Each week we open our mic to readers and lurkers alike to come out of the woodwork and tell us your thoughts and opinion, your experiences and mistakes, what you love and what you hate. We want to hear from you, and here’s your chance.
What type of bender do you prefer on your keyboard? A wheel, joystick, ribbon, or something else? Or maybe you prefer to adjust the parameter in your DAW? Let us know!
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By Adrian Try
Adrian is writer and editor for Audiotuts+ and Envato Notes. He has been playing keys and acoustic guitar for three decades, and has six kids. Follow him on Twitter at @envatoaudio.
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I’m actually just planning a piece on my site about this very subject!
I much prefer to have two wheels, one for pitch and one for modulation. Roland’s ridiculous all-in-one bend/mod stick really gets on my nerves, because it’s spring loaded. While that’s fine for the odd vibrato flourish it’s absolutely no good for anything that requires the wheel to be set at a level and left.
I’ve used ribbon controllers before and they’re not too bad, but you can’t go wrong with a nice spring-loaded wheel.
Matt
http://totallykeyboard.net
For guitar-like soloing I prefer the roland type, because you can perform bending and modulation together easily.
But for things like arpeggiators when you have to slowly modify parameters like cutoff or release time, Separate wheels are much better.
I use Reason as my DAW, and all of the devices have two animated wheels, and it’s cool to watch them react to my movements. Other than that, I don’t really have a huge preference.
I prefer the joystick like Roland / Korg use. I do a lot of work with synths and for Modulation / vibrato, it can’t be beat.
T
I used to be a fan of separate wheels for mod and pitch. But I recently purchased a Novation SL Mkii and I must say its joystick is quite amazing. You can use it in locked mode so the pitch and mod are both spring loaded or you can release the mod so the pitch is still spring loaded while the mod can float freely. So now I can do proper quick solo flourishes and also do slower modulations while still having the pitch on the same control.