I’ve received some questions over time about how I blog. What platform I use, how I manage dependencies, how I achieve certain effects, how I update, how I handle images etc…

I primarily use Docker, Jekyll, Mercurial and Visual Studio Code. Click through to see how I use these things together to create what you’re reading now.

July 4th was my last day of of using Bitwig via the ‘30 days’ monicker.

I’ve made my decision on whether I’m going to continue with it or fall back to Renoise.

Let’s see what I’ve decided and why…

Other posts in this series:

• Bitwig first impressions
• Bitwig feature review - Note Expression
• Bitwig Modulators - The coolest part of Bitwig
• Bitwig Effects review
• Bitwig Instruments, Note Effects and Instrument Containers Review
• Things that Bitwig could improve.
• Bitwig Review, but better!

It’s not terribly uncommon for an old guitar to have an inner brace detach. It’s more likely if the guitar is thrown between high and low humidity and high to low temperature environments.

My wife has her mother’s guitar which is a 70s Cortley. The guitar was heavily used and often left in a hot car. One of the braces on the top (on the opposite side of what you see) came loose.

It may not be totally obvious when this occurs, but a sudden or gradual deadening of the sustain is a sure-sign of an issue. You can also thumb the top with your finger around the guitar and take note of any drastic assymetrical differences along the axis continued by the fretboard. You can also just throw a mirror in side and check!

Let me show you how easy this is to fix, and how to do it right.

Bitwig is a cool DAW no doubt, but there’s a number of things that could be greatly improved.

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of things that I’ve found problematic in my time with Bitwig so far…

(Using BITWIG STUDIO 2.1.1 as of the time of this writing)

• Bitwig first impressions
• Bitwig feature review - Note Expression
• Bitwig Modulators - The coolest part of Bitwig
• Bitwig Effects review
• Bitwig Instruments, Note Effects and Instrument Containers Review
• Bitwig Conclusion
• Bitwig Review, but better!

A DAW that’s aimed at electronic musicians needs to supply at least a basic set of instruments so the user can get making some music right away. Bitwig has a decent set of included instruments, and it has note effects (midi effects).

Let’s see how they are…

Spoiler - Overall rating:

Other posts in this series:

• Bitwig first impressions
• Bitwig feature review - Note Expression
• Bitwig Modulators - The coolest part of Bitwig
• Bitwig Effects review
• Things that Bitwig could improve.
• Bitwig Conclusion
• Bitwig Review, but better!

Small update, lots of work: The site should now work better on mobile.

Sorry for taking so long, but I don’t have a phone with a web browser so I never really paid much attention.

It should be much better now.

Bitwig comes with a number of stock effects. Not only are these effects largely competent in their own right, Bitwig also has some very clever routing and a comprehensive modulation system that greatly enhances what you can do with the devices.

I’m going to cover every single audio effect included in Bitwig with a basic rundown of what it does, some cool bonus features and my ADRB rating.

Spoiler - Overall rating:

Other posts in this series:

• Bitwig first impressions
• Bitwig feature review - Note Expression
• Bitwig Modulators - The coolest part of Bitwig
• Bitwig Instruments, Note Effects and Instrument Containers Review
• Things that Bitwig could improve.
• Bitwig Conclusion
• Bitwig Review, but better!

Bitwig has what they call their unified modulation system. The modulation system is a set of modulation devices that can be applied to any visible parameter of any effect or instrument in Bitwig.

Along with the capability of modulating existing parameters, Bitwig’s modulation system is capable of being a full-fledged digital modular synthesizer!

Come with me as I walk you through probably the coolest feature in Bitwig, and perhaps a ‘killer feature’ if you’re looking to switch to Bitwig from another DAW

UPDATED FOR 2.3

Other posts in this series:

• Bitwig first impressions
• Bitwig feature review - Note Expression
• Bitwig Effects review
• Bitwig Instruments, Note Effects and Instrument Containers Review
• Things that Bitwig could improve.
• Bitwig Conclusion
• Bitwig Review, but better!

I’ve had a number of readers ask me what happened with the 7 Days of no music. Well here’s a short update.

The original idea was to explore a few things, some of which I didn’t express in the original post:

One of the major features that sets Bitwig 2 apart from other DAWs (such as Ableton Live) is Note Expression.

Note Expression, at its core, allows you to apply modulation of certain parameters to specific notes. The original midi spec only allows for control messages to be attached to the whole stream of data. With Note Expression, you can have a complex part where only certain notes that are specifically controlled.

After the break I’ll break it down even further with some examples.

Other posts in this series:

• Bitwig first impressions
• Bitwig Modulators - The coolest part of Bitwig
• Bitwig Effects review
• Bitwig Instruments, Note Effects and Instrument Containers Review
• Things that Bitwig could improve.
• Bitwig Conclusion
• Bitwig Review, but better!