I totally got that. I was laughing along with your poetic description of the turtle and the ninja after breakfast… Still smiling as I write this actually 
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This sounds really promising, thanks.
Will this MIDI routing work with Bitwig Studio 16-Track? The list of features says 16-track version’s Note FX don’t include Channel Filter and Channel Map, so I’d like to make sure if the functionality you describe requires that full version.
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I’ve verified this functionality: it’s exactly what I need. I wonder why Ableton’s never implemented a “keep channel” feature.
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I really love Bitwig and I’ve been using it since it was in Alpha in 2013 (I think it was). I think it’s probably the most innovative DAW since Ableton introduced session view. The unified modulation system, Grid modular design (no more clunky eurorack emulations) and the general focus on making things fast and easy (I don’t think I’ve ever read the manual) makes it really great.
However…dramatic pause…I’m increasingly frustrated with some performance issues which may or may not be due to my getting-a-bit-old 2013 Macbook Pro. When I try to browse new device presets or “hot swap” things it’s so slow it’s almost unuseable. I just constantly get a long pause (sometimes 10 seconds or more) and a message saying “optimising devices” and I’ve never figured it out. I also own Reason 11 and it has some small similarities in terms of the easy way to just drag and drop anything anywhere and a single browser for everything, but it’s always incredibly snappy and there’s no lag. The closed Reason ecosystem has always had a major performance benefit - it’s stable, fast and it runs light on CPU.
Perhaps this performance issue will push me over the edge to buy a new M1 Mac, although I get nervous because Apple clearly have “good” and “bad” generations of laptops and if you are unlucky enough to get a “bad” one then it can be painful. I was lucky - my late 2013 MBP has been a trooper and in 90% of usage it still performs very well and it has almost never crashed or frozen even under huge stress.
Still, I’m excited about the next big Bitwig update and I trust they will add some fun stuff. I have been pleased every time so far.
I didn’t use Channel Map or Channel Filter, which offer even more control of which messages get sent and where, so the method I described should still work with the 16-Track version.
Sounds like you’ve got it working anyway.
I just did a quick setup working from Ableton’s paradigm, whose external instruments method works exactly the same except there’s no Keep Ch. option. Now that I’ve just received by Bitwig license, I’ll make a note of Channel Filter and Channel Map to see what they can offer. As I recall, REAPER also has plugins for mapping MIDI, but I’m liking how it’s already baked into BW’s basic functionality.
Polarity’s Youtube channel puts together a lot of pretty great tutorials. I assume most folks on here who use Bitwig have seen at least some of his stuff, but a lot of his recent videos have been really great and demonstrate some of the flexibility you have in building your own tools in Bitwig. Over the last few videos he’s put together a Euclidian rhythm generator, a melody generator, and a exponential rhythm generator, and it’s really cool to see a video where he uses all of them to actually compose a track without spending much time in the piano roll at all:
I know some folks won’t be super inspired by the whole “procedural music” side of things, but I just find it really fascinating that you can build all of this in Bitwig with nothing more than the native Bitwig devices.
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When will 4 drop? Rhetorical question but it’s been well over a year, maybe 2 years since a major release. The 12 month cycle license agreement seemed to indicate a major release every 12 months initially. I’m getting nervous as mine expires in July.
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After seeing the amount of stuff they’ve packed into each 3.x release, it’s really hard to know what’s up with their versioning IMHO. If the full Bitwig 4 release is that much “bigger” than these small 3.x releases are, it’ll be one hell of a release.
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Yes we’ll I haven’t used bitwig very much with 3 so if 4 only adds functions I won’t use, I will probably sit on this version for a few years. Version 3 has so much already now but it’s the fine tuning of small things I will miss.
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Yeah, agreed - I’m coming up on the end of my license soon too and hope 3.4 or whatever next “major” release comes before then, but if not, I’m happy to stay frozen on one specific release until something shiny comes along.
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I now see what you mean here. There are two ways to route MIDI to a plugin: set up a dummy external instrument to route the MIDI (using “Keep Ch.”), or just route it directly, using “Same” for the To. The second way is a lot more logical and streamlined. Ableton requires setting up the dummy external instrument, which did see, to me like a workaround more than a real solution, but apparently Ableton users are used to it. In any case, Bitwig’s routing MIDI is hardly what I’d call innovative, but rather expected so that you’re surprised when a DAW can’t do it. I also tried Studio One, which doesn’t route anything, like Logic Pro.
I think REAPER has plugins to route MIDI. Bitwig has the better user interface, though, so I won’t bother with investigating unless Bitwig starts showing the instability issues that make REAPER annoying to use because of the side effects to the UI when running plugins in their own threads to protect from crashes.
Bitwig 4 beta is out! Comping, native support for Apple silicon, operators (chance, repeats, occurence, recurrence: seems kind of like Elektron trig conditions for note events), and spread (randomization of any expression point)
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I think I’ll wait until I have something with Apple silicon. Looks like it’s only for 10.14 (Mojave) and later, and my studio mac is back on High Sierra. I do like the look of the operators though…
i did not expect proper MIDI export (incl. CC automation) – and bingo, it’s still not there.
Everything looks promising and fun, but I didn’t see grid midi out, so, I’m waiting
My 3.3.7 is still a very deep daw
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Please tell me if I bought 3.3.7 yesterday, I’ll get 4 at no extra cost??
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Yes, free, because you do not buy a license but a 12-month upgrade plan. As 4 should be out end of Q2-beginning of Q3, this will be included in iyour plan. You will also be entitled to all 4.0.x versions.
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THANK GOD 
Many thanks
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I’ll probably wait untill it’s out of beta, I think. The new features look great but not so great to have to put up with beta bugs.