Why isn't the pitch bend audible?

[edurbrow]

I'm trying to create a glissando. I've done it before, but this time it is not changing pitch at all. I tried searching and found something with automation but that only created jumps in the lines not steady ascents.  In the EX24 instrument, I cannot get the left display for pitch bend to stick on any number other than 0. I could get the other one to be on 12, but it doesn't help. Or are those two different thing? base pitch and pitch range?

[des99]

The two values corresponding to the up and down ranges. The one with the up arrow is your upward pitch bend range - how much you will bend up when you move the pitch bend wheel up from zero, and the one with the down arrow does the same for the lower end underneath the pitch bend central zero position.

This way you can have, eg, a tone bend upwards, but an octave bend downwards.

You are currently set to 0 bend up (so no upward bend), and an octave down for the downward bend.

If you can't change the 0 upward bend (strange!), can you double click on the value and type it in?

[edurbrow]

11 hours ago, des99 said:

If you can't change the 0 upward bend (strange!), can you double click on the value and type it in?

I cannot click and type in the value. There must be something inhibiting it somewhere. I ran an experiment and tried moving the pitch bend to the negative side. That worked.

So here is another question: can I change/automate the pitch range setting throughout one track or do I have to make new instruments for each pitch bend that has a different value? I cannot find pitch bend range in automation settings.

[David Nahmani]

4 hours ago, edurbrow said:

I cannot click and type in the value.

Can you click-hold that "0" value and drag it toward the top in order to increase the value? 

4 hours ago, edurbrow said:

can I change/automate the pitch range setting throughout one track or do I have to make new instruments for each pitch bend that has a different value? I cannot find pitch bend range in automation settings.

Typically the bend range is not something that is automatable, so you would have to use different instruments for different bend range values. 

[edurbrow]

On 11/9/2022 at 6:33 PM, David Nahmani said:

Typically the bend range is not something that is automatable, so you would have to use different instruments for different bend range values. 

I wonder if I should make audio regions of each pitch bend. Then I could put them on the same track.
Oddly, no info on pitch bend shows up in the event column.

[David Nahmani]

Can you now hear the pitch bends? Were you able to change the Pitch Bend Up value in EXS24? If you weren't, can't you click-hold the value and drag up to change it? 

[edurbrow]

I decided to try on another track. I have 4 tracks and at least several places, so maybe I have to do about 16 pitch bends. The problem is they are all going to be different amounts.

I am able to change the pitch bend value today, but I am not getting the result I want.

For example, I want to have a pitch bend go from a Bb to a D, over an octave, a 10th or 16 half steps. If I write a Bb and a D a third apart and start the pitch bend 12 steps below and go to 4 steps above it should work, right? But what happens is it sounds odd, it glides at one speed half way through to 0, the octave Bb, but then takes the same amount of time to glide up 4 steps. So it is as if the glide slows down half way through. If I set the lower bend to 16 and change the Bb to a D, it should sound like Bb, right? And by golly it does start on a Bb, but it reaches the D half way through and just stays on D for the second half!

I guess what I want to do is eliminate the upward bend because it seems to have a limit of 12 steps. There must be a way to do this, but my head is going to explode so I will go to bed and see if any of you Logic geniuses can spot where I've gone wrong.

Thank you in advance.

You can see there is a tiny black dot half way through the pitch bend.

Edited December 28, 2022 by edurbrow

[David Nahmani]

Are you trying to do a legato performance? Where one note bends into the next? In the EXS24 you can achieve it this way:

1. Click the Legato button (top left).
2. Raise the Glide slider.
3. Make sure the MIDI notes overlap slightly in the Piano Roll.

 

[edurbrow]

Here is a shot of it with 0 for the up bend

Just now, David Nahmani said:

Are you trying to do a legato performance?

My understanding of the word legato is notes connected without a break.

 

[David Nahmani]

1 minute ago, edurbrow said:

My understanding of the word legato is notes connected without a break.

Yes and the glide allows the pitch to glide from one note to the next. So there's no pitch bend to automate at all, you just draw for example a Bb and a D and you'll get a Bb gliding into the pitch of a D. 

[edurbrow]

2 minutes ago, David Nahmani said:

Are you trying to do a legato performance? Where one note bends into the next? In the EXS24 you can achieve it this way:

1. Click the Legato button (top left).
2. Raise the Glide slider.
3. Make sure the MIDI notes overlap slightly in the Piano Roll.

Sorry David, I'm not finding a legato button. Looked in the h elp.

[David Nahmani]

[edurbrow]

Just now, David Nahmani said:

Yes and the glide allows the pitch to glide from one note to the next. So there's no pitch bend to automate at all, you just draw for example a Bb and a D and you'll get a Bb gliding into the pitch of a D. 

That sounds pretty good, but one wants to have a little pause on  the starting note before starting the glide. If that is the only way....

 

Oh in the synth, I see.

[David Nahmani]

1 minute ago, edurbrow said:

That sounds pretty good, but one wants to have a little pause on  the starting note before starting the glide. If that is the only way....

You could draw a Bb and immediately after a long D note with a slow glide, which creates one note that slowly glides from Bb to D, then create a new D note slightly after the end of the first D note, which creates a little pause. So basically same result as what you're trying to achieve now with the pitch bend curves, only much easier to set up. 

[edurbrow]

I'll try that.

It seems I'll have to make a different track and instance of EXS24 for every bend.

Thanks so much. I'll attack tomorrow.
Bedtime here in Japan.

 

[edurbrow]

I tried one more thing and I think it works, but it will mean doing a bit of transposing every time. If I set the bend range of the EXS24 to 8 up and 8 down and move the Bb down 4 steps, it seems to work smoothly. This way I can get a little pause on the Bb to establish the beginning pitch.

Thanks and good night.

[David Nahmani]

1 hour ago, edurbrow said:

I'll try that.

It seems I'll have to make a different track and instance of EXS24 for every bend.

No, that's the beauty of using glide in legato mode, only one track with bends of all kinds of range. The bend range is determined by the notes you draw that overlap, so you could have say a C3 bending into a D3, then a small gap then a D3 bending into a high C4 for example. 

1 hour ago, edurbrow said:

I tried one more thing and I think it works, but it will mean doing a bit of transposing every time. If I set the bend range of the EXS24 to 8 up and 8 down and move the Bb down 4 steps, it seems to work smoothly. This way I can get a little pause on the Bb to establish the beginning pitch.

Ok if that works for your application then that's great! Whatever works. 😄 

[edurbrow]

17 hours ago, David Nahmani said:

You could draw a Bb and immediately after a long D note with a slow glide, which creates one note that slowly glides from Bb to D, then create a new D note slightly after the end of the first D note, which creates a little pause. So basically same result as what you're trying to achieve now with the pitch bend curves, only much easier to set up. 

I'm trying this between an F and an A. In the EXS24 I clicked Legato and set the glide to slow but it doesn't do any gliding, it just jumps immediately to the A from the F. I must have missed an important step.

TIA

[edurbrow]

Okay, disregard that post. It didn't work at first, but I closed the ESX24 then reopened it and it worked.
I don't see a way to automate this though, so it will glide on every note. I guess the thing to do would be to make an identical track and only have the notes I want to glide on it and a blank space on the original.
This certainly has the advantage that you can tell at a glance what the beginning and ending pitches are.

[edurbrow]

It seems like the original settings on the original track control the settings on the glide track. Now changing either seems to do nothing. It worked for a moment, even after I moved the glide bit to a new track,  but it doesn't work anymore. Back to the drawing board.

Edited December 29, 2022 by edurbrow

[David Nahmani]

You can completely control the legato aspect, assuming you have all your ducks in a row, so to speak. 

Make sure the MIDI notes overlap. The length of the overlap doesn't matter for the result, just make it obvious to the eye so you know the notes are actually played legato. That overlap allows you to determine whether the notes are played legato or not.

Same thing if you play the notes live on a keyboard: if you play a new note while still holding the old one then you get a legato effect. If you release the current note before playing the new one, there is no legato effect: 

5 hours ago, edurbrow said:

I don't see a way to automate this though, so it will glide on every note. I guess the thing to do would be to make an identical track and only have the notes I want to glide on it and a blank space on the original.

There's nothing to automate, you control which notes are played legato or not by having an overlap or not. The length of the glide is determined by the position of the glide slider in EXS24. There's no need to create an identical track, all your notes can be placed on a single track. 

[edurbrow]

 Could be I was not precise with overlap.

Thanks a lot.