Writing a good feature request

Bitwish aims to offer a useful community wishlist to the Bitwig team. The quality of the requests is very important. Follow this guidance to produce good feature requests.

If you just want to propose an idea quickly, please do so! If the idea is interesting, others will work on it. You can also start an open discussion on Brainstorm.

Drafting together

To keep the community wishlist in good shape, all requests go through Drafts before moving to Features. Anyone can create a new draft. Everyone is encouraged to improve drafts, editing them or commenting on them.

Bitwish admins and moderators decide when a draft is ready, based on these criteria:

  • The request describes one specific feature, no more, no less.
  • Plain English, neutral descriptions, no rants, no subjective feelings.
  • Friendly description that can be understood by a Bitwig hobbyist, linking to the User Guide or other web pages as needed.
  • All the sections of the template are covered, and no section has been removed.
  • At least two tags.
  • The draft is at least one week old, and the promotion to Features has been announced at least 24 hours ago without causing objections.

Good practices

Things to look at in a good feature request, section by section.

Title

  • Describe the feature request in a specific and self-explanatory way.
    • Good: MIDI Comping, Slicing in the Sampler, Audio to MIDI converter…
    • Bad: “Improve X”, “Better Y”, “Fix Z”, “Do [something] just like in [another DAW]”…

Tags

  • Use different families of tags. More is better:
    • type of feature: ux, settings, shortcuts, controller…
    • what component it affects: arranger, grid, browser, fm-4…
    • products with this feature: max-for-live, akai-mpc, reaper, vital…

Description

  • In most cases, one short paragraph is enough.
  • When the request is very specialized or requires advanced knowledge, a second paragraph with explanation is welcome.
  • Use the same terminology as the Bitwig User Guide. If there is another popular denomination, add it as well.
  • Consider adding visual materials like screenshots, mockups or videos (only when they are short and fully related to the feature requested, or when linked to the exact point when the feature is explained).
  • Don’t talk about you, your personal preferences, what you personally miss from another DAW…
  • Don’t make assumptions about how needed the feature is or what the Bitwig team thinks.

What problem(s) would this feature resolve?

When proposing a change it is important to specify what problem you want to address. If there is no agreement on the problem it will be hard to agree on any solution. One paragraph focusing on problems (and only problems, not solutions) should be enough.

How does this feature fit in Bitwig as a product?

A group of people created Bitwig Studio because they had a vision. Then we chose this product over others because, consciously or not, we share this vision. When proposing a new feature, it is important to explain why it fits in this vision.

If this sounds quite abstract you are right, often it is. Still, try this: check the Bitwig overview page and search for sentences that support your request. After this, a good feature requests should be easy to connect to Bitwig’s vision. A couple of sentences should be enough.

Is there already an alternative way to achieve this on Bitwig?

Document here whether features requested can be achieved in other ways with plain Bitwig, without plugins.

Usual situations:

  • The feature can be achieved only partially, and the request expands on it.
  • The feature can be achieved only through a complicated alternative or a hack, not intended for this purpose.
  • The feature is supported but the request presents a preferred alternative method.

Links to texts or videos explaining these alternatives are welcome.

Could it be implemented using Bitwig components or APIs, without Bitwig team’s support?

This is a technical question. If you are unsure about the answer, just type “Not sure”. Someone else can make this judgement.

Could it be provided by a VST or something else reasonably integrated with Bitwig?

Sometimes a feature isn’t available in Bitwig but it can be integrated using external plugins or other tools in a rather seamless way. If this possibility or something similar exists, list products that provide it.

Are there other products that offer this feature?

If the feature you are requesting already exists in other products, especially DAWs, then this is useful information too. Be precise and list the products you are aware of.

Relevant links (optional)

Types of links welcome, sorted by relevance:

  1. Anything published or said by the Bitwig team.
  2. Bitwig community discussions, blog posts, videos…
  3. Relevant links from other products or websites.
  4. More information about concepts related to the feature request.

That’s all. If you miss anything, just comment below. Happy drafting!

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