Chapter 8. Automation
With the mixer interface (chapter 6 <>) and our introduction to devices ( chapter 7 <>), we examined both track and device parameters that you will want to set as your own tastes dictate. But fixing these parameters to certain values is probably not enough. If you can think about how a song develops — from the arrangement growing as parts gradually fade in and find their place in the stereo field, to instruments becoming more animated as their tones morph and brighten, to parts gradually fading away by both losing volume and increasing reverb — then you can visualize the series of long and short curves that represents a piece of music and its structure. Automation is the animation of any defined parameter over time. It is usually thought of as narrative and rigid (in the same way the Arranger Timeline defines an exact musical progression), but Bitwig Studio also supports both a clip-oriented approach to automation, and techniques for having multiple layers of control cooperate to shape individual parameters in a relative way. We will start our look at modulation back in the Arranger Timeline Panel, where we can work directly with traditional track-based automation. Then we will meet theAutomation Editor Panel, whose sole purpose is displaying and manipulating automation. Finally, we will see how clip-based and relative automation can enhance our workflows and music in ways both novel and powerful. Let's get those parameters dancing.