fixed Pitch Bend values

Assuming that you've exhausted all options in Project Settings/ Tuning, then yes, it is possible, within limits, those being:

- Pitch bend is a parameter ranging from -100% to +100% (-8192 to +8191, to be exact). How much of a bend 100% actually is depends on the setting of the receiving instrument's patch. It can be 1 semitone, 12 semitones, 0 semitones or any number in between. So a pitch bend of 50% will be 6 semitones from a range of 12, but 1/2 semitone from a range of 1 and 0 from a range of 0. This makes it a) quite tedious to find the correct pitch bend value for a pitch change of, say, 15 cent and b) quite limiting to reliably recall exactly that target across more than one instrument patch since you'd have to modify all patches to the same pitch bend range.

- Microtonal adjustments usually are specific to notes, so you'd either need 12 keys reserved for steering the pitch of every key across all octaves if you retain 12 keys per octave, or as many pitch keys as you have note keys if you have more or less than 12 keys per octave.

- All of this requires quite good timing in a live environment and quite some non-musical focus on the performance, as you'd have to constantly think "Ok, next note will be F#4 but 15 cent up so I need to hold down...D#-1 simultaneously to achieve that. Then I'll play Bb4 but 3 cent flat, that'll need...um...ah...hang on..."

You decide if that's a promising route.If you have fixed values per note it can be tied to the actual notes without need for extra pitch keys, but then why not directly use that very setting in Project Settings/ Tuning which then also works polyphonically?

Assuming that you've exhausted all options in Project Settings/ Tuning, then yes, it is possible, within limits, those being:

Yes, I did

- Pitch bend is a parameter ranging from -100% to +100% (-8192 to +8191, to be exact). How much of a bend 100% actually is depends on the setting of the receiving instrument's patch. It can be 1 semitone, 12 semitones, 0 semitones or any number in between. So a pitch bend of 50% will be 6 semitones from a range of 12, but 1/2 semitone from a range of 1 and 0 from a range of 0. This makes it a) quite tedious to find the correct pitch bend value for a pitch change of, say, 15 cent and b) quite limiting to reliably recall exactly that target across more than one instrument patch since you'd have to modify all patches to the same pitch bend range.

I know that. I work with the pitch bend method already, for example with Sibelius. In this case, it would be just one patch with the PB range set to +2 /-2

- Microtonal adjustments usually are specific to notes, so you'd either need 12 keys reserved for steering the pitch of every key across all octaves if you retain 12 keys per octave, or as many pitch keys as you have note keys if you have more or less than 12 keys per octave.

I thought that Pitch Bends are active for the whole channel, like the pitch bend wheel, so 6 general modifiers must be enough.

- All of this requires quite good timing in a live environment and quite some non-musical focus on the performance, as you'd have to constantly think "Ok, next note will be F#4 but 15 cent up so I need to hold down...D#-1 simultaneously to achieve that. Then I'll play Bb4 but 3 cent flat, that'll need...um...ah...hang on..."

Exactly! And if I write that out, a well-trained professional player shouldn't have any trouble with that. But I'd like to test if this will work

You decide if that's a promising route.If you have fixed values per note it can be tied to the actual notes without need for extra pitch keys, but then why not directly use that very setting in Project Settings/ Tuning which then also works polyphonically?

Because the Tuning options are not suited for my need. I need 12 x 6 = 72 pitches per octave. Another route we might take is to retune the samples within EXS24 to a custom key mapping. That's a safe solution!

Thanks!

Ohhh, now I get it. You don't want actual microtuning which involves specific non-trivial abberrations of specific notes from tempered tuning to achieve some cosmic resonance, you 'just' want to divide normal, tempered halftones into six finer steps.

This is easy and can be done in either Scripter or the Environment. Convert the five pitch notes into PitchBend events which are set to cause pitch changes of 16,6 cent, 33,3 cent, 50 cent and so on. Either use a tuner to find the exact pitchbend values or play a second manually tuned instrument to compare.

Not sure if tuning samples in EXS is the right approach since you'd need 144 keys to cover but two octaves...