Pitch wheel
Control on a synthesizer to vary the pitch
In electronic music, a pitch wheel, pitch bend or bender is a control on a synthesizer to vary the pitch in a continuously variable manner (portamento).
The first synthesizer with a pitch wheel was the Minimoog, in 1970.
Alternatively, pitch bend controllers on synthesizers may be implemented as a joystick, knob, or touch-sensitive ribbon.
MIDI represents pitch bend as a 14-bit integer, allowing for 16,384 possible values. General MIDI implementations default to a range of ±2 semitones.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Pitch wheel”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Minimoog.JPG by Krash, Public domain
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