectly good.

Maybe this guide could be a place where even the tiny new creators could have their videos next to the bigger ones without being buried by the algorithm?

Just my two cents.

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Thank you for your encouraging words, @Mr.Rodent. Your point about votes is interesting. We agree on the idea of promoting good tutorials, especially when they come from creators that are not favored by The Algorithm. You are right that there is a risk that we will be replicating here the same problems YouTube has, but maybe to votes actually help to promote these less known creators?

There is only one way to know, which is trying out as part of the experiment. :slight_smile: Worst case scenario, we remove the votes (I have asked, and it would be possible, without losing the content).

The first step is to collect videos. That is easy, just paste one link in one post (see example, Steps). I have already started, with the goal of removing the “(first video welcome!)” label in as many posts as possible. Contributors welcome. :sunglasses:

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I tried to link more videos under Polysynth but it told me that I can only post 3 consecutive replies and that I have to wait for someone to reply in the chain first before I can do it again. Would it be possible to take that off in the video guide section in order to populate the topics faster?

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Changed to 10, and it should work well for you now. This is a limitation for new users only, to prevent potential spam or vandalism. If we start getting spammers we will find another solution.

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More experiments:

Also, thank you @Mr.Rodent for breaking the ice and posting links to videos for several instruments and devices! Please keep them coming. :slight_smile:

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Now all topics of the #bitwig-video-guide:instruments subcategory have at least one video. I have un-unmuted :wink: this subcategory, which means that if someone posts new videos or comments in these topics, they will appear in the timeline (users can mute it again in their preferences).

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The #bitwig-video-guide:modulators category has now all modulators appearing in the official User Guide. Did 4.1 bring any new modulators?

Also, I removed the “What’s New” subcategory. Bitwig announcements on YouTube can go on the #bitwig-video-guide main category directly.

Instead, I have ventured to create a category about #bitwig-video-guide:production , to feature all the good tutorials being produced about music production concepts and techniques using Bitwig.

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I wonder if it would be useful to create a curated list such some group (such as the admins) choose. I am so for democratic process, but I think we can be faced with a few problems. Relatively small numbers of individuals make it tricky to get a true sense of what the “average user” might be interested in; the people of this forum (many of whom are from the bitwig Reddit) may not represent the demographic most in need of educational content (meaning their preferences may be quite different); a lot of videos “about bitwig” are actually not about bitwig: by that I mean they are about general music or production and only use Bitwig by coincidence.

My experience of lists of educational content like this (in the past) had been that the length can grow rapidly, and the quality can vary tremendously. Between these two factors, over time the list becomes more extensive, and correspondingly less useful. I’m all for being inclusive and open, but I’m also wondering how best to maximize the value that we (as a community) can deliver. For example: while 10 different “bitwig in 5 minutes” type videos could offer benefit to a new user; unilaterally reducing that list to one or two might be more useful.

Secondly, with respect to voting and likes: in terms of a feature request, I think it’s clear what a vote means; it means “I would like to see this feature implemented”. What does a like on a video mean? That you enjoyed watching it? That it taught you something? That it represents a good step in your overall bitwig education? It is a good step in your musical education and it has bitwig in the title? Perhaps we could clarify how to use likes per other mechanisms, and how those likes or other mechanism will be used to transform an ad hoc, self selected video list, into something curated and useful for a certain demographic

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You make very good points and I agree with them. Somehow I want to say that we want quality, but quality requires quantity first.

Right now the focus is to remove the “(first video welcome)” of as many topics as possible, hopefully by other contributors in addition to myself. :slight_smile: There we will have the raw materials to curate and hopefully a few people who enjoy watching tutorials, watch lots of them, and therefore have developed some selection criteria.

Right now I think it is ok if it simply means “I want this video to appear at the top of this page”. This is all what it does. If we apply more complex criteria, I’m not sure users will follow them anyway. They are likely to upvote a video they liked, and that’s all.

If/when we offer a better curation, it will have to be more manual. Votes there may help a bit, but as @Mr.Rodent pointed out already, they cannot be really trusted.