Here’s an early look at a new feature of Bitwig Studio 3.1 – Micro-Pitch!

Micro-Pitch allows you to use microtonal scales and tunings with your Bitwig instruments.

It supports scales of up to 12 notes. If you want to use unequal scales with more than 12 notes then you’re out of luck – best way to do this is still to use VST plugins with full-keyboard microtuning support. But if you’re interested in large equal temperaments, these are still possible (you simply enter the data for the first 12 notes).

It’s a good start and quite mind-blowing that the tunings can be modulated over time. I can think of plenty of things I would love to do with that.

Given that Micro-Pitch now exists, is it possible for some third-party developer to create a MIDI effect that would retune all MPE-capable Bitwig synths WITHOUT the 12 note limitation? I wrote to Bitwig support and they confirmed that Bitwig instruments DO NOT respond to MPE that comes earlier in the chain. They only respond to polyphonic pitch-bend from the piano roll, or Micro-Pitch. Therefore a third-party VST MPE retuner is still not possible within Bitwig Studio.

But with MIDI 2.0 on the horizon, the future is looking bright for microtonal music tech. As MIDI 2.0 rolls out in the coming years it will be exciting to see which DAWs offer the best experience for microtonal musicians.