Hi,
 
I would like to finish off the bridge of a song with a sustained chord using synth strings and various power chords, with a bend through 6 semitones over about 10 seconds as a high energy crescendo.
I can't quite achieve what I'm trying to do with the "Wheel" feature on my yamaha synth, so I was wondering if anyone has some other ideas.
My idea would be to create the single sustained chord as an audio clip of 10 secs duration, and then somehow apply the bend afterwards.
 
Any ideas folks?
 
TIA
Adrian.
Sonar X1 Producer, & Sonar X3 Basic.

What synths are you using?  Do all notes need to bent by the same number of semitiones?  Does your synth respond to polyphonic aftertouch events.  Can you assign polyphonic aftertouch to pitch bend (I know the Yamaha XG standard can supports this) - this would be handy if different notes of the chord need to be bent my different amounts over the 10 seconds.

Hi Promidi.
 
My Synth: Yamaha S-30, (HERE) & (here)
and it does have aftertouch, but I must admit I've never used this feature.
 
Yes.... all notes would need to bend together. but I guess I could bend each seperately, and then combine the individual audio captures.
 
Can you please tell me more about achieving this using aftertouch?\
Thanks
Adrian
 

I have had a look at the MIDI Implementation chart for the s30 and unfortunately it does not support the receiving of polyphonic aftertouch events. So that method would not be possible.

If you have a chord where different notes bend by different amount, there is a work around that I sometimes use. (This happens a lot with pedal Steel guitars. The work around is to split the chord up into two tracks - one track has a one semitone shift and that other has a two semitone shift.  With the track that has the one semitone shift needs a command to change the pitch bend range to set it to one semitone instead of the default two.  On my Yamaha SW1000XG synth, it's RPN 0.  The s30 also responds to RPN 0 to change the bend range.

You have stated that "all notes would need to bend together" - I take that to mean that all notes in the chord need to shift by the same amount.  Because of that you can just use standard pitch bend events. 

Does the chord have to shift by the standard two semitones when the pitch bend is applied?

STOP PRESS !!! .... Hooray!... I did it.
 
I modified the Wheel's "Pitch Bend Sensitivity" parameter within Sonar's Piano Roll edit feature.
This altered the degree of pitch shift of the wheel from the default of 2 semitones, to let me bend to my desired 6 semitones. (it can actually bend upwards to about 2 octaves when you max out the parameter.).
 
I can now play a full chord of as many notes as I want and get an awesome sustained lifting crescendo.
 
Thanks for your help and suggestions.
Adrian
 

That method works absolutely perfectly with chords of a similar type, say from major to major or minor to minor.
 
If you wanted to go from e.g. major to minor you would have had to split it up and do the bend with 2 passes and combine the results.

z3ta2 has a pretty unique adaptive pitchbend feature