Bitwig 6 Clip Launcher Automation Troubleshooting and Workflow Tips

[00:00:00] Bitwig 6 Clip Launcher Automation, what went wrong?
[00:00:04] I initially want to make just music in Bitwig and show you the process, but I stumbled upon
[00:00:09] a problem inside of the Clip Launcher recording some automation.
[00:00:13] And you can see this in a minute, because I recorded it.
[00:00:16] That's why there's a video.
[00:00:19] But I want your input, so let me know in the comments down below what you think about automation
[00:00:23] in the Clip Launcher right now.
[00:00:26] Where are your problems?
[00:00:27] Yeah, give me some input.
[00:00:30] I still think Bitwig 6 is in a great spot.
[00:00:33] They fixed a lot of bugs in the recent betas and I think the release is right around the
[00:00:39] corner even though it looks like they, you know, move things around.
[00:00:44] But I think it's still pretty soon.
[00:00:47] But I want your input, so let me know in the comments down below what you think about the
[00:00:50] Clip Launcher Automation and maybe Bitwig 6 in general.
[00:00:54] And I know a lot of people are impatient waiting for the release, right?
[00:00:58] Because we need to move on to Bitwig 6.1 and get a new features near and there.
[00:01:02] I still think it's really great that we fixing all the bugs, getting a nice foundation to
[00:01:09] move on.
[00:01:11] Bitwig 6 actually does a lot of good things and fixes a lot of old problems a lot of people
[00:01:18] had in the past moving or coming from Ableton Live, coming from FL Studio.
[00:01:23] So it's still a good foundation and it's really good that they make sure it works.
[00:01:28] Okay, so let's head over to Bitwig and I'll show you what I mean.
[00:01:32] So I want to start here with creating a sound and I also want to show you a problem I have
[00:01:37] with the automation recording inside of the Clip Launcher because they also gotcha us
[00:01:42] to it.
[00:01:43] Okay, so we start here by maybe using a synthesizer, a polymer synthesizer.
[00:01:49] I just use here a sine partial, sine oscillator, a bit of decay and we use here a multi-node
[00:01:58] to create kind of a chord, maybe fourth, fifth, we put this into a layer, second layer, gets
[00:02:05] here a note transpose, goes up one octave and this one goes two octaves higher.
[00:02:13] And then we can just more or less record this into a rolling sampler.
[00:02:20] Let's see how this sounds.
[00:02:24] So we just play here one note C on the keyboard, that's a bit too loud, a bit quiet.
[00:02:33] That's cool.
[00:02:34] So we can take this sound and create another audio track here, on this audio track we use
[00:02:41] a test tone and after the test tone we use a convolution reverb and then we use here
[00:02:47] this sample, this chord inside of the convolution reverb.
[00:02:52] Okay, so we have an audio track and we have a test tone and yeah, a convolution reverb
[00:03:00] with the sample we just created and the test tone gets here white noise.
[00:03:04] We play white noise into this resonator, nice, so then we put the convolution reverb
[00:03:17] here into an FX layer, duplicate this convolution reverb and put it down one octave.
[00:03:22] We can make the first one a bit quieter, something like this, okay.
[00:03:42] So now that we have this, we maybe can change the sound by using EQ in front of the resonator
[00:03:51] so we can modify more or less the white noise here, taking out certain frequencies.
[00:03:59] It probably doesn't matter if you put it in front or after, but I kind of like it to tweak
[00:04:04] here the white noise going into the resonator.
[00:04:18] Okay, so let's imagine you want to change the EQ with automation, but the automation
[00:04:26] should live like in the clip launcher and it's not really easy, not really clear how
[00:04:31] to do this in my opinion, so maybe we will switch the loop on and the ranger.
[00:04:37] So let's say you want to record automation, it's pretty clear, you use here the automation
[00:04:42] right button and I have this on my keyboard on a shortcut because I use it all the time.
[00:04:48] So you hit play, you hit automation right and then you move around maybe here, band two.
[00:04:55] You can see it records into the ranger.
[00:05:03] Also you can see here it's not really recording, this is in my opinion also a bug, right, so
[00:05:09] I can change here the band gain and then it stops after the loop.
[00:05:13] This is still a bug in there, so this is bug number one.
[00:05:18] Okay, so this is recording into a ranger, which is not what I want.
[00:05:23] I want to record into the clip launcher, but how do you do it?
[00:05:28] There's only one button which is called automation right and it records into the ranger.
[00:05:35] So where's the automation right for the clip launcher?
[00:05:38] There's an overdub button here for the clip launcher and there's an overdub button for
[00:05:42] the rangers.
[00:05:43] Why isn't there automation right for the clip launcher?
[00:05:48] So this is my first question.
[00:05:51] You can record into the clip launcher, it's not a problem, but you need to do some things.
[00:05:57] So first up you need to arm the track and then you need to record the clip and then you can
[00:06:04] move these knobs around, then it records into the clip launcher.
[00:06:11] To stop this you need to hit space or click the stop button, so hit space.
[00:06:18] So now it stops recording and also here the automation is stopped recording, but then
[00:06:23] beginning here there's some kind of space gap, this is actually the gap between me hitting
[00:06:29] record or hitting scene one play and you know starting to move here the knob around.
[00:06:36] So this is already not good, but we can move this here around to this position.
[00:06:41] This is also weird kind of visual representation because it looks like you actually move the
[00:06:49] waveform so this one here around, which is not the case, you actually change the size
[00:06:57] and the beginning of the automation.
[00:07:00] You don't touch this, but it looks like you're moving the waveform around.
[00:07:05] So this is also a bit confusing to me.
[00:07:08] Also I don't want to record actually here the audio clip, I just want to record automation,
[00:07:16] but here it recorded something whatever I had here as an input, maybe it was my microphone,
[00:07:21] it was probably my microphone, right?
[00:07:23] So now I want to delete this clip because I don't want to record audio, I just want
[00:07:28] to record automation, so I delete this.
[00:07:30] So when I delete this, the automation lanes or clips are combined with this of course,
[00:07:36] it's not what I want, so I go back.
[00:07:38] So only option I have, I go into the audio clip and I delete the region inside and I
[00:07:44] go back out.
[00:07:45] So now I have an empty clip and automation, perfect.
[00:07:48] Maybe what I want, but I need to make some things happen.
[00:07:54] Also this one, Band 2Q, I never touched it.
[00:07:58] That's a lie, I never touched it, so I delete it.
[00:08:01] Okay, so now I have exactly what I want, maybe here, I also want to change this to the beginning.
[00:08:09] So the automation loops perfectly.
[00:08:12] The next problem, when I click on these clips, on these automation clips, on the left side
[00:08:17] you can see looping is off for some reason.
[00:08:19] So I switch it on, also here.
[00:08:22] So now I'm finally ready and I can hit play and it only automates Band 2 in a loop.
[00:08:32] Nice.
[00:08:33] Fine.
[00:08:34] And also you can see this one is a bit faster because it's a bit shorter.
[00:08:38] It's exactly what I want.
[00:08:40] I want to have polyrhythmically loops, different loop lengths and then they combine to something
[00:08:50] much, much nicer.
[00:08:52] Perfect.
[00:08:53] Okay, so this is nice how it is.
[00:08:56] So maybe we want to add some additional movements.
[00:09:00] Maybe we want to move here, I don't know, five around or actually Band 1.
[00:09:06] So how do I actually record now Band 1?
[00:09:10] Because we already hit record here on the clip, so we can't do this.
[00:09:16] We can only hit play and when we hit play here and when we hit automation, record here and
[00:09:23] start to move one around, then it records into the clip launcher again.
[00:09:31] Okay, let's do this again.
[00:09:34] Move this here again, but this time the clip is stopped, record and now you record everything
[00:09:44] into the ranger, which means when there is no clip playing in the clip launcher and you
[00:09:50] hit automation record, it records into the ranger.
[00:09:54] It only records into the clip launcher when there is a clip and the clip is playing, which
[00:10:00] is a bit confusing.
[00:10:01] I mean, it's okay if you know about it, but it's not intuitive, I would say.
[00:10:08] It's not really intuitive.
[00:10:10] So my opinion would be better to have here a second button exactly like overdub for automation
[00:10:18] ride, ranger and clip launcher.
[00:10:20] If you ask me, I would do this, there's a lot of space here inside of this thing.
[00:10:26] Why not do another button just for the clip launcher?
[00:10:32] It almost evolves already into a second ranger, so you need all the things separately for
[00:10:39] the clip launcher than for the ranger because it's its own thing.
[00:10:42] It has different rules, so maybe why not add also additional buttons for this type of thing.
[00:10:51] Okay, so now to record something on top here, like I said, we need to play this clip and
[00:11:01] we just let it run here for a moment.
[00:11:03] And then we need to hit automation ride because we want to record automation into the clip
[00:11:09] launcher.
[00:11:11] This needs to be armed, I think also.
[00:11:13] I'm not sure.
[00:11:14] Maybe I disabled it.
[00:11:15] Let's try it.
[00:11:16] Oh, it records.
[00:11:17] Okay.
[00:11:18] It needs to be armed this time, but now I'm moving around here, band one, and you can
[00:11:23] already see another problem.
[00:11:27] First up, when I disable automation ride here, it still records.
[00:11:35] It continues to record automation, so we need to stop the whole thing, or I think you need
[00:11:40] to stop here the clip, something like this.
[00:11:44] So this is the first problem.
[00:11:46] The second problem is you can see here in the beginning, there's a lot of empty space
[00:11:52] where nothing happened.
[00:11:53] And this is actually the gap between me hitting play on the clip launcher.
[00:11:59] So I'm just letting it run in the background.
[00:12:03] And me actually starting to move a parameter around on this EQ.
[00:12:09] So you get this empty space here every time.
[00:12:12] So when you have this basically running in the background, and it runs, I don't know,
[00:12:17] for five minutes, and you think, oh, maybe I kind of in the mood of moving around five
[00:12:23] and just recording it into a loop, it doesn't work because you have this five minute gap
[00:12:29] of nothing in front of the automation thing.
[00:12:32] So in my opinion, it's, it should start basically here, where we actually move about exactly
[00:12:39] how it works in the Ranger, actually.
[00:12:42] So when I move here now, the global thing, enable automation right, and then I move it
[00:12:48] around, but you have this empty space here, which don't need.
[00:12:56] So this is already something that needs to change in my opinion.
[00:13:00] So it's not, it's probably correct in a, from a developer standpoint, how it works from
[00:13:06] a workflow perspective, I would say that's not what you want.
[00:13:15] Because when you are here in the, in the Ranger, you let it play and you listen to your track
[00:13:23] and then you think, oh, I actually need to record five, then it starts here.
[00:13:29] Exactly where it is, right.
[00:13:31] And yeah, in the clip launcher, basically have this then as a clip.
[00:13:36] I get the idea, but yeah, I would say this is, it doesn't feel right.
[00:13:44] So again, clip launcher here does exactly what I want with recording into multiple clips,
[00:13:50] but there needs to be some tweaks, if you ask me.
[00:13:53] So when I want to record here, another lane for, let's say, band one, I need to be quick.
[00:14:02] I need to hit this record and I need to hit play here and then I instantaneously need
[00:14:10] to move over here to record actually what I want, because the more time I need between
[00:14:15] clicking this and moving around here, the more space I have in the beginning, if you
[00:14:20] know what I mean, play here and then I move around this.
[00:14:26] And to stop this whole thing, I need to hit stop, which is also not right in my opinion.
[00:14:30] You just need to hit this and leave it running in the background.
[00:14:34] Need to go in here and need to remove this awkward kind of space in the beginning.
[00:14:40] Also here.
[00:14:41] Yeah.
[00:14:42] And if you want to do this live on the fly, it's not possible.
[00:14:46] You need to hit stop every time to stop the recording or you need to stop here and then
[00:14:51] you need to go in there and tweak it and move it around.
[00:14:54] So the workflow is not really there.
[00:14:56] It's a clip launcher.
[00:14:57] It's something you probably want to use live and everything needs to be very fluid and
[00:15:02] very easy to get.
[00:15:04] And yeah, I already said this to a developer when you are live and you produce live or
[00:15:10] you do live shows.
[00:15:13] Your brain is somewhere else.
[00:15:14] It's, you know, everything goes the wrong way and you don't need to have any complications
[00:15:18] on top of that.
[00:15:20] So yeah, that's my problem at the moment with the clip launcher.
[00:15:25] But besides of that, it's really nice to have here an empty clip.
[00:15:30] Then there's an instrument here playing something and you have polyrhythmically playing automation
[00:15:37] lanes.
[00:15:38] Really nice.
[00:15:39] I mean, it doesn't probably sound very nice, but it's a delay, a bit of reverb.
[00:15:49] Um, slow machine or what's the name, what I use there sometimes slow machine, yeah.
[00:16:07] Let's pitch it down one octave again.
[00:16:10] We put this here after the reverb.
[00:16:17] Okay, so this is a drone and there is stuff playing us also here.
[00:16:27] I don't know why they put here some random lanes in there.
[00:16:31] I guess it's a bug.
[00:16:33] Yeah, this is, these are my problems with the automation recording in the clip launcher.
[00:16:40] Anyway, so let's continue here.
[00:16:42] Here's the test tone again, cause I want to show you why it's not showing here the second
[00:16:58] audio track.
[00:17:02] Oh, this is also a bug now.
[00:17:06] I can't switch here that the chain is not switching for some reason.
[00:17:18] Yeah, it's not showing.
[00:17:19] Okay.
[00:17:20] I need to start something new.
[00:17:24] Okay.
[00:17:25] Yeah, now it's, now it's switching again.
[00:17:28] Damn, I guess I just closed the video at this point.
[00:17:34] Thanks for watching.
[00:17:35] Next time, when I show you Bitwig 6 in beta, 28.