When is Bitwig Studio 6 releasing?

[00:00:00] Yo folks, welcome back, Bitwig Studio 6 is still in beta and we are at beta nine at the moment
[00:00:06] and it's probably or it's definitely the longest running beta for Bitwig Studio so far. But we
[00:00:12] also have a lot of features. They implemented a lot of new GUI stuff and from that we have of
[00:00:20] course a lot of bugs to fix or they have a lot of bugs to fix. So it's no wonder. So it's expected.
[00:00:27] And the biggest question is probably will they release a stable, a final version before Christmas
[00:00:33] and my guess is no. My guess is they probably released this early next year but maybe there
[00:00:40] is a chance, a small chance, a small window that they release on Christmas Day or maybe before
[00:00:50] Christmas. But I doubt it. It's probably early next year. It's my guess. Anyway, so beta seven was
[00:01:01] very long awaited. I think people waited for over two or three weeks before they released beta seven.
[00:01:08] So then quickly after that we had beta eight and beta nine and they implemented a lot of
[00:01:15] interesting things in my opinion. Also things I had problems with in beta one. Let's put it this
[00:01:22] way. Not like bug fixes, more like stuff I wanted to have different and I want to show you some of
[00:01:28] the things here. So this is beta nine and what they implemented here. I think it was in beta seven
[00:01:35] also. This mode here it's called flying automation lanes. So back in beta one we only had this button
[00:01:41] here. This global automation mode or I don't know how it's called global automation automation mode
[00:01:48] there. It's just called automation mode. So let's implement here some kind of clip and let's use
[00:01:56] here my melody maker to make a quick two octave sequence, something like this and C minor.
[00:02:07] And we maybe want to use here a polymer synthesizer and maybe a bit of convolution reverb
[00:02:16] and delay two. Okay. So let's use this here as a base so I can explain what's going on.
[00:02:32] Yeah. Nice. Okay. So the global automation mode looks like this. We have the last touch
[00:02:38] parameter. You can see this on top and we can draw in here automation for the cutoff because
[00:02:44] that's the last touch parameter. All right. Let me touch here the decay. You can see now it's
[00:02:49] switching to another parameter. This is now on decay. And I really didn't like this in beta one
[00:02:59] or when I made the stream the first beta stream because the problem here is that you can only
[00:03:06] edit one parameter and you can't change the clip beneath the automation. You can't move it around
[00:03:13] or you can't cut it or something like this. That's what I do all the time when I'm editing
[00:03:18] automation and so on. So to that automation mode we have now here this button. It's called flying
[00:03:26] automation lane and this is on by default. And what this means is when this is off we have here
[00:03:33] a plus button because there is no automation here on audio two and you can unfold this here
[00:03:39] because there is automation. But when this is on here, this is not the plus button anymore.
[00:03:46] You can see here basically the last touch parameter even though there is no automation here. It's
[00:03:52] always having here this unfold button which I kind of like. So now it's not switching between
[00:03:58] here it's plus and here it's unfolding and when there's automation here it's unfolding.
[00:04:03] When there's no automation there's a plus button. So this is more consistent for me
[00:04:08] when this is on and this is on by default and I really like it. And you can see now here on the
[00:04:14] top more or less the last touch parameter. So when I touch here out the output gain of this
[00:04:20] synthesizer you can see this here on top or when I select this one here it's now the voice level
[00:04:26] or this is velocity sensitivity and so on. So it kind of works like exactly how it worked in
[00:04:32] Bitwig Studio 5 and I really like this because now I can step in, select my parameter, draw an
[00:04:40] automation, move on to something different. Let's automate this one. And below that you have a
[00:04:47] history of what you changed recently. So it's a very nice overview and when I'm done with automating
[00:04:55] here or drawing an automation I can just close it and move on to another track or something else.
[00:05:03] So it's very nice for me to work in this kind of way in Bitwig Studio 6 and they edit this here
[00:05:11] or edit this kind of flying automation lane. I really like it that we have this here and also
[00:05:17] recording works now. So I have here a keyboard shortcut for
[00:05:24] recording automation and I switch this here to touch. That's at least how I like to do it.
[00:05:31] And then I can just automate your things while playing.
[00:05:57] So having this on touch here and then this automation recording here on my keyboard shortcut,
[00:06:03] it's so nice. I just let it play. I loop this loop and I just record or fiddle around on certain
[00:06:13] knobs here to get some automation recorded and then I have more like a natural feel to the sound.
[00:06:20] It's not so fixed anymore. So I really like to have this and here it's working now.
[00:06:26] We had some problems in earlier beta versions where you couldn't record this automation and I
[00:06:32] think it also works perfectly now here in the clip launcher. So yeah, they kind of fix this and I'm
[00:06:40] very happy I can use Bitwig Studio 6 now without complaining. They also added here something in
[00:06:47] the last version which was my biggest complain or the last biggest complain after this automation
[00:06:54] stuff here. And this is here in preferences under settings behavior and then you can see
[00:07:04] a default and then this thing here called automatically open new clips in detail editor panel.
[00:07:11] And this is on by default and this means when you create a clip on the ranger or in the clip
[00:07:20] launcher and you double click to create it, it automatically opens up here this editor down
[00:07:26] in the bottom half which is not something I want to do because I always want to edit my
[00:07:37] notes in this editor and then I want to see my instrument here on my synthesizer below that
[00:07:42] because I want to edit the notes, I want to edit the synthesizer, I want to edit here my automation
[00:07:48] and you know everything is in sight. I never want to see the clips or the ranger and the notes
[00:07:57] down here. I think this is also how it works in logic. I'm not sure, maybe you can tell me in
[00:08:03] the comments down below but I always had to basically create a clip then I had to switch back
[00:08:12] to the device view and then I had to go into the detail editor every time I create a new clip which
[00:08:19] is pretty annoying. So now we can go here to the settings behavior and use then defaults and uncheck
[00:08:27] this here and now you get this, you can create clips and it just stays where it is. It's just one
[00:08:34] action. Before it was two actions, create a clip and then open up the editor and now it's just one
[00:08:39] action again like it was in Bitwig 5. You just, you only create a clip and that's it and if you
[00:08:46] want to go into this bottom editor you have to double click on the existing clip. So yeah,
[00:08:53] so it works like exactly, it worked before which I'm very, very happy about. Okay,
[00:09:01] then in automations or in automation lanes here we had this problem before that when we automate
[00:09:10] something like this decay parameter here and we click once. We had before I think this was by
[00:09:18] default in hold value or in hold mode here for this one thing and then when you click the second
[00:09:24] node in this automation the first one changes to a normal node. So this was how it was before but
[00:09:35] I think now we have basically, let's remove this here, can we remove this actually?
[00:09:42] No, you can't delete. Do you have to delete instrument track? No, that's not what I want.
[00:09:49] Let's go back. Looks like you can't remove here this anymore for some reason.
[00:09:58] So this should be a bug, right, that you can't remove it. Before you could remove it in Bitwig
[00:10:05] 5, now it's always something. But we have now a new parameter here, a new shortcut. We can
[00:10:12] select the node in the automation and then use H on the keyboard to switch between hold
[00:10:20] and a normal, yeah, a normal automation node. So what this means is you can just make multiple
[00:10:29] nodes here, select everything and then press H and you have a stepped, yeah, a stepped automation
[00:10:37] line, which is, yeah, kind of neat to have this now. But yeah, it's pretty suspicious that now we
[00:10:45] can't delete the automation. So it looks like we have to have always one parameter. Oh, you can
[00:10:51] delete, okay, you can right click then on this. Yeah, maybe it would be nice to have this also
[00:10:57] here on the lane itself. Right, when you draw something in, then you click right and you can
[00:11:04] can't actually delete here this lane, you have to click here, delete automation lane.
[00:11:08] Okay, so it's still in there, it's just missing here on the right click
[00:11:14] pop up, I guess. So this is what I mean, there are a lot of these small things missing or not
[00:11:21] working correctly. But if you don't pay attention, Bitwig 6 works fine. So yeah, that's that. There's
[00:11:33] also something they changed here with the track headers. When you go to settings and let me see
[00:11:41] user interface, view, and then you have here a range of volume control, you can switch this from
[00:11:47] numeric to slider. So now we have a slider back down here like it was in Bitwig 5. A lot of people
[00:11:55] complained also about this. So yeah, now we have the slider back. And I think you can also type in
[00:12:02] here, yeah, the numbers works. And if you don't like it, you can go back to numeric, then the slider
[00:12:10] is gone and we have like this, this number here. So yeah, you can you can decide what you prefer,
[00:12:16] basically. There's also something with the meta clips, at least that's how they call it when you
[00:12:22] put your multiple tracks into a group like this, and you have like here a clip and this is a meta
[00:12:28] clip. And the problem here is I don't know if it's a problem or if it's intended. So let's say you
[00:12:36] have a clip here and you have some automation on this clip and you move this clip around. You also
[00:12:43] move all the automation below this clip around, even though it's not inside of an automation clip.
[00:12:50] So we have new automation clips in Bitwig 6. So this kind of works, right? But then if you
[00:12:57] have a group here and you have, let's say, some kind of device on there and you want to automate
[00:13:04] here this, this volume. And then you move this meta clip around. The automation stays in place.
[00:13:15] I don't know if this is intended. Some people complained about this friend of mine, Skyance is,
[00:13:20] you know, raging about this all the time. Maybe it's intended, maybe this is still missing,
[00:13:28] but I guess it should work exactly like this, like how it works on clips, on normal MIDI clips,
[00:13:34] note clips here. So yeah, it works differently on meta clips. They hopefully fix this, right?
[00:13:44] They also added here something to the clip launcher. So when you have like here this
[00:13:51] clip and you move it into the clip launcher with all the automations, of course, here,
[00:13:56] we can hit play and maybe just remove here this automation for now.
[00:14:02] Yeah, you can see it's playing here, right? And we have here this button
[00:14:11] called back to a ranger clip or something like this. So if you don't want to use this clip
[00:14:17] launcher, you can always click this, right? And then it plays this kind of clip. And by the way,
[00:14:22] this is the most asked question here that people accidentally click on a clip launcher and then
[00:14:29] this is grayed out and they have this closed, right? And then they wonder, oh, why is this clip
[00:14:36] not playing, right? And they miss out here on these kind of buttons. You can also see here as a
[00:14:41] kind of a GUI bug here. It's not, yeah, it's not how it should be, I would say.
[00:14:49] Yeah, this is still a problem here. So yeah, what I want to say is we have this clip playing here
[00:14:57] and we have to go back to a ranger playback here. And then when you hold down the alt key,
[00:15:04] it switches to this retrigger thing here. And you can retrigger basically the clip because
[00:15:10] sometimes people complained and I think the only beta beta versions that we had like the clip playing
[00:15:19] from certain positions inside of the clip. Now it's retriggers correctly. I think also when
[00:15:24] you push here the stop button and then hit play and then it plays from the beginning of the clip.
[00:15:29] But you can also use your alt key and then the switches to a retrigger button
[00:15:34] and you can play it back from the start from the beginning. I think you can also push this here,
[00:15:41] of course, on the group for all the clips inside. So if you have multiple clips, you can retrigger
[00:15:47] multiple clips at the same time, of course. So yeah, you can see here it's still a visual bug
[00:15:53] in there, but I hope they fix it. It's not a big deal. We get this. Also before I forget it,
[00:16:01] when we switch here back to the ranger and we go here to the editor, to the detail editor,
[00:16:09] maybe I use here, maybe use another audio clip. Maybe let's bring in here some kind of drum loop
[00:16:19] put this here. And I select multiple selectors here with shift and then go into the detail editor.
[00:16:26] You can see that the drum loop down here and you can also see the notes on top. So we have like a
[00:16:32] layered editor and we can change, of course, here the view. Let's say it's something to this or maybe
[00:16:39] we only want to see here the drum loop. They added this kind of small little arrow key.
[00:16:46] Can you see it down here on the bottom left? And you can click this and you can go back to the
[00:16:53] previous states of the detail editor. This is not an undo. We have the undo still here. It's
[00:17:01] more for the view when you change the view. You go here and here and you make some different
[00:17:06] settings or make some adjustments here to the layering, something like this, or you choose
[00:17:13] a different mode here. You can always go back here to the last state and browse through the views.
[00:17:22] So they added this here, I think a bit of 6 or 7. I don't know exactly. And yeah,
[00:17:28] there's a lot of small changes here and there. These are the biggest one, at least for me.
[00:17:34] There are probably more. It's so many small little changes. It's hard to cover
[00:17:42] everything. But I guess I do some kind of beginner tutorial for Bitwig Studio to go over
[00:17:50] everything. And this will be probably a long, long video. But yeah, I just waited out until
[00:17:58] they released Bitwig Studio 6 before I go into that. So I have the newest version for this kind
[00:18:04] of tutorial. I just want to give you basically an update what's going on with Bitwig Studio 6.
[00:18:11] So yeah, like I said, the beginning early next year is my guess. Maybe there is a surprise
[00:18:17] release before Christmas. I doubt it. But we will see. But a lot of good changes in beta 9. It feels
[00:18:25] really good to use Bitwig 6 for me now. Automation and this clip thing was the biggest gripe for me
[00:18:34] so far and they fixed it. Yeah, fun times. Let me know what you think in the comments down below.
[00:18:41] If you think Bitwig Studio releases before Christmas or exactly on Christmas day,
[00:18:45] or what you hope for the future, or what you think about this video, or if you like me,
[00:18:52] or if you don't like me, or whatever. Leave a like. See you in the next video. Bye.