Re: [LAU] Bitwig: what we can learn from it

On 03/30/2014 12:27 PM, Louigi Verona wrote:
> What we can learn from Bitwig is that they base their work on
> musician's needs. And their whole application is tailored towards a
> musician getting his work done easier and more efficiently.
>
> In Linux Audio very often the basis is a curious technical idea that
> might have little to do with doing music. As a made-up example "why
> not create a framework that will have all the midi connections in one
> place and it will dynamically reassign those connections and plug them
> using my new format that everyone will have to adapt because it is
> such a great and efficient format".
> This is a strictly technical passion. Commercial projects tend to
> figure out what their users actually want.
>
>
> Even right now in this thread I see people suggesting many cool
> technical feats, but I see little interest in trying to understand
> what musicians might want. As I usually write, sometimes getting
> heated metaphors back at myself for that, often a musician needs some
> basic stuff first.
>
> I spoke about no Linux sampler supporting WAVE loops, although all
> Windows DAWs do.
> Or that no sf2 player has volume envelope, although most non-Linux sf2
> players do.
>
> And the reason for this is because people are doing software for
> themselves and not necessarily for others. This is not good or bad,
> this is just how it is. You decide whether you want to change this or not.
>
> Louigi.
> http://www.louigiverona.ru/
>
>
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I add my now self-enforced once a year enthusiastic mention for workflow
in LA. I don't necessarily agree with the notion that LA is for only
hobby enthusiasts, as my nearly ten years in LA trying to piece together
a professional setup took a step forward with the advent of
Non-session-manager, and a couple of other breakthroughs in that time,
and for the moment at least, i feel i'm "almost there."

Putting aside the obvious difference between commercial and opensource
DAWs in terms of philosophy, i'm with Louigi on the user/musician's
workflow front. For all their faults, and there are many, made worse by
the upgrade extortion commercial apps enact for what are usually
bugfixes, most of them do have an eye on their users in terms of
workflow, as it will directly affect their bottom line if they don't.

Louigi's right, it's just how it is, no finger pointing, or accusations
of incompetence implied.

I will add there are exceptions in our community, and i will wave the
flag for Fons, Filipe, John, Robin, and Christian, who have, when i'm
interacting with them about their apps (those apps i use), kept an open
mind about workflow, enthusiastically, or at least respectfully. My
corner use case has elicited little enthusiasm at times, but it's these
generous and decent fellows that kept my linux enthusiasm going, when i
got so frustrated with the amount of work required to achieve a simple
task that i considered going back to the "dark side". (and that decision
is still on the table, being honest with myself)

I've learned to distinguish between more academic projects, and those
with an intent on wider user involvement at the musical level. (No doubt
to the relief of LA devs in general)

I no longer consider my unique user case relevant in LA, however i've
managed to put something together that is at least usable, and with a
modicum of workflow efficiency, as clumsy as that may be.

Bitwig misses the mark for me, on Linux, in a couple of spots. But the
basic workflow is "mainstream", fairly efficient, and they've obviously
worked out the path from A to B to C in terms of navigation, and
sequence of as few actions as possible to achieve a task, to the general
users benefit. (At least in the 2 hours i spent trying it out)

My 2 Euros worth, and now it's back in the box until the next workflow
mention, sometime in 2015.

Regards to all, and thanks again to those devs i mentioned. You're
keeping the flame alive.

Alex.
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Received on Sun Mar 30 16:15:02 2014