Change pitchbend to mod wheel on a synth

Hello

Could someone tell me please if there is a way to swap function of pitchbend of my synth to modulation wheel function?

In other words when I use my synth pitchbend it triggers modulation wheel parameter in cubase. My synth has got only pitchbend… but I don’t use it, I need modulation wheel, but it’s not good idea to do a manual work in a CC1 Modulation tab.

Unfortunately you don’t mention what synth you are using? But especially synths with one wheel are mostly pitchbend. And think about it? They are of different breeds. A pitchbend wheel centers, a modulation wheel does not and they both send out completely different data. So you can’t simply modify this? Maybe there’s some other control (knob?) on your synth that you can program to send out 0`127 values and manipulate it to send out CC 1?

One can use a global or local transformer to change the pitchbend events to whatever you like in real time.

In fact, you could have the top half of the pitch bend wheel send one CC, and the bottom half send a different CC, and ‘mirror’ or invert that bottom half so it works backwards.

The catch is that the pitch-bend wheel is usually going to send a special 14bit command which allows for greater resolution for a control (from −8192 to 8191).

Cubase will split this up into a number of observable decimal values (LSB and MSB) for us if we put a “MIDI Monitor” in one of our track inserts.

For now, lets just ignore the LSB value 1 (as I don’t fully understand the math between LSB and MSB myself without looking it up). In using a MIDI Monitor insert for a MIDI or Instrument track, we can observe Value 2 will read 64 when the pitch bend wheel is in its center position. We can push the wheel down, and it will creep towards the minimum of 0. We can push the wheel up, and it will creep towards the maximum of 127.

If you can take the spring out of your pitch-bend wheel, then it’s easy as pie to have Cubase change it from pitch-bend to whatever CC you like.

With the transformer above, If your wheel has the spring in, each time you let go, it’s going to snap to a value 64. Typically NOT a good thing to have your CC1 mod-wheel do in most cases.

You can make a tweak to your transformer that would let you use the top half of the wheel for CC1, and the bottom half of the wheel for some other CC, but keep in mind the resolution won’t be all that great. Also keep in mind, that if the wheel has a spring, things are going to snap back to 0 (or possibly some other value according to how you build the transformer) when you let the wheel go!

In this case I need two transformer modules to transform my pitch-wheel so it will send CC1 when pushing it up, and CC2 when pushing it down.

For this scenario, ignore that I’m not using module 1 for the example (I’m already using that to force a correction for a foot pedal that is wired backwards for my AKAI MPK261).

I’ll use Module 2 to take care of the top half of the wheel (pushing it up). We’ll transform pitch-bend to CC1, subtract it by 64, then multiply it by 2 to expand the range.

Then I’ll use module 3 to transform to the lower half of the wheel (If Value 2 < 64) to CC2, invert, and expand.
(top event to change to type controller can’t be seen here, but it’s the same as above. Only differences are that we change value 1 to CC2 (breath controller), and add a mirror statement to invert the direction of the wheel.

Now if both of these modules are active for a track, pushing the pitch-bend wheel up should send CC1 events from 0 up to 127. Pushing it down should send CC2 events from 0 to 127.

Based on these examples, it’s possible to build your own transformers to have your controls do all sorts of interesting things. Experiment. I’m just giving you a couple of examples that probably will NOT be very useful as long as you have a spring in that wheel, but now that you know this transformer option exists in Cubase, you might come up with some ideas that ARE useful.

Also be aware that these transformers feed into one another in serial manner, so it’s possible to transform something in Module 1, then transform it AGAIN in module 2, and so forth.

Also be aware that if you need more than 4 modules, it’s possible in Cubase Pro to also add MORE MIDI transformers as MIDI Inserts (for both MIDI and Instrument track types). For MIDI tracks, you can also have transformers as MIDI Sends. In the cases of inserts and sends, you can set things pre/post track-output. So in theory, you could have up to 68 stages in MIDI transformation going on for a MIDI track!

Good luck, and happy sequencing :slight_smile:

That’s great info, thanks for it. Sorry for my naive question but I don’t know how to have these modules active for a track… I followed all your steps but it doesn’t work. I must be missing something rather simple…