Vibrato with pitch wheel

[EricBarker]

I"ve always been curious what most keyboardists do for synth vibrato. Having come in the 90s, aftertouch was always available on my controllers, so I always have aftertouch set to control vibrato level and speed (so it speeds up as I lean into it). Mod wheel is a decent option, but I find it cumbersome to operate consistently along with pitch bends. A few years back I played on a Kronos and wow, I felt like I could actually play vibrato manually on the stick, it was like a dream. But I didn"t think much of it because my AT has always done me well enough.

 

Now I have a PolyD, which can"t do AT vibrato, so I"ve been using the mod wheel. And it"s fine, but it knocks out the one mod routing that the Mini traditionally has. I"ve been trying to see if I can get good at PW vibrato but it"s excruciating. Is it even really a thing? If so, do people have any tricks on anchoring your hand to be able to pull it off cleanly?

[Baldwin Funster]

That whole pitchwheel vibrato is easier with a roland pitchstick . Start on the whole step below the target note and bend up like a fast glissando. When you reach the top wiggle the stick against the stopping point. That might work with a wheel or might not.

[bjosko]

That"s one of the reasons I love the pitch stick on the Nords.

[delete]

Have you considered a controller pedal? Static or variable?

[Threadslayer]

That whole pitchwheel vibrato is easier with a roland pitchstick .

If a Roland pitchstick is the same thing as their side to side pitchbender then I wholeheartedly agree.

[GovernorSilver]

I think this is why some peeps bought an Expressive E Touche. It's not cheap but by all reports, it delivers for the money. It doesn't just do side-side. Can also move up-down and you can drum on it with your fingers.

 

https://www.expressivee.com/1-touche

 

On my Matriarch I use the pitch wheel for some manual vibrato. But I'm looking forward to doing more guitar-like vibrato on the keys of my preordered Osmose - whenever that arrives.

[EricBarker]

Well, you can probably chalk that up to one of the drawbacks of cheap Behringers. The keybed is actually not bad at all, and the wheels are nice and big, feel good for bends, but they have a pretty big null zone and the tension is very tight, I'm finding it quite a bit more difficult to do nuanced work with them. I can attest that the AT is crap. It's not THAT useful because you can't route it to LFO pitch modulation. The white key pressure is okay, but the black key pressure is crazy tough. When the white/black keys don't reasonably match, that's not good. I'm sure it's not easy to get the specs right, but I've never seen a bigger mismatch. Otherwise, the board is pretty solid.

 

My old Alesis QS8 had really really nice wheels: giant rubber things with just the right amount of tension. I probably could have learned to do PW vibrato on that thing, but I quickly discovered AT and made that my default playing method, so I never really practiced PW vibrato.

[MathOfInsects]

I don't know what else is within finger's reach on that board, but you could always give over anything you were otherwise going to do with the wheel to the relevant knobs, since those more likely to be a single event than an ongoing expressive element.

[Tom Williams]

If a pitch wheel has a small null zone, I might put my finger 1 cm or less from the body of the keyboard, to limit my motion to microtones. If that word picture is too vague, try this one: imagine the "bottom" of the untouched pitch wheel (where it intersects with the flat frame near you) to be position 0, and the opposite side of the untouched wheel to be position 100. I put my finger around position 90 to 95.

 

BTW, that's how I use AT for vibrato on guitar patches -- the pressure directly (no LFO) raises the pitch 10 or 20 cents max. That way I can control both depth and rate.

[Canoehead]

That whole pitchwheel vibrato is easier with a roland pitchstick . Start on the whole step below the target note and bend up like a fast glissando. When you reach the top wiggle the stick against the stopping point. That might work with a wheel or might not.

 

This does work on a pitch wheel. One of the things I"m working on recently, is using the pitch wheel on my Voyager for vibrato. I enjoy the feel of using the same controller for pitch bend and vibrato. It also leaves the mod wheel, aftertouch and other controllers available for various other tasks. Something else I"ve noticed about the Voyager pitch wheel; if I give it a little 'flick' it imparts (what I think) is a pleasant 'warble', similar to when a guitarist taps the whammy bar. Maybe the Poly D (mis)behaves in a similar fashion?

 

Cheers,

Gord

[The Real MC]

My ARP ProSoloist does very effective manual vibrato with pitch bend assigned to aftertouch. I have other keyboards with aftertouch but they don't work as well, and I could never get the same effect with pitch wheels or joysticks.

[Old No7]

If a pitch wheel has a small null zone, I might put my finger 1 cm or less from the body of the keyboard, to limit my motion to microtones. If that word picture is too vague, try this one: imagine the "bottom" of the untouched pitch wheel (where it intersects with the flat frame near you) to be position 0, and the opposite side of the untouched wheel to be position 100. I put my finger around position 90 to 95.

.

I think that's a great idea -- I'll try it out. Thanks for the tip!

 

Old No7

[analogika]

That"s one of the reasons I love the pitch stick on the Nords.

 

So this.

[mynameisdanno]

That"s one of the reasons I love the pitch stick on the Nords.

 

So this.

 

It's really unmatched, IMO. A big part of what makes them worth the price premium.

[jerrythek]

Great topic... I remember seeing a nice video demo from Jordan Rudess covering this when the Little Phatty was first released:

 

[video:youtube]

 

Jerry

[EricBarker]

That's very cool. Yeah, I've had some success with controllers in the past, not sure the PolyD is really up to this type of performance. At first glance the wheel feels really well made, but they're just so much stiffer from any wheels I've ever played on the past, getting that back & forth motion feels very "cranky". Still... I like the idea of setting to uneven up/down amounts, maybe I'll play with it and see what I can get.

[jerrythek]

If a pitch wheel has a small null zone, I might put my finger 1 cm or less from the body of the keyboard, to limit my motion to microtones. If that word picture is too vague, try this one: imagine the "bottom" of the untouched pitch wheel (where it intersects with the flat frame near you) to be position 0, and the opposite side of the untouched wheel to be position 100. I put my finger around position 90 to 95.

 

BTW, that's how I use AT for vibrato on guitar patches -- the pressure directly (no LFO) raises the pitch 10 or 20 cents max. That way I can control both depth and rate.

 

Both really great ideas! So great, in fact, that I've asked Tom to help me "share" them in my next column (Art Of Synth Soloing) that I still write for EM Magazine.

 

I agree with many here that the Nord mechanism is the best feeling one for subtle and expressive pitch variations/vibrato etc. Joysticks work well, but there's something about the Nord stick that just feels like a natural and "acoustic" way of adding subtle vibrato and such to your playing. But as I showed in the above Jordan R. video, there are plenty of players that make a wheel work for them.

 

Jerry