Ableton Forum

Hey all, hopefully an easy question for the community...I have tried searching it but it seems all useful terms are too common to target a desired result :

I am playing a VST instrument (ReFX Juno) that is loaded into a MIDI clip. Currently, when I use the pitch bend on my MIDI controller it will raise/lower the pitch by a full octave. I would like to be able to limit the bend to 1 semitone when I have the wheel at maximum.

What is the best way to "cap" the amount of bend that will occur?

Many thanks in advance! At this point I am just zoning out when trying to find this info in the manual.

pitchbend is just a +/- 16k value. It's up to the instrument to interpret it however it wishes. Hopefully, in the instrument, there's a way to tell it pitchbend range is a semitone.

If not... you could try the midi compressor utility device. Works for CCs, compress 12:1 over 0, should effectively do it. Not sure if it works on pitchbend but I bet it would.

Thanks for the help! I had a feeling that it would be more hardware specific...I have been learning lots about MIDI as of late I think I will try to go the Compressor route though, as there are other songs where I will want to bend more than 1 semitone. It will be ideal (for live performance) to have that "automated" for me from song to song.

well, a lot of synths let you put the pitch bend range in the patch - that's really where it should be.
i looked and I thought live had the scaling function - well, it's only for velocity of notes.
not CCs, not pitchbend. there are probably third party VSTs that will do it, but it's a pain to use
third party midi CCs; to do midi in/out, you have to open a separate track and route midi around.
possible, but a pain.

unfortunately it looks like refx juno doesn't support this either.

there's another juno simulation called sixth month june.. part of the elektromusic group. in general those are decent synths, though I don't think it's really like i remember a juno... the chorus is not even close, for instance. but it's not bad sounding, and it supports not only pitchbend range, but you can assign pitch bend amounts to osc or filter, so you could do this with that. it's also free.