Topic: request: Pitch Bend Range To +/- 48 semitones

For use with Ableton and other, an update to have an option for +/- 48 semitone pitch bend would make the instrument so much more intuitive since that is what Ableton's piano roll uses. Please give us that option! I'm begging! And a koto instrument would be so cool to have with that polyphonic pitch bend ;)

Re: request: Pitch Bend Range To +/- 48 semitones

lazyyeyee wrote:

For use with Ableton and other, an update to have an option for +/- 48 semitone pitch bend would make the instrument so much more intuitive since that is what Ableton's piano roll uses. Please give us that option! I'm begging! And a koto instrument would be so cool to have with that polyphonic pitch bend

You want to bend the pitch up to 4 entire octaves?
What acoustic instruments sound natural with that?
Perhaps that's not your thinking though?

I suppose if it can be enabled (but not as default) that might be okay. I imagine as we are dealing with a physical modelling engine that it could sound really awful at some ranges.

Re: request: Pitch Bend Range To +/- 48 semitones

No. I wouldn’t probably ever bend 4 octaves. That wasn’t my point. The thing is that ableton has a system that it visually shows your polyphonic pich bends on your piano roll’s expression page and it is ”calibrated” for +/- 48 semitones. So now when the max bend range on pianoteq is 24, it it isn’t accurate. Rather half of the value I want to bend. So if I want to bend a perfect fifth, for example wich is 7 half steps, i have to visually bend it 14 half steps. And if I want to bend a minir third (3 half steps), I have to visually bend an augmented 4th.

Here you can see the ableton sysytem:

https://youtu.be/mgfp6dcOLsk

Re: request: Pitch Bend Range To +/- 48 semitones

Oh okay, so you are programming rather than playing music, gotcha - I think.

Can the Ableton scale not be adjusted to suit the instrument's own?

Seems like an oversight in Ableton not Pianoteq.

Re: request: Pitch Bend Range To +/- 48 semitones

Yeah, it seems that the scale can be modified. Good Point! But more or less the default MPE bend range seems to be +/- 48st so it would make a lot of sense to have that option in Pianoteq so i wouldn't have to change my midi clip settings for just about every Pianoteq clip. and dragging the midi clip to other instruments would be a lot more seemless. And having a seperate pitch bend WHEEL range from the polyphonic MPE (polyphonic per-note bend range) would also be useful for traditional keyboard playing and then finer adjusting with the per note setting. that way the bend wheel on a midi controller could be for example five semitones (actually usable for live recording) and the individual note glide could be something like the 48st range to match the MPE/poly glide functionality.

Last edited by lazyyeyee (15-05-2022 14:36)

Re: request: Pitch Bend Range To +/- 48 semitones

lazyyeyee wrote:

Yeah, it seems that the scale can be modified. Good Point! But more or less the default MPE bend range seems to be +/- 48st so it would make a lot of sense to have that option in Pianoteq so i wouldn't have to change my midi clip settings for just about every Pianoteq clip. and dragging the midi clip to other instruments would be a lot more seemless. And having a seperate pitch bend WHEEL range from the polyphonic MPE (polyphonic per-note bend range) would also be useful for traditional keyboard playing and then finer adjusting with the per note setting. that way the bend wheel on a midi controller could be for example five semitones (actually usable for live recording) and the individual note glide could be something like the 48st range to match the MPE/poly glide functionality.

I will respectfully suggest that it wouldn't make sense to give a ridiculous range of almost certainly unusable pitch bend just to satisfy your desire to use one specific DAW in a particular way, especially if pitch bend is adjustable to fit the range of any given plug-in, as I would expect.
I don't think many decent instruments have 4 octave pitch bend. It's suitable for some synth sounds - if emulating  classic analogue ribbon pitch bend say.
2 semitones up and down tends to work well for live playing a pitch wheel without lots of very unmusical mistakes. A large ribbon or MPE controller rather different.

Re: request: Pitch Bend Range To +/- 48 semitones

I get it. that range is just the MPE standard so i was asking.

Re: request: Pitch Bend Range To +/- 48 semitones

lazyyeyee wrote:

I get it. that range is just the MPE standard so i was asking.

Hopefully I didn't come over as hostile. You can already save Pianoteq MIDI pitch bend as  +/-2400 which can be fun on some instruments with pitch bend control - instant midrange keyboard sounds to thumping clunky bass sounds!

Possibly going to hear aliasing if you push high frequencies.

Re: request: Pitch Bend Range To +/- 48 semitones

No not at all don't worry! Rather the opposite. Im glad you got me to check and know that the ableton bend range can be adjusted to the +/-24st setting .

Last edited by lazyyeyee (15-05-2022 20:44)

Re: request: Pitch Bend Range To +/- 48 semitones

And yeah true, the internal sample rate seems to be linked to the project sample rate. But I don't think it will bottleneck my sound design at all.