keygroup responds to MIDI pitch bend?

If I output a MIDI track to a keygroup track, and the MIDI includes pitch bend info, should it pitch bend the multisampled keygroup instrument as expected?

I would expect so. Have you tried it? What happened?

Koekepan wrote:I would expect so. Have you tried it? What happened?

It didn't bend pitches at all. It just played the semitone as if there were no pitch bend information. I do verify that the MIDI track sending to the keygroup has the pitch bend info, and it works with synth plugins, altering the semitone as expected. It's not working with the sample-based keygroups. I thought, since keygroup multisamples are not one-per-MIDI semitone (128), that there's interpolation going on for notes between the samples, and so pitch bend might work. I imagine it can work, but AKAI doesn't implement it?

Configure the pitch bend settings in track edit > porta/mod

More info in the PDF user guide, do a keyword search for 'pitch bend'.

MPC-Tutor wrote:Configure the pitch bend settings in track edit > porta/mod

Yes, that totally worked, thank you so much. You saved everything for me because I pitch bend the vast majority of notes, and the need to set this setting was far from obvious to me even after looking over the occurrences of "pitch bend" in the manual.

Curiously, the correct setting here was 12. On page 213, the manual says, "Pitch Bend sets the range (in semitones) of a connected MIDI keyboard’s pitch-bend wheel," but this number has always been 2 using this same MIDI file with other hardware and software synths outside of any Force or MPC context. I don't fully understand either number, which I guess relates to a synth's other parameters in particular ways I've never had to worry about.

Pitch bend goes from 0 to 100, where 100 is a complete octave bend. Considering there are 12 semitones in an octave I would have thought picking a number perfectly divisible by 12 would make more sense, or just offering it in actual semitone increments. Perhaps there's a technical reason or limitation at play.

blipson wrote:Curiously, the correct setting here was 12. On page 213, the manual says, "Pitch Bend sets the range (in semitones) of a connected MIDI keyboard’s pitch-bend wheel," but this number has always been 2 using this same MIDI file with other hardware and software synths outside of any Force or MPC context. I don't fully understand either number, which I guess relates to a synth's other parameters in particular ways I've never had to worry about.

Oh, I assumed that number was semitones, as with every other soft or hard synth I've ever used; I didn't actually turn the knob past 12. I aurally compared a keygroup track with a synth track on the same MIDI file, but I think I'll observe more closely if the tuning is exact. If 12 means 12%, then two semitones would be 1/6 of an octave, or 16%. I guess I should use two patches that will make the beats of mis-tuning as obvious as possible.

LATER: My ears were too forgiving at first. Using two very plain patches, it's obvious that 16 and 17 are the best settings.