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EP Vibrato Speed/Depth Control


vortmaxx

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I've been struggling with trying to figure out how to assign vibrato speed and depth to the controllers. I'm using one of the hex layer wurlitzers and through some menu diving I've found that the vibrato effect is actually an LFO. I can adjust the rate and depth via the "filter/amp rate" and "filter mod.depth" but I cannot seem to assign either of these parameters to a controller (K1, K2...)

 

Does anybody know if this is possible?

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Something you can try: There is no MIDI implementation document for the PX-560 (I want to say "yet" but I have frankly lost confidence) but the MIDI implementation documents for the PX-5S and the MZ-X500 both show an NRPN that will adjust filter LFO depth. You can assign that to a knob or to an expression pedal, assuming the PX-560 works in the same way (a reasonable assumption in my opinion). See page 17 of the MZ-X500 MIDI implementation document.

 

Unfortunately, I see nothing for controlling filter/amp LFO rate. 

 

However, I find it curious that the tone is modulating the filter with an LFO. Wurlitzer pianos used pure amplitude modulation for their so-called vibrato. The circuit is simple and has little if any affect on the harmonic content of the tone. I suspect that if you made a new tone that dispenses with the Hex Layer LFO and replaces it with the Tremolo DSP effect you could get a similar tone, if not an even more faithful emulation. In that case you would have full control of the Tremolo's LFO using knobs because all DSP effect parameters are direct targets for controllers (as well as, probably, by CCs and even by NRPNs).

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Well, I've been on this kick since I acquired the board last winter and I've sort of tried to go down that road a few times- starting with just a basic (non-hex layer) wurli and editing via the main menu's Controller and Effects pages. I haven't really made any substantial progress, but I'm finding out lots of ways to not accomplish this seemingly simple approach to incorporating real-time control of the vibrato. Ideally, the mod wheel would control the depth and I could assign K1 to the speed...or vice versa.

 

I'm learning a lot though, having fun trying this and that. For example, when I alter the tone via Menu -> Tone -> Edit, I can't simply save the changes by exiting out to the Main and "Storing" the patch in whatever Bank/Registration I was working in- I have to "Write" the tone first. Seems obvious now, but I was stuck on that for a long time.

 

Going in thru the Effects menu, I can find things like Chorus and Delay, but no Vibrato (or Tremolo).

When I go in thru Menu -> Edit -> (edit) -> Tone Edit Menu -> (edit) -> Effect -> DSP -> Algorithm, I find Tremolo (no Vibrato), and can activate it so that it is "on", as opposed to Phaser or Chorus, but the depth and rate are fixed.

When I try going in thru Menu -> Controller -> Modulation Edit -> Target, I find all sorts of stuff...16 pages of stuff, including CC76: Vib Rate and CC77 Vib Depth (no Tremolo?) but neither of these seems to affect the sound.

 

I researched this as best I could when deciding between the PX 350, 560 and the PX-5S, as I knew that this would be important to me. I couldn't find any definitive answer then, but I figured it would certainly be possible given the assignable controllers. I'm not inclined to think that I would be the only person to be interested in having real-time control over Vibrato/Tremolo speed and depth.

 

I suppose I could just get a pedal.

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Well that's the trick. Thanks.

 

Interesting to me how this works for regular wurli but not the hex-layer one. LFO rate/depth does not appear in the sub-menus with the hex layer wurli. I'm still a bit baffled at how this is an LFO thing instead of just a regular "effect", but the end result is all that matters to me.

 

I really prefer the hex wurli. Something about it seems to have more teeth/bite to it than the regular one. I guess I will have to play around with the tone a bit.

 

Thanks again.

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Interested to know what apparently worked. The LFO parameters on pages 13 and 14 (not 14 and 15) of the Target menu for each controller are all for LFO depths, not LFO rates, and they affect individual layers of a Hex Layer tone (only). As for "LFO rate/depth does not appear in the sub-menus with the hex layer wurli,"  these parameters are certainly editable for a Hex Layer tone for each of the tone's two LFOs, one for pitch and one for filter/amp. But the rates of the LFOs cannot be adjusted by a controller. (Depths are adjustable using NRPN, as I said.)

 

As you no doubt discovered the PCM Wurlitzer (not named that, of course) uses pure amplitude modulation by LFO (no filter modulation) and the amplitude is controlled by the modulation wheel (as is also true for true vibrato). But again, the rate of the LFO cannot be adjusted in real time using a controller.

 

As you puzzle out the machine you will discover, I am fairly confident, that doing what I suggested above (using the tremolo DSP effect) is the only way to achieve your goal: real time adjustment of both depth AND rate of a "vibrato" (tremolo) LFO within a Hex Layer Wurli tone. (If others want to consider that a challenge, go right ahead. I'm willing to learn something new about the PX-560. I haven't yet put nearly the hours in on it that I spent learning the XW-P1.)

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I spent a little more time on this last night and this morning and I have come to the conclusion that I have almost no idea what I am doing. I wasn't really understanding what NRPN was. I actually had to look that up and learned something about RPN and NRPN. It seems to me that it's a MIDI thing and forgive my ignorance, but I was wondering why MIDI would be a factor.

 

Yesterday, I started with a PCM (had to look that up too) from the EP menu. As you said, p13-14 under the Target menu is for all of the individual layers LFO Filter/Amp etc when using the hex-layer wurli. However, using one of the PCM tones, I was able to find LFO rate and depth on p15 under Target. I assigned rate to the mod and depth to K1. All good except no hex-wurli.

 

Today, I started with the registration I saved yesterday and swapped it out with the hex tone I like (013 "5-velowhirly") thinking maybe I could sort of trick it into working since I had the controllers assigned. Obviously this didn't work. I played around in the Tone Edit Menu -> (edit) -> LFO and sort of removed it (I think) by zeroing out the depth of the Pitch, Filter and Amp. This left me with an un-effected tone when I engaged the mod wheel.

 

Here's where it got weird.

 

I went back to the Tone Edit Menu and went into Effect -> DSP.  Algorithm was set to distortion and was apparently tied to the mod wheel because all of the sudden increasing it also increased the level of distortion. Forgive me here as I don't really remember all of what I did along the way; I was saving/writing this tone as I went and may have somehow temporarily-permanently altered the original hex-layer tone. Switching from distortion to tremelo gave me the desired effect when I dialed up the mod wheel, but with no control over the depth or speed. On the same page under the DSP menu, right below Algorithm, was LFO Rate and Depth. I tried adjusting them and it worked on the tremolo, so I went back into the Controller menu and assigned the LFO Rate and LFO Depth to the mod wheel and K1, respectively, under Target on p15.

 

Call me confused because I thought I had removed the LFO from the equation, but I hope this somehow helps someone out there who might be after this capability. Maybe better minds than mine can tell me what happened.

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Bear in mind that Wurlies don't really have vibrato (frequency modulation).

They only have tremolo (amplitude modulation).

A Wurlie sample/sound that has vibrato just sounds wrong right out of the gate.

JMHO...

 

And yes, I realize the Wurlie control panel says vibrato...but it's trem.

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