Pitch Bend Range - in semitones.

[eustus_music]

I've always set my bend range to 12 in the past to keep things simple as going up and down 1 octave is easy and predictable.

But what if you then want to bend to an F from a C or a G# to a D. It's annoying maths that results in values with decimal places and lots of zooming.

 

I've just finally got round to working out the best bend range to set to make semitone steps in between easily findable. I'm doing this on NI MASSIVE that has different ranges for up and down, which is useful as the pitch bend parameters in Logic start at 0 and have an upwards range (63) that is different to the downward range (64). - because of the 0-127 overall range available.

 

Set UP range to: 12.6

Set DOWN range to: 12.8

 

Setting up like this makes semitones sit apart by a value of exactly 5. So from a middle C, your values look like this:

 

C : 60

B : 55

A#: 50

A : 45

G#: 40

G : 35

F#: 30

F : 25

E : 20

D#: 15

D : 10

C#: 5

C : 0

B : -5

A#: -10

A : -15

G#: -20

G : -25

F#: -30

F : -35

E : -40

D#: -45

D : -50

C#: -55

C : -60

 

I know that this isn't really useful for live settings cause nobody is that accurate with a wheel, but if you want to sit down and program a really complex bendy lead melody (which is exactly what I'm doing now) it's really useful and so much more customizable than the uncontrollable glide function we all normally are stuck with.

 

If you are using an instrument with only 1 available value for up & down then I suggest ignoring the down value and just using one direction. Or you can do some other maths to find out what works for you.

 

So long benders!