As Bitwig Studio's primary task is to record and play back music, the element of time is crucial. The transport (most closely associated with the global play, stop, and record buttons) is the engine that drives all time functions in Bitwig Studio. This means that for any clip(s) to be played back, triggered or recorded, the transport must be active, propelling the Global Playhead forward.

Bitwig Studio works with time in musical units of bars, beats, and ticks (a set subdivision, which defaults to sixteenth notes). A final value is stored for finer resolution, which is a rounded percentage of the distance between the current tick and the next one. These four units are shown together with period spacers in this way: BARs.BEATs.TICKs.%

For example, with a default time signature setting of 4/4, 1.3.4.50 would represent an event happening in the first bar, on the third beat, within the fourth sixteenth note, exactly halfway to the next sixteenth note. The example below uses Bitwig Studio's counting system to label a rhythm in traditional musical notation: