Tags: posts polarity-music Bitwig Tutorial

Driv Melody Sequencer in Bitwig Studio

Tutorial | Jun 28, 2024

I successfully rebuilt the Driv sequencer from Ableton Live inside Bitwig Studio. I demonstrated how to use the Grid to create four different play heads with varying playback speeds and directions. I also explained how to route each play head to separate MIDI channels for recording.

You can watch the Video on Youtube - support me on Patreon - Download Driv for Bitwig

Overview:

Yesterday, I rebuilt an Ableton Live sequencer called "Driv" inside Bitwig Studio. Driv allows you to play a melody pattern with multiple playheads that manipulate the playback speed and direction. I recreated this in Bitwig, demonstrating how it works.

Key Points:

This summary should help you quickly grasp the content and key functionalities demonstrated in the video.

Questions & Answers

Maybe you dont watch the video, here are some important takeaways:

Can you recreate the Driv sequencer from Ableton Live in Bitwig Studio?

Yes, it is possible to recreate the Driv sequencer from Ableton Live in Bitwig Studio. The video demonstrates how to rebuild it using the Grid tool and MIDI routing in Bitwig Studio.

What are the main features of the Driv sequencer?

The Driv sequencer in Ableton Live features a main pattern, four play heads with adjustable offsets, a curve modulator for playback variations, and the ability to route each play head to a different MIDI channel or channel in Ableton Live.

How does the rebuilt version in Bitwig Studio work?

The rebuilt version in Bitwig Studio uses the Grid tool with four voices, each representing a different play head. The curve modulator is used to control the playback variations, and MIDI routing is used to send each voice to a different MIDI channel. The result is a similar functionality to the Driv sequencer in Ableton Live.

Is the preset for the rebuilt version available for download?

Yes, the preset for the rebuilt version of the Driv sequencer in Bitwig Studio is available for free download. The link to the preset can be found in the video description.

Transcription

This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by AI, so it might not be perfect. If you find any mistakes, please let me know.
You can also click on the timestamps to jump to the right part of the video, which should be helpful.

[00:00:00] So yesterday on Discord, someone asked the question if you can actually rebuild this
[00:00:06] kind of device here inside of Bitwig Studio.
[00:00:08] It's called "Driv".
[00:00:09] It's a sequencer for Ableton Live.
[00:00:13] And the main idea is that you have basically just one main pattern here, a melody pattern,
[00:00:20] and then you have like four different play heads and you play this pattern in different
[00:00:25] manner, reversed, back and forth slowly.
[00:00:29] And yeah, you can do this in Bitwig Studio, of course.
[00:00:33] So I answered and I rebuilt this yesterday inside of Bitwig Studio.
[00:00:39] I want to show you how it works.
[00:00:41] But first, maybe let's watch this video.
[00:00:54] So this is the main pattern that plays.
[00:00:57] It's the first play head.
[00:01:01] And then you activate or enable here different play heads and then you can change basically
[00:01:06] the offset where it starts to play inside of the sequence.
[00:01:10] Then you have here some kind of curve that defines how you play back this kind of pattern,
[00:01:18] sometimes slower, sometimes faster, sometimes reversed and so on.
[00:01:45] And then you can route basically each of these play heads to a different MIDI channel or
[00:01:49] to a different channel inside of Ableton Live.
[00:01:52] So this is basically how it works.
[00:01:55] Main sequence probabilities, then here the face travel curve kind of thing.
[00:02:04] Yeah, and then routing.
[00:02:07] So that's basically it.
[00:02:09] So I rebuilt this inside of the grid.
[00:02:11] It looks like this here.
[00:02:14] We have basically four voices or actually has voice three.
[00:02:18] That's wrong.
[00:02:19] It's called voice four.
[00:02:21] So we enable voice one.
[00:02:23] You have here this play head and we use here the curve modulator to actually change how
[00:02:28] to play back the sequence.
[00:02:31] We can influence this here in all kinds of different ways, right?
[00:02:34] So it's just your normal MIDI stage envelope generator.
[00:02:40] So let's bring this back.
[00:02:42] We can also change here the play duration.
[00:02:44] That's exactly one bar and it sounds like this.
[00:02:54] So it plays a melody.
[00:02:55] You can see the melody in this pattern here.
[00:02:58] You can change it.
[00:02:59] You can put in every type of note you want to have.
[00:03:06] We have also pressure data.
[00:03:07] We have gain data.
[00:03:08] We have probabilities here.
[00:03:10] Velocity.
[00:03:11] We can also bring the velocity full up.
[00:03:23] So this is basically one play head voice one.
[00:03:26] And then we can bring in voice two.
[00:03:29] And voice two is, let's say, an octave lower here, right?
[00:03:38] It's the same pattern, but here we play it back a bit slower.
[00:03:41] You can see now here it's three bars instead of one bar and one octave lower .
[00:03:51] Then you bring in voice three here.
[00:03:53] It's even slower.
[00:03:54] Four bars and an octave.
[00:04:03] And voice four.
[00:04:10] There's also four bars, maybe five bars here.
[00:04:13] And we can bring in maybe later three bars.
[00:04:17] Something like this.
[00:04:30] Then we bring in maybe a different velocity here.
[00:04:37] So this pattern is actually, let me see here.
[00:04:42] This is seven steps long.
[00:04:46] We can change the step size here up to 16 steps, right?
[00:04:49] If you want to have this longer.
[00:04:57] Then you have here some global things.
[00:04:59] You can say I want to have maybe voice one always on the left side and voice two always
[00:05:06] on the right side.
[00:05:07] You can also scale the velocity here down if you want to have always lower velocity settings
[00:05:16] here for the fourth voice.
[00:05:18] You can do this.
[00:05:19] Maybe this in the middle and this left and this right.
[00:05:35] So you can paint in any note you want here.
[00:05:46] And yeah, we output this basically here to different MIDI channels.
[00:05:50] So voice one is channel one, voice two is channel two and so on, right?
[00:05:55] So you can just grab this or send this to another channel inside of Bitwig Studio and
[00:06:00] then just record it here on a different channel.
[00:06:03] When you do basically insert here a new instrument channel, then you maybe grab, let's say, the
[00:06:10] output here of Polymer channel, maybe then you can change your channel.
[00:06:20] Let's say we only want to grab channel two, right?
[00:06:24] Then you put something on here.
[00:06:32] You basically only receive on this channel here now channel two and send it to channel
[00:06:37] one on this track.
[00:06:39] So this is how it works.
[00:07:01] I also put in here like a set pressure and tumbler so you can use this here in these
[00:07:08] expression modulators if you want to.
[00:07:11] So here you use tumbler for the index of the wave table and pressure I use here for the
[00:07:15] modulation amount.
[00:07:18] Yeah, pretty simple, straightforward.
[00:07:22] I did something like this multiple times in different versions of different iterations
[00:07:27] over the years on this channel.
[00:07:30] But sometimes people just want to have exactly this feature set from a different device like
[00:07:36] here the Drift module or Drift device Drift VST.
[00:07:42] I don't know if this is actually a VST.
[00:07:44] It's probably some kind of Max for life device.
[00:07:47] So yeah, they want exactly the same feature set.
[00:07:50] So I do this here with this preset.
[00:07:53] It's in the description below.
[00:07:55] It's free to download so you don't need to pay anything.
[00:07:58] It's completely free.
[00:08:00] And yeah, let me know what you think.
[00:08:02] Leave a like leave a subscription.
[00:08:04] Thanks for watching.
[00:08:05] And I'll see you in the next video.
[00:08:07] Bye.