Master Recording, to Directly Capture Audio
Bitwig's Master Recording feature offers a unique way to capture audio from the master track's output, and it is independent of the project's transport status.
Recording into a track in the Arranger Timeline (see Recording Clips) or onto the Clip Launcher (see Recording Launcher Clips) requires the transport to be running, and often involves stopping the transport to complete the recording process.
But Master Recording has no concern for status of the transport. This allows you to:
Capture a full live performance straight to disk.
Capture ideas without ever hitting play.
Record performance gestures that include starting, moving, and stopping the transport itself.
Record anything triggered by transport stop or jump, such as Globals (Interface) modulator effects (see Globals), or just the way Steps (and many other Sequence and LFO modulators) change on start/stop or position movement.
Once audio is captured, it can dragged to the project's Launcher or Arranger, in to a Sampler device (see Sampler) for exploration, or even on to a Convolution effect (see Convolution) — all without ever stopping the transport.
All Master Recording controls are found together in the display of the transport area (see The Window Menus/Transport Area). There are three elements here:
Master level: A level meter showing the current output from the project's master track. This is exactly what you would see if the master track was on screen, but here it is always visible.
Master Recording toggle: A circular recording-style button that starts or stops a recording. The button will look as above when no recording is running. Once clicked, a recording is started, and the button appears red.
Additionally, the play time display (see Display Section) now shows the elapsed time of the current recording. As seen above, this time is shown in red to visually correspond with the Master Recording toggle.
Show Master Recordings: Once a project has used the Master Recording feature, the folder icon becomes active, both visually and functionally.
Clicking on the Show Master Recordings button points the Browser Panel to the current project's master-recordings folder.
- 0. Welcome to Bitwig Studio
- 1. Bitwig Studio Concepts
- 2. Anatomy of the Bitwig Studio Window
- 3. The Arrange View and Tracks
- 4. Browsers in Bitwig Studio
- 5. Arranger Clips
- 6. The Clip Launcher
- 7. The Mix View
- 8. Introduction to Devices
- 9. Automation
- 10. Working with Audio Events
- 11. Working with Note Events
- 12. Operators, for Animating Musical Sequences
- 13. Going Between Notes and Audio
- 14. Working with Projects and Exporting
- 15. MIDI Controllers
- 16. Modulators, Device Nesting, and More
- 17. Welcome to The Grid
- 18. Working on a Tablet Computer
- 19. Device Descriptions
- 19. Credits