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I've been writing music in Python with the pretty_midi library. It has the ability to write notes, pitch bend, and/or control change information to a .mid file.

I've had great fun with the notes in Bitwig, but a few of my creative ideas require the freedom to change the pitch bend, too. Right now .mid files with that information don't seem to affect Bitwig's sampler... but I suspect it's just the way I've set up the track/instrument?

Is pitch bend from an imported MIDI file even a possibility with Bitwig? If so, how is it done?

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Maybe you'll find an answer here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitwig/comments/dutdqo/modulator_pitch_bend/

They say:

Easy: put a "Pitch Shifter" and/or a "Note Velocity" Note-FX into your device's Note-FX-chain and modulate it ...The note pitch shifter also has a fine tune knob that lets you continuously bend one semitone up or down.

The German manual is much larger than the English version I've found:

To add a MIDI automation track, you need to add the MIDI channel and set the type of MIDI data for this track. Here you can choose between Pitch Bend, Ch. Pressure (in some cases Called aftertouch) and control change (which also includes the controller number required)

Edit:

Upgrading to Bitwig 3.2.8 will enable this feature!. (D. Betchkal)

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  • I'm afraid you've tried this all already ... – Albrecht Hügli Oct 11 '20 at 9:22
  • No I hadn't! An informative test. [1] It doesn't work to activate pitch bending from my Python-generated .mid file. [2] I tried your idea with my keyboard, and it works to activate bending on the Polysynth (which doesn't support my keyboard's pitch wheel otherwise.) [3] I can always bend on the Sampler with the keyboard. Moving that .mid recording to the Polysynth, the bending transfers automatically! [4] However, saving the MIDI file out and playing in VLC: no bending is exported. I'm starting to think there is some very Bitwig-specific way that pitch information is stored? Very weird. – D. Betchkal Oct 11 '20 at 20:00
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    Turns out upgrading to Bitwig 3.2.8 enables the feature as you described; if you modify your answer to include that bit of info I'd gladly accept! – D. Betchkal Oct 12 '20 at 20:04

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