Vibrato LFO

[NWS]

I'm testing out Bitwig and found that when adding the vibrato LFO to a VST (Pianoteq) within the instrument selector, "poly" is grayed out. In the help window it says "when available." So my question is, is this some limitation within Pianoteq? Might there be a way to get this to work by some other means? I'm assuming that if "poly" were available, playing a note while holding another note wouldn't result in the vibrato from the first note getting cut off and restarting. Is that correct?

Also, not quite related, but I can easily right-click on a knob and map it to a controller, but how would I go about setting numerical limits? For example I want an expression pedal to control the vibrato rate knob, but I want it to go from 0.01 Hz to about 6 Hz... rather than 12 when the pedal moves from one extreme to the other.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[antic604]

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1) I believe for this to work with 3rd party plugins they need to be MPE capable. I've no idea if Pianoteq is MPE capable (didn't see it mentioned on their website), but if it is make sure MPE is on in the plugin itself AND in Bitwig's Inspector panel for the Pianoteq device. If it doesn't have MPE, there's probably something you could do putting several instances of Pianoteq in Instrument Selector in round-robin mode, so then each voice is a separate plugin but I can't try it right now.

2) How are you mapping expression pedal to Vibrato? If it is through Expression modulator, then simply don't draw the modulation all the way up but just halfway there. You can finetune it in Inspector panel, when you're focused on Expression modulator.

[NWS]

Thanks for the information.

I don't think Pianoteq is MPE capable. The round-robin concept sounds interesting, but I assume it could get pretty CPU intensive for a lot of voices at once?

So I have the vibrato LFO added to an instrument in the 'instrument selector.' I then just right-clicked the vibrato rate knob and selected "map to controller or key" and then moved my expression pedal to map it. I set the vibrato LFO to control Pianoteq's pitch bend, where it let me set the amount of pitch bend. I don't see any option to set limits to the vibrato rate knob there or in the vibrato inspector. Not sure what or where Expression modulator is (sorry, my knowledge of midi/synth is very basic).

[antic604]

So I have the vibrato LFO added to an instrument in the 'instrument selector.' I then just right-clicked the vibrato rate knob and selected "map to controller or key" and then moved my expression pedal to map it. I set the vibrato LFO to control Pianoteq's pitch bend, where it let me set the amount of pitch bend. I don't see any option to set limits to the vibrato rate knob there or in the vibrato inspector. Not sure what or where Expression modulator is (sorry, my knowledge of midi/synth is very basic).

Oh, OK. Do that instead:
- add a Macro modulator (same like you did with Vibrato)
- set Vibrato's rate knob to minimum value
- map Macro to your expression pedal, like you described above (unmap Vibrato's rate knob, too)
- click the arrown under the Macro until it starts blinking
- open the Vibrato, the rate knob shoul have a different colour - drag it up half way or something

That should get you close to what you need.

[NWS]

Thanks so much, that works nicely.