electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...

, a pitch wheel, pitch bend or bender is a control on a

synthesizer A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis a ...

to vary the pitch in a continuously variable manner (

portamento In music, portamento (: ''portamenti''; from old , meaning 'carriage' or 'carrying'), also known by its French name glissade, is a pitch sliding from one Musical note, note to another. The term originated from the Italian language, Italian exp ...

). The first synthesizer with a pitch wheel was the

Minimoog The Minimoog is an analog synthesizer first manufactured by Moog Music between 1970 and 1981. Designed as a more affordable, portable version of the modular Moog synthesizer, it was the first synthesizer sold in retail stores. It was first popul ...

, in 1970. Alternatively, pitch bend controllers on synthesizers may be implemented as a

joystick A joystick, sometimes called a flight stick, is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. Also known as the control column, it is the principal control devic ...

, knob, or touch-sensitive ribbon.

MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...

represents pitch bend as a 14-bit integer, allowing for 16,384 possible values.

General MIDI General MIDI (also known as GM or GM 1) is a standardized specification for electronic musical instruments that respond to MIDI messages. GM was developed by the American MIDI Manufacturers Association (MMA) and the Japan MIDI Standards Commi ...

implementations default to a range of ±2 semitones.

References

External links

Pitch Bend Wheel
at Dailyanalog Synthesizers Continuous pitch instruments {{electronic-musical-instrument-stub

See also

References

External links