I have been trying to learn bitwig and am doing ok, but… There’s always a but… Ok, so I discovered songster and I listen to the midi files using their built in synth. I found that the guitar pitch bends are mostly really well done. It was my assumption that loading this midi file into a DAW would allow me to re-create these sounds. I will say that I am not currently a paid songster user yet. I was trying to get some reassurance that my idea would work before paying for the service. I found a midi on midifind and was using it. It’s sweet leaf by black sabbath. Everything sounds just great, but there is no note bending happening. I have searched and watched so many bitwig videos and I’m still completely lost as I can’t find any info on this. Plenty of pitch bend info, but not using the midi file for the source of the pitch bend info. It seems to me that this is something that lots of people would want to do. Is it a bitwig problem? Can anyone help an old hippy out here? I wrote a very long post on bitwig reddit and crickets… Thanks
Jim, this question is pretty far afield from the usual topic of this forum (a desktop synth system called VCV Rack), but I’m sitting in a cafe avoiding some hard thinking and thought I’d take a stab at explaining what’s happening.
For clarity, I’m going to explain here what I did and how that informs my thinking. This might help anyone else who decides to chime in.
I found the Songsterr Sweet Leaf tab here (Sweet Leaf Tab by Black Sabbath | Songsterr Tabs with Rhythm). And indeed, there is a built-in synth on the web page (see the “play” button and the SYNTH button next to it), and, as you say, it plays the pitch bends correctly. However, I doubt that the “synth” in that web page is a stock MIDI player.
Encoding pitch bending in MIDI is not as simple and obvious as you might expect (MIDI has it’s roots in pianos, not guitars). In fact, synths that take normal MIDI input cannot pitch bend individual notes. There is a way to bend all of the notes being played at the same time and the same amount (this is encoding the “Pitch Bend” wheel on most digital keyboards), but I can’t say if the MIDI files you’re getting actually use that or not.
Synths (both hardware and software) that can bend individual notes typically implement a variant of MIDI called “MPE”. Here’s an article about MPE in Bitwig that may explain that to you. So, maybe sending the MIDI files to an MPE-capable synth within Bitwig will work. But I’m reluctant to claim it will.
The real question is: do the MIDI files you can get (either from Songsterr or midifind) actually do MPE pitch bending, or even pitch wheel bending? That’s a question I can’t answer. Maybe Songsterr support can tell you? I’m seeing nothing in a handful of searches.
Hope that helps.
mahlen
Thanks for the reply. I know the topic is out there, but I am using vcv rack in my project. I know there is no standard for pitch bending midi guitar notes, but I thought that they had worked out something in the community, I thought all the files were created by the community. I am ok with animating the bends in bitwig, but of course I would like to make it painless as possible. I just don’t know how to get it done yet. Why can’t anything be easy. lol
Ah, yes, see, if VCV is reading in the midi along with the pitch bend info, then it could work. Again, though, without seeing the MIDI files in question, it’s hard to know how to make it work.
Do you have a tool for reading the actual messages in the MIDI files?
Btw, hasn’t there been a standard for many decades? Midi mono mode. Works fine for guitars.
I will go ahead and pay for songster and download a bunch of stuff. Hopefully there’s a way to get me where I want to be… I wonder if it’s not midi, but the guitar pro files that are holding the pitch bend info. Now I know absolutely nothing about the guitar pro game thingy… The last time I played a video game was nintendo, I got so pissed having to start over at the beginning to save that princess I vowed to never again play any video game, ever… haha!
They may very well be MIDI files that use MIDI mono mode. Or not. But such a thing is indeed possible, and it’s how I played MIDI guitar in 1986. It definitely lets you bend each string separately. I know from personal experience. As a result I even added a special note to the midi spec for how to bend all channels at once, although I think no-one ever implemented it in a production instrument.
Here’s a photo from a long time ago of my boss at the time holding the guitar synth we made:
