How to Pitch Bend with a Control Pedal
Posted: 17 Oct 2024, 02:25
Hi everyone,
I received my NS4 last week and have spent some time getting to know my way around the new layout. A post on Facebook prompted me to find a solution to being able to smoothly change the synth pitch with morphing.
On the NS4, the pitch menu allows semitone tuning and fine tuning, however both parameters are not morphable. The user on Facebook was able to change the pitch in semitones using an external MIDI controller as a workaround.
Messing around with the Oscillators "Pitch to Env", I found I could morph the "Env Amt" to get a smooth pitch bend down (or up). I created a Synth Preset with the highest-note mono synth set with a negative Env Amt and morphed to zero with the Control Pedal. Backing off the CP will drop the pitch.
As the OSC pitch follows the OSC Env Decay, the morph becomes less effective the longer a note or chord is held, so the OSC Env Decay time is currently set just below infinity at 43 seconds for best results. I believe there is a bug with the infinity setting as the initial pitch jumps dramatically and the sound moves to the 0 setting when I would think it should take "forever" to move from the OSC Env Amt setting to 0 (infinity seconds). I've posted the bug here with a video.
While the pitch stick bends the pitch uniformally across all selected instruments, the pitch bend with the morph can be different for each synth. In MP3 demo 1, two synths use my "W Env2Pitch" preset with mono turned off, and one synth has the initial Env Amt set slightly different so the two synth pitches move further apart as the Control Pedal is backed off and then come together at max (Env Amt = 0). In MP3 demo 2, both synths are set for mono and a third synth is added for the chords. The synth preset can be easily changed for any analog wave or sample. I hope you like it, take care.
UPDATE: Leaning toward the idea that folks will learn more by doing, I removed my posted preset after about 500 downloads. Please use the information above with whatever sound you prefer to create a pitch bend morph. Take care
I received my NS4 last week and have spent some time getting to know my way around the new layout. A post on Facebook prompted me to find a solution to being able to smoothly change the synth pitch with morphing.
On the NS4, the pitch menu allows semitone tuning and fine tuning, however both parameters are not morphable. The user on Facebook was able to change the pitch in semitones using an external MIDI controller as a workaround.
Messing around with the Oscillators "Pitch to Env", I found I could morph the "Env Amt" to get a smooth pitch bend down (or up). I created a Synth Preset with the highest-note mono synth set with a negative Env Amt and morphed to zero with the Control Pedal. Backing off the CP will drop the pitch.
As the OSC pitch follows the OSC Env Decay, the morph becomes less effective the longer a note or chord is held, so the OSC Env Decay time is currently set just below infinity at 43 seconds for best results. I believe there is a bug with the infinity setting as the initial pitch jumps dramatically and the sound moves to the 0 setting when I would think it should take "forever" to move from the OSC Env Amt setting to 0 (infinity seconds). I've posted the bug here with a video.
While the pitch stick bends the pitch uniformally across all selected instruments, the pitch bend with the morph can be different for each synth. In MP3 demo 1, two synths use my "W Env2Pitch" preset with mono turned off, and one synth has the initial Env Amt set slightly different so the two synth pitches move further apart as the Control Pedal is backed off and then come together at max (Env Amt = 0). In MP3 demo 2, both synths are set for mono and a third synth is added for the chords. The synth preset can be easily changed for any analog wave or sample. I hope you like it, take care.
UPDATE: Leaning toward the idea that folks will learn more by doing, I removed my posted preset after about 500 downloads. Please use the information above with whatever sound you prefer to create a pitch bend morph. Take care