Pitch-bending using SFZ

[Harmony]

Does anyone know how to pitchbend a soundfont more than 2-semitones using SFZ (in SONAR, if it matters)? There's no option for pitch bend range that I see in the interface. I've also tried setting the "pitch bend range" continuous controller (CC 6) to different values at the beginning of my midi track...no dice.

Any ideas?

[strugglepoo]

I'm having the same problem. Did you ever find a solution?

[Moseph]

I've had the same issue with other VSTs. If you only need to bend one direction, you can double the range by starting the note bent to one extreme (with the note itself placed a whole step off from where it actually sounds, obviously). If you need even more range, a kludgy way to do it is to bounce part of the pitch bend to audio, transpose it, and edit it into whatever you're doing.

[Rozovian]

If the option isn't there, you need a different soundfont player to do it. Logic's EXS24 plays soundfonts, and it can be set to greater values, tho it's built-in, not VST. If a sampler you use has the option to set a greater pitch bend value than +/-2 seminotes, check if it can import soundfonts.

[Harmony]

Oh no, this problem brought back to haunt me

Well, I did some more detailed digging, and the answer hinges on whether or not SFZ responds to the MIDI pitch bend sensitivity RPN. The sfz "manual" doesn't list this RPN as one that it reads, although it does mention being able to bend notes up to two octaves and it says that the default range is +/- 2 semitones. So sounds hopeful, right?

I've never used RPN's before so forgive me if I'm wrong or stating the obvious here, but RPN's are similar to CC messages, but they can take on more values than your standard 0-127 (because they are passed as a larger chunk of data). The General MIDI specs says that an RPN of MSB=0, LSB=0 indicates the "pitch bend sensitivity". After those bytes are specified, a CC of 6 sends the data value in semitones of the desired pitch bend range. The default is +/- 2 semitones. Yeah. Whatever. All that means is that in order to get SFZ to change the pitch bend sensitivity, you have to send it a specific value of RPN (0,0) and CC, then all should be well.

Well, I did this in as many ways as I could think of in SONAR, and no dice. SONAR even has a way to skip all of the nonsense and directly input a "pitch bend sensitivity" event that should directly adjust the parameter, but still nothing.

This really isn't about music making for me anymore. This is personal. Why won't SFZ recognize the pitch bend sensitivity parameter? Why is it making this so difficult?