Bitwig Studio 6 Upgrade from Essentials/16-Track

Important note: This upgrade is for owners of Bitwig Studio Essentials/16-Track. The full version of Bitwig Studio 6 is also available.

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Bitwig Studio is the only software you need to realize any musical idea across every stage of creation. Linear and nonlinear workflows, an innovative modular design, 180+ instruments and effects, and over 20GB (and counting) of world-class sound content. Built on a flexible modern architecture for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Update: Bitwig Studio 6

Automation Editing Is More Powerful Than Ever

Bitwig Studio 6 brings an extensive upgrade to automation editing, starting with two new ways to access your curves. Pressing [A] switches to Automation Mode, overlaying each track with the parameter you last touched, or any other single lane you choose. Or reach for the Detail Editor Panel, where you can now access all automation for any track. Use these alternate editors to keep the Arranger clean, or to get a new perspective on how different tracks relate to one another.

Gestures make editing quicker and more unified. Clicking on a line will draw a new point as usual, but clicking near it lets you quickly move the line up and down. And the interface cleanly highlights which part of the curve is in play before you even click. You can freely drag an automation point past other points to overwrite them. And if you want to adjust a chunk of automation up or down, just make a Time Selection and drag. The points on either side will be unaffected.

New automation behaviors offer new possibilities. Inspired by the way our Operators add life to notes, the new spread feature brings variation to your automation. When it’s applied, an automation point gives you a random value within a range on each pass. Points can also have a hold behavior, so they stay at a flat value until the next point is reached. And curvature for segments can now be controlled in the Inspector.

Improved tools also make automating smoother. When you draw freehand with the Pencil tool, its upgraded algorithm will translate your gesture into clean, simple curves that are easy to edit later. And the brand new Spray Can tool paints a series of held points at the current grid interval. Because techno.

Introducing Automation Clips

Automation can be just as important as audio and notes, and now Bitwig treats it that way. Working with automation in clips makes intuitive sense. All the clip features you know are there. Set looping and independent start times, slide the clip contents in time, stretch your automation clips, use clip aliases, and more.

If you like the old ways, don’t worry. You can still use track automation with all the new editing improvements, and going between the two is easy. Tweaking a parent note/audio clip will seamlessly adjust the automation clips below… until you edit them directly and make something new. And once you find a clip you like, save it to your library to use again later.

Automation clips bring to the timeline what our BWCURVE devices bring to instruments and effects. So our browser offers automation clips and BWCURVE files together. Even dragging an automation clip onto a device will load that shape into a Segments MSEG. All roads lead to curves.

Clip Aliases: Repeat After Me

Brand new in Bitwig Studio 6, clip aliases are a way to create structure and sequence in your music. Instead of duplicating a clip across a track, try dragging it as an alias. This means the clips will have a shared fingerprint – what we’re calling their pattern. When you edit one, all clips sharing that pattern will be updated, and other clip settings remain unchanged.

Clip aliases work with audio, note, and automation clips, and can be used in both the Clip Launcher and Arranger. They’ll slip into your workflow without much fuss. If you still like to copy-paste, you can link identical clips as aliases later: just use the Merge Duplicate Patterns function. This is handy for tidying up your existing projects, too. And when it's time for one alias to break free, Make Unique will make any clip independent of the others.

Guide Your Notes With Key Signature

Alongside tempo and time signature, your project now has a key signature to help guide your work with notes. You can see the scale when you work in the Piano Roll, and use Snap to Key [K] to make your editing gestures harmonious. Combine this with the Pencil tool – or when painting a stream of notes with the new Spray Can tool – for speedy creation that’s always in key. Or use the Quantize to Key function to snap existing notes or clips to your chosen scale.

As well as helping you pick notes, key signature can control your note FX. Arpeggiator and five other note-shifting devices have a Use Global Key option, which follows any harmonic movement across your project. So when you change key using automation, project remote controls, or modulators, your note FX will happily follow along.

Sharper Looks for a Smoother Flow

You’ll notice it as soon as you open the software: Bitwig Studio 6’s looks have been improved. We’ve made the interface smoother to navigate and easier to customize to your needs.

For a start, you’ll now see the editing tools laid out as a palette on the right side of the interface. You can adjust how the grid looks from each editor via the Editor Settings menu in the bottom-right corner. And right-clicking at the top of the Bitwig window gives easy access to some project-wide visual controls.

Track headers are now more dynamic when resized: they can shrink down small, and will offer more controls when space is available. This works well with the new Arranger Auto Zoom option, which makes your selected track or lane larger while everything else stays in place. The two sequencers have also got some polish. The Clip Launcher now visualizes the clip position and loop count for each track, and clips in the Arranger allow you to see the beat grid lines behind them.

Editors That Give You More

In Bitwig Studio 6, the editors let you see and do more, from small scale to the big picture. Expression editing is now a more powerful way to work on fine details. Micro-pitch curves were always shown on top of notes, but now gain, pressure, and other expressions can be edited directly on the notes (or audio) too. All expressions are also available in the folded Drum/Hybrid editor. Not to mention that the new automation gestures have come to expression editing as well.

Need an overview? It’s easier than ever with improved layered editing. To edit multiple clips together, simply select them. The Detail Editor Panel – and its fullscreen companion, Edit View – will adapt to your selection, even showing note and audio lanes side by side. Or just select a scene or cue marker to immediately see all of the relevant material in one layered view.

And on, and on

Bitwig Studio 6 brings plenty more improvements, large and small. In addition to the Spray Can, which creates a row of notes at the current beat interval, a new Audition tool lets you directly preview any track or clip. And when working with notes, there is now a Step Input tool for quick, intuitive entry. It even supports multi-note input.

Whether drawing notes or clips, the Pencil and Spray Can tools show a helpful preview before you click. The Piano Roll editor can show the traditional Piano Pattern in the background, or you can ditch the past with the colorful Adapt to Key. And the generative patching crowd will enjoy four new Grid modules, for quantizing by Scale and shifting by Scale Steps, as well as accessing the global Root Key or picking your own with Pitch Class.

Finally, a new safety feature brings peace of mind when trying out new versions of Bitwig. When you open a project made in a previous version, a permanent backup of the original project file will be saved, so you can always go back when needed.

Streamlined Workflows

• Intuitive sequencing for the studio world, stage, and beyond: Use the nonlinear Clip Launcher and the Arranger together.
• Hybrid Tracks can contain notes, audio, or both.
• Use tabs to open multiple projects at once and drag-and-drop between them.
• Multi-display support for up to three displays.
• Localized to English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.

Modern Foundations

• A truly cross-platform DAW for Windows, macOS (Intel/Apple Silicon), and Linux.
• Native CLAP/VST plug-in support (32-/64-bit), and crash protection so audio never stops. Also includes delay compensation, flexible multi-out, and sidechain capabilities.
• Eight diverse time-stretching algorithms and sophisticated beat detection for audio with fixed and dynamic tempo.
• Hardware and modular-friendly: Send and receive MIDI and control voltage signals (CV/Gate).
• Multi-touch support for Windows and Linux, with a dedicated Tablet display profile.
• Flexible syncing options: MIDI clock, MIDI time code, Analog clock, Ableton LINK.
• Support for +175 MIDI controllers included and native MPE support for next-generation controllers.

Modular and Expressive

• Unified Modulation System lets you freely modulate parameters across your entire project – including Bitwig devices, CLAP/VST plug-ins, hardware, and project-level controls – with 40+ modulators including LFOs, envelopes, and more.

• Device Nesting allows devices and plug-ins to be embedded within other devices, making complex structures easy to navigate and presets much richer.
• With Operators, simple sequences of notes and audio events can be transformed into complex progressions by controlling Chance, Repeats, Occurrence, and Recurrence.
• Advanced tools such as Histograms allow you to control your material in sophisticated ways – or add creative chaos.

Powerful Editing Features

• World-class editing tools for audio, notes, and automation.

• Layered editing of multiple clips, across multiple tracks – including notes and audio side-by-side.

• Each audio clip can contain multiple audio events for powerful editing and arranging.
• Advanced automation controls for linear or clip-based workflows – including gestures, automation point modes, controlled randomization, and loop regions.
• Versatile tool palette for your notes including Spray Can, Razor, and Quantize to Key.
• Comping allows you to quickly combine the best parts of your audio takes.
• Effortless Bounce and Bounce in Place for clips or time selection.
• Clever implementation of clip aliases to quickly create structure and repetition with audio, notes, and automation.

180+ Devices Included

Bitwig Studio devices are virtual instruments, audio effects, and other tools for crafting your sound. The extensive array of included devices covers all sound design needs, from the subtle to the extreme. 

Bitwig Studio includes instruments and effects such as:

• Polymer, a fun and quick synth: Pick an oscillator, a filter, and an envelope generator. Choose your synthesis method: Subtractive, FM/PM, hard sync, PWM, phase distortion, and Wavetable. With 270 possible combinations, Polymer covers them all.

• Drum Machine: Drop in samples or electronic drum synths. Each note is now its own audio chain.
• Sampler: A versatile instrument for playing and manipulating audio with several playback modes, including granular or wavetable options and much more.

• Sweep: An expressive filter bank with two filter slots, one waveshaper, and a routing knob for smoothly blending through several configurations.
• EQ+: a feature-packed graphical equalizer with up to 8 bands, excellent visualization, mouse gestures, and new algorithms.
• Phase-4: A four-oscillator phase modulation and phase distortion synthesizer for classic, modern, and future sounds.

• The Grid: an open modular sound design environment that powers a family of devices. It includes 230+ modules and a supersonic workflow.

Sound Content

A full creative library right out of the box: Thousands of sounds and factory presets, including drum machines, acoustic drums, multi-sampled instruments, instrument loops, sound effects, and various synth presets, as well as curated partner and artist packages.

Future-Proof

All Bitwig Studio software updates in the following 12 months are FREE.