I just downloaded the brand new Bitwig 3.3 Beta and it’s some really exciting new additions in there like a new synth device, Polymer, with wavetable support! The Polymer is basically a new synth with an oscillator, sub-osc, filter and envelope pre-setup for you to get started with sculpting your sounds.
If you got an active license subscription for Bitwig you can login to your account and download the latest Bitwig 3.3 Beta release.
Let’s find out what’s new in Bitwig 3.3 Beta!
The first thing I notice is that Bitwig has re-designed the authorization box slightly. After a quick enter of my Bitwig user credentials we are ready to start working with Bitwig 3.3!
New in Bitwig 3.3 – At a glance
- POLYMER DEVICE – New exciting synth instrument
- New oscillator – Wavetable (includes 120+ wavetables)
- EDITING IMPROVEMENTS – Scale midi- / audio clips. Trim clips, Bitwig 3.3 improves audio clip fades.
- New Vibrato modulator
- Project Sections page – Manage your project with sections in a more delicate way.
- Scale Modulation routing via another modulator
- Modulation routing curves
In depth overview of the new features of Bitwig 3.3
Let’s take a closer look at these new features in Bitwig Studio 3.
POLYMER DEVICE – Hybrid Modular Synth
Polymer, at first glance, is like Bitwigs own recreation of the Serum synth. Which is a really good thing! Serum is one of the quickest synths out there to work with IMO. In the Bitwig information panel, the Polymer is described as a:
Hot, swappable power synth.
The new Polymer device is a quick setup of a basic hybrid synth patch
At the heart, and “behind the scenes”, the Polymer synth is actually a Grid patch with a row of pre-wired modules featuring:
- Oscillator – Regular oscillators like; pulse, phase-1, saw, sine, triangle, swarm and the new additional Wavetable osc.
- Unison settings – up to 16 voices!
- Sub-oscillator
- Noise-oscillator
- Filter
- Envelope
- Hi-pass filter
- Note glide setup
Hot, swappable power synth
Each module in the Polymer can easily be swapped out for another module device in the same category. Swiching between different oscillators and filters couldn’t be easier!
My first Polymer synth patch
With these accessible settings I quickly got a nice patch going. I know this instrument will be helpful for many new Bitwig users. Fun and quick to work with!
Here is a jam I did on my instagram with the new Polymer synth, some saturation, delay and reverb.
Furthermore, the Polymer synth can also be converted into a Poly Grid patch! Just right-click and select “Convert to Poly Grid” and you can dig deeper into this new exciting synth.
Vibrato modulator
At first glance it’s an LFO. But it’s a musical LFO, controlled by mod wheel by default. The Vibrato modulator can also be switched to poly pressure or manual control.
Bitwig also added important improvements to Editing & Workflow.
EDITING
Scale any audio / midi clip
- Scale any audio- / midi-clip freely by alt+dragging the clips. Finally you can expand or contract a midi clip if you want it to play slower, or faster. Previously we were locked to something like a 200% scaling factor. But now it’s just a matter of click and drag. Huge!
Trim clips
- Trim clips, not your sound. Bitwig aims to preserve your transients. Version 3.3 improves fades, allowing you to fade in from where your audio starts or to go back before it begins, automatically extending the clip and keeping the sound as edited. And adjusting crossfades, sliding edit boundaries, and adjusting gain only take one click now.
WORKFLOW
Project Sections page
- Project Sections Page. The Project Panel has gained a new Sections page. The Sections page lists all of your Arranger cue markers and Launcher scenes side-by-side. So now there’s a reserved space for scenes and markers which is great for overview!
MODULATION ENHANCEMENTS – The Bitwig 3.3 way
Scale Modulation routing via another modulator
This is a huge step for modulating modulators. 😉
While modulators could always control each other, any single modulation routing can now be scaled by a modulator.
Modulation routing curve
- And each modulation routing now has various curves, either for shaping the signal or making it responsive across only part of a knob range.
Final words
This is indeed an exciting update and I’ll be making a video on the Bitwig 3.3 Beta soon so you can get a grip on these new features! You can watch the Bitwig 3.3 Beta features video here!
Want to know more about Bitwig Studio 3?
More video tutorials on Bitwig Studio below:
