Taming Probabilities in Bitwig
Anyone who has been following my blog for a while know I am a fan of probabilities and randomization in my music. While they are a great compositional aid they can become problematic later on in the creative process. It can be frustrating rendering out a piece multiple times in the hopes that the random seed generates something compelling. To deal with this in a recent piece I have used a system to allow me to “freeze” the randomization and hand edit where needed.
In my example I have created 3 tracks:
After setting this up Arp will be sending MIDI to both the instrument track and the render track. The render track will also be sending MIDI to the instrument track.
Set up your arpeggiator input on the Arp channel. When you are ready to “Render” the arpeggiator arm the Arp Render track and record. After you have recorded both your Arp and Arp Render track are still sending MIDI output to Inst. You should mute the arp track or deactivate the clips as needed.
While testing this I found that tracks sending MIDI data work normally when they are muted, but ignore the solo button continue to send data. I would consider this a bug but perhaps there is some reason for this decision.
Another thing to note is that I first attempted to set this up by sending notes directly to the Inst plugin instead of the track. When doing this from multiple sources it only accepts input from one of the sources and completely ignores the other. To avoid this issue I suggest routing to the track unless you have a reason to do otherwise.