pitchbend-criminally underutilized in DAW,VST&MIDIapps

it's like nobody knows what to do with it.
physical pitchwheels all suck, synthesizers and vstis are generally lame about pitchbend ranges, and even brilliant DAW applications only go halfway towards making pitchbend a usable expression tool.

there are plenty of midi plugins dedicated to manipulating ccs, but only 1 fantastic pitchwheel plugin (it's jesusonic, reaper's native plugin language, but it can be used in a js to vst wrapper)

so
yesterday i ordered 2 membrane potentiometers from jameco. these are basically ribbon controllers - they only send a signal when your hand is pressing down on them. they're 8 inches each.

basically, i'm building a goddamn midi controller specifically for controlling a pitchbend signal.
1 ribbon will control the bend up, and the other will control the bend down. additional knobs/buttons will control the pitchbend plugin, which will allow a user to set a minimum and maximum bend value through software. the user will set their synthesizer pitchbend range to 12 up and 12 down and let the actual used ranges get set through the pitchbend js plugin.

this means that the pitch bend range is now an automatible parameter, which it wasn't previously in plugins like trillian and many many others.

this finally will allow pitchbend to be a truly playable part of MIDI without only halfassing it. thank gawd.

arduino is the shit, C++ rules, and easy electronics hardware wins every time.

arduino is interesting
a friends tells me about that thing days ago

i've built 3 midi controllers using arduino.
scrapped the 1st because it was immature and more of a way to learn the basics
redid the 2nd because the first's OS was an absolute mess (now it is SICK, mid air gestural control of midi notes and CCs...midi theremin)
and the last i rewrote the OS yesterday, while at work, in the course of 3 hours to improve it somewhat.

this pitchbend arduino controller is going to be a walk in the park to program. the fanciest thing i'll be doing is adding an optional "average" knob so that the PB data more naturally/logarithmically sweeps from your pressure point back to 0 when you release your fanger. easy street. on the fly averaging based on a variable controlled by a rotary potentiometer. again - C++ is awesome, and arduino/timtwillman's midi library makes it dead easy to get results, FAST. i've only been programming for a year and i'm able to get extremely innovative, sophisticated results...and my electronics chops are amateur at best, too.

it's absurd. you can build your own midi controller with very little fuss and do things that companies like nukai, m-audio, etc won't be doing for years to come. amazing.

Dude, you seem to keep that brilliant mind of yours going all the time.

I thought of the korg triton when you mentioned the ribbon controller. Plus you know I'm down with the controller usage so that idea you brought up would be something interesting to look into.

that's pretty smart .. vangelis will want one

if it's a ribbon controller, do you really need one each for up and down, they should be able to be on one ribbon and depending on which way you move your finger adjusts the bend?
you can get velocity sensitive ribbons like on the new roger linn drum machine, they look sweet

i thought about getting 1 500mm one for a little more, but
1 ribbon = 10k resistance = 0 thru 1023 units read by the microprocessor.
2 ribbons = 2046. much better resolution. as it is, you're losing a lot of rez because pitchbend is 0-8192.
these ribbons are not velocity sensitive, since they're only going to be controlling pitchbend there's no need for velocity sensitive here since pitchbend only has 1 parameter. trent resnor has a cool velocity sensitive ribbon controller, there's youtube videos of his wife using them. he has good taste.

pitchbend is 0-8192

I thought MIDI was only 0-127?

Not saying you're wrong, but if I'm wrong, how did you get that 8192 number?

trent resnor has a cool velocity sensitive ribbon controller, there's youtube videos of his wife using them. he has good taste.

haha good taste in what now?

good taste in what now?

err----you could go either way with that one and still get an A+
trent reznor, dennis kucinach - both on top of their game in that regard.

CCs are 0-127. low rez modwheel/pan/a couple others are 0-127. PB and high rez other things are 0-8192.

this is the midi library i'm using that puts hexadecimal midi into a straightforward library that my small brain can grasp:

http://timothytwillman.com/itp_blog/?page_id=240

any success of my MIDI controllers is due entirely to the work of Timothy Twillman.
but yeah, PB resolution is nice and high. TOO high, actually which is why i'm thinking about that averaging trick to get less predictable divisions. regardless this is child's play. yesterday i fired up one of the ribbons and was overjoyed to see how responsive and controllable it is. perfectly linear. you could draw keyboard divisions overtop of this sucker and play the pitchbend as if it were a keyboard.

instead of putting one's finger directly on the sensor (hard to stay directly on the sensitive part, you could slip and get 0 values) i'll be using a small bungee type cord strung directly above it so you touch that instead. cheap and handy solution.

most of my midi controllers use recycled and found objects, all except the sensors. some folks try to make people go "wow" with the amount of $$ they invest in their equipment, but i'd rather look like a trash barge blasting ill beats

most of my midi controllers use recycled and found objects, all except the sensors. some folks try to make people go "wow" with the amount of $$ they invest in their equipment, but i'd rather look like a trash barge blasting ill beats

Props.
You can still wow people with recycled materials.

Did a little snooping on midi pitch bend. Seems they are using the trick of using two bytes instead of one, to actually get +16,000 steps of data (128*128). I've always thought that'd be a great way to get more fine control out of midi.

The two bytes of the pitch bend message form a 14 bit number, 0 to 16383. The value 8192 (sent, LSB first, as 0x00 0x40), is centered, or "no pitch bend." The value 0 (0x00 0x00) means, "bend as low as possible," and, similarly, 16383 (0x7F 0x7F) is to "bend as high as possible." The exact range of the pitch bend is specific to the synthesizer.

Nothing much to add, except there's one pitchwheel I absolutely love, the Nord Lead. I also had a K2500 and you could use the ribbon for pitchbend. Very nice.

Nym wrote:it's absurd. you can build your own midi controller with very little fuss and do things that companies like nukai, m-audio, etc won't be doing for years to come. amazing.

The market supplies what the market demands. The problem is that, as teriffic as your controller may be, it is catered to a niche market (advanced music controllers) within what is already a niche market (electronic music recording/production). Its appropriate for this and stuff like it to come from where it is coming (arduino and ppl like you). And to be honest I wouldn't want the big boys screwing it up...

hey nym beat battle is tomorrow at club6, I believe is free before 1030pm....i'll give ya call today to confirm...also I got some scrap electronics if ya want them couple mixers one is behringer and other is stanton tt mixer...they used to work

NYM I need for you to pass my college Algebra class lol.

good work!

Good work as usual Nym.

I have a Walking Stick ribbon controller for my modualr synth and love it.

http://www.psionicsoundworks.com/

Small upstart companies are changing the game for music technology. It's like the 70s all over again. I love it.

Keep us posted on your project!