Vibrato

[Liquid Shadow]

Do you like to use the mod wheel or stick for modulation, or do manual vibrato? Myself, I hate using the mod wheel. It never does exactly what you want it to, but if you just do things manually you can do any vibrato stuff you want however you want (slow, fast, shallow, deep, ect)

[Irish]

I'll respond honestly, I chose the mod wheel because on my synth it's tough to get a good vibrato using the pitch wheel. It's a combination of that and the fact that I'm not very good at pitch wheel vibrato, so I sometimes use the mod wheel to create vibrato, if it's needed. What I mostly use the wheel for is if I'm doing something kind of heavy, or any real type of lead, I'll put the wheel up to about 1/3-1/2 and leave it there because the vibrato tends to make my leads sound more powerful.

I don't know whether this is a characteristic of vibrato or a function of my keyboard, but I've found that it works for me, so hey.

And that, as they say, is that.

[Drusillus]

Great topic!

All the time I've been playing keyboards I've used modulation for vibrato (which is what I voted), but I'm trying really hard to change :) All of my gear is Roland, which has the joystick instead of separate mod and pitch wheels, and I find it hard to get good sounding natural vibrato with the stick. It never sounds like vibrato, it always sounds like a lame ass pitch bend :P I do think that I've gotten pretty good at making modulation vibrato sound good though.

Anyone feel like posting any video tips on doing manual vibrato with a joystick? I have lots of video of how to do it with a pitch wheel (I have the Keyboard Wizardry video...)

[Spacehog]

Can I be awkward and say "neither"? I tend to have vibrato assigned to aftertouch on my synths. My primary lead synth sounds tend to have either vibrato or 1/4 tone upbend assigned to aftertouch, wah or filter sweep on my expression pedal, and the intensity of the effect controlled by the mod wheel. I find this gives me the control I need and can't get by using the mod wheel or pitch wheel for vibrato (plus the E-mu's pitch wheel isn't really responsive enough to do vibrato with it). I find the 1/4 tone bend assigned to pressure to be the most expressive.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it :)

Martin

[hephiroth]

i definitely doing vibrato manually. although i have a triton, which has a joystick, and that is a little harder than a wheel, but i find that the pre-programmed modulation is just cheesy sounding. it's personal taste, i guess, but i think jordan said it best on his video--rock vibrato tends to vary more than, say, classical vibrato...

-jeff-

[Axe2Grind]

Manual vibrato using stick from my roland...thats what I voted.
Vibrato supposed to be a technique to envoke emotion, phrasing and expression into one's playing, I fail to see how a mod wheel or pushing up on a stick can achieve this other than putting a little wobble on the sound. It needs to be physically done by the player's hands. But in music there are no rules so this is just my opinion, and countless pro's like Jens, Derek.S, Jordan etc.

[Cary]

I'm a recent convert to the pb technique after many years of mod wheel.

[quote="Drusillus"]I find it hard to get good sounding natural vibrato with the stick. It never sounds like vibrato, it always sounds like a lame ass pitch bend :P ...quote]
I have found that with certain patches, it is harder to get a good sounding vibrato even with the same pb setting (+1/2 -12). Just like you said, lame. Other patches I think lend themselves more to it.
Also, if you are moving the stick with the tip of your finger, try moving your hand up on it a little to use the side of the index finger closer to your thumb or vise-versa. (make sense?) That helped me a lot.

[Over The Edge]

I like doing the manual vibrato on the Nord Lead's
pitchwheel. It's definitely geared for that purpose.



FL
www.franklucas.net

[Everlasting_Rain]

I use more often the manual since I feel I can give more expression to the lead. Anyway, I sometimes use the automatic, because that's how I used to do it until I read in the old forum some topics about this.
I do it with the stick in my korg.

[m@]

Manual. :twisted:

[Drusillus]

m@ you're one of the reason's I'm trying to switch to manual ;)

[TheVillageMidiot]

Definately a manual person for sure. I'm right with you guys that think it sounds cheesy. And Jordan was definately right in saying that rock vibrato varies. I'm definately still working on it though. It's not an easy thing...for me anyway.

[m@]

m@ you're one of the reason's I'm trying to switch to manual ;)

Cool! Make that baby scream! 8)

Peace,
m@

[PsawniK]

I use manual, with the wheel set to +2/-12.

Also, when I use a pitch wheel (S90), my vibrato is faster than when I use a stick (Triton). Overall, I prefer wheels.