These settings generally relate to the musical position of the selected event and its optional fades:

These settings relate to the behavior of Bitwig Studio's audio playback.

Tempo defines the original tempo of the audio event. Knowing this enables Bitwig Studio to properly play back the data in any circumstance.

When an audio file is brought into a project, the program first checks the filename for an indication of tempo (such as the word 154bpm). If nothing is found there, the program determines the tempo as best it can.

This value can be corrected at any time, but changing it will impact the placement and timing of the audio event.

The Fade In and Fade Out parameter sets allow you to define independent fades at the beginning and end of each audio event. When set in tandem with an overlapping clip, you can also create crossfades in this way.

All of the parameters and methods of operation are the same as when applied at the clip level (see Applying Fades and Crossfades to Audio).

Unlike the other sections in the Inspector Panel, the section displaying Operators is only shown when events (and not clips) are selected. Operators are covered extensively in their own chapter (see chapter 12: Operators, for Animating Musical Sequences).

This section exposes three of the expressions we have covered: Gain (see Gain Expressions), Pan (see Pan Expressions), and Pitch (see Pitch Expressions). While these expressions have completely different functions, they are programmed in the same fashion.

Following the Gain and Pitch numeric controls are incrementer and decrementer buttons that will adjust the expression value by the declared amount. For the Gain expression, these buttons express decibel changes. For the Pitch expression, the unit is semitones.

These are the automation-type expressions, each able to be defined by a curve made from several values. Because of this possibility, each value in this section of the Inspector Panel is actually representing the average of points in that expression. Let's examine the Gain expression as an example.

The Gain value listed of -0.58 dB is an average of the five points defined in this audio event expression.

To adjust an expression curve: change its listed average value, or click one of the expression's incrementer/decrementer buttons.

This method will work for any expression in this section, whether it is defined by a curve or a single value.

Finally, while right-arrow buttons at the edge of parameter fields are normally reserved for the Histogram interface for working with multiple events selected (see Using the Histogram), these buttons are also present when any number of expression points or even a clip is selected.

This provides a way to both see the average Spread value for all selected points, and a way to adjust them relatively.

These functions take the specified action on the selected audio event(s):

We saw expressions summarized earlier with a single average of all their points. That works well when you are dealing with numbers, but some parameters simply toggle on and off. For these discrete parameters, the Inspector Panel will diagonally stripe any indicator whose settings are mixed.

In the above image, the Mute, fade IN, fade OUT, and both of the Onset buttons (Preserve and preview) have the orange and gray striping to suggest that some of the selected events are enabled, some are not.

Additionally, the Mode menu is listed as (mixed), which is its way of suggesting that not all selected events have a uniform setting.

Finally, Bitwig Studio provides a special interface called the Histogram for working with a selection of multiple numeric values. The purpose of a histogram is to display the number of times that different possibilities occur over a span of time. In our case, the span of time being considered is the length of the current selection and the possibilities being considered are different values of the targeted parameter.

But our Histogram can also modify values, or even produce them from scratch. We will now demonstrate the option of creating values and then tweaking them.

I will begin with the drum loop you have seen all across this chapter.

By applying the Split at Onsets function, this single event will now be divided at each onset point, giving us a collection of events that add up to the same loop.

From here, I will select all of the events. This can be done in the standard ways, by either pressing CTRL+A (CMD+A on Mac), or by choosing Select All either from the Edit menu or from the context menu. And once all events are selected, I will switch the Detail Editor Panel to focus on the Pitch expression.

A few things to note before we proceed.

First, the Inspector Panel now labels this section of the panel as AUDIO EVENTS (19). The 19 in the title is indicating exactly how many audio events are currently selected and will be acted upon when changes are made here.

Second, the event headers are now reflecting fades where each onset point was split. This is because I have Automatically create fades on audio clip/event edits enabled, which is the default setting. (This preference is found in the Dashboard, under the Settings tab, on the Behavior page, in the Fades section.)

The only places where fades do not exist are at the start of the first event and at the end of the last one because no splitting occurred at these two places. And because these events lack a fade of each kind, both of the Fades buttons are now striped.

Third, in the expression section of the Inspector Panel, each numeric control is now followed by a right-arrow button. Since we now have multiple events selected, these arrows appear to give us access to the Histogram.

With these few observations made, we can now proceed.

The pitch expression is currently empty, containing no points. Now I will simply single-click on the Pitch parameter control. I am not changing the setting, just clicking on it once.

By just clicking on this parameter, an expression point has been created at the start of each event. So even though every point is currently set to 0.00 (semitones), we now have something to work with.

By clicking the right-arrow button beside the Pitch parameter, we can now see the Histogram.

The Histogram is comprised of four elements:

Adjusting the Spread of these points would do nothing as they are all currently identical. And adjusting the Mean would only adjust them all by an identical amount keeping them the same. So I will click the Chaos control and drag it upward.

And now we have some variation in this expression.

You can see that the Histogram display now has some life in it. The horizontal positions are indicating the pitch values for various events — from -24 semitones on the left, to zero semitones in the middle (no pitch shift), to +24 semitones on the right. The vertical position of the chart roughly indicates the number of events found near that value.

The distribution shown here is weighted toward the left (negative) side, and indeed, the Mean is telling us that -1.31 semitones is the current average of all values. The Inspector Panel displays an identical Pitch value, showing that these two controls are identical.

The Chaos value is set in the units of the selected parameter, so it is 25.25 semitones of shift in this case. And because the pitch expression has a bipolar range, 25.25 semitones represents a distribution between -12.125 and +12.125 semitones.

Looking at the newly formed Pitch expression in the Detail Editor Panel, you can see that the highest point is right around +12 semitones (in the second audio event), and that the lowest point is right around -12 semitones (in the fourth event).

If we liked the shape of the expression but felt it was a little too extreme, we could call the Histogram back up and bring down the Spread value to narrow the overall range.

As the Spread value goes below 100%, the range is indeed being shrunk, causing the histogram curve to become narrower and grow upwards — an indication that more of our 20 points are landing close to each other. But the shape of the curve is comparable to where it started.

Interestingly, the Chaos value was back at 0.00 when we brought the Histogram back up. Actually, this happened immediately after the Chaos setting was made and the mouse was released. And the same was true of the Spread function just now, as it will return to 100% once you let go.

Each of these values represents an amount to change the current distribution of points. Unlike Mean, these values reflect only the future action and nothing about the present situation.

Finally, we can indeed use the Mean function to shift the whole expression so that zero is no longer near the center.

By moving the Mean to 12.00, the average value is now a shift of one octave up with all variation landing just around that. (Again, we could have used the Pitch parameter to make the exact same adjustment.)

So that is a brief overview of how the Histogram works and an example of what you can do with it. We have spent this much time on it because the Histogram is available all across Bitwig Studio, whenever a group of numeric values can be selected together.