… and why it’s just not like pitch sliding samples with 1xx or 2xx.
Lately, we’ve got some people joining #renoise (espernet) to ask us why 1xx was not working on their VSTI lead instruments.
Actually, I remember asking that to myself the first time I tried Renoise, realizing that finally I was using a VSTI and it should definitely not work the same. And YES - it doesn’t work the same at all. Basically, a VSTI will understand one and only message for pitch sliding, this message is even as old as the creation of MIDI. Unless you have a midi keyboard with a pitch wheel, you’ll have to write the correct pattern code down into your patterns if you want to tweak the pitch of your VSTIs.
So, how to proceed?
Let’s say you inserted your VSTi on the first instrument slot (00) and you want at a certain moment to pitch slide up then down in a track: you’ll have first to reveal the track’s panning column (see Player Control Panel). Then, you have to know that the pitch command is 91, and that from 00 to 40 it will move the wheel from bottom to top while from 40 to 7f it will move it from the middle to the top. See Effect Commands for the syntax.
So what you REALLY want to say is: send a pitch slide value to the instrument “00″.
Let’s go with some ASCIInoise:
c-5 00 .. .. ---- --- 00 .. 91 6000 === pitch slide up --- 00 .. 91 2000 === pitch slide down --- 00 .. 91 4000 === put it back to center, else it will be detuned till the end.
Notice that unlike pattern commands, you’ll have to type the number of the instrument you want to trigger, else it will never get the MIDI message and you’ll be sending some ghost pitch slides.
Ho, and another detail: if you need a finer value just fill in the two other digits (4010 for example).
And if you didn’t get my super explanation and ASCIInoise, I provided a little .xrns showing it to you, just load your favourite VSTIs on slot 00 and enjoy.
Download here: pitch_sliding.xrns
Some more notes about this tips:
You can’t do a pitch slide on one note only if more than one notes are playing at the moment you doing the slide. If you really really need to pitch slide ONE and ONLY note within multiple notes, I would definitely suggest you to render this note slide separately (using the ho-so-famous “render selection to sample” option).