One of the things as a long term Roland user I’ve always been a bit envious about in other brands is the ability to use the foot controller to do pitch bends...

I’ve often talked about how difficult it is to emulate certain instruments without pretty near constantly riding the pitch bender. Sax, guitars (especially rock lead and pedal steel), most winds and brass, almost anything non-keyboard played by humans! And don’t get me started on Minimoog type synth solos!

The trouble is, when playing in style mode, there goes your left hand! Okay, you might say ‘but I can bend any time except when I play a new chord!’, but think about this for a minute... Listen to any really good expressive solo and count how many times the bend goes ACROSS a chord change. In fact, that’s one of the times it is MOST likely! The bend anchors the two chords together, transitions between them.

So, how do we deal with this? For Roland users, we can’t!

But I would like to ask, for players that CAN do foot bending, how many of us ever regularly use it? How well do you think it works? Do you combine it with bender use for when you aren’t playing a chord? Do you generally bend up or down (one of the shortcomings with foot controller bending is you can’t bend both ways!)? Does it stress your foot? Is it hard to hit an accurate half step if you have it set to a whole step?

Have any of you that CAN do this ever tried?! 🦶🏼🎹🦶🏼🎹🦶🏼

My Pa4X has "Glide", which is a portamento effect producing an up and down sound with my EC5 pedal. I don't use the joy stick, even, as I have only fooled with it on guitar and quit because my left hand is needed, and because I never delved into it's proper use. I do have DNC voices that produce automatic effects, but not as controllable, I don't think, as what you are proposing. There is no question that this is a worthwhile endeavor, however,

I thought I read that foot controllers could be used to modulate pitch on the PA series? I don’t think it’s a global setting, it has to be programmed into the lead voice AFAIK.

I guess there’s one potential shortfall to this... That the controller HAS to be in the up position when you play the voice or it will be out of tune! Joysticks and wheels are sprung to return to zero, but a pedal stays where you last left it. Just one more thing to remember, I guess!

I’d think a guitarist in particular could deal with this type of bending, because unless you have a whammy bar, guitarists only ever bend up!

What you say is correct, and I hope others can shed more light on bending as it would certainly enhance our playing more realistically.

I know at least one person who does it, which is me; mostly for an electric guitar voice, like this:

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I use the foot controller to make the sound lower, and to make it higher I still have to use the wheel. Can’t say if it is comfortable or not, I got used to it. Nevertheless, right now I’m not very exited about how it sounds in general, perhaps I need to upgrade my PSR, which is not currently possible, or to practice in other directions, which I do.

Nice, playing Kabinopus. I really need to explore pitch bending more myself, it really helps for a more expressive sound especially on guitar, synth leads, brass and woodwinds.

Diki, at least you have a very good chord looper on your Roland keyboards that help free up your hands. I would LOVE to have that feature!

Very nice, Kabinopus! Perhaps it’s worth setting the pedal for the whole tone bend up and only use the lever for the occasional divebomb and see if it’s doable to do it all with the feet? For me, it’s that dash from the chord to the lever and back again that always ends up with me playing a bum note or two in a piece!

So I’m primarily interested in seeing if total reliance on the footpedal is doable...

It might be time to upgrade to the SX900 if you’re jealous of Roland’s Chord Sequencer, montuno... Yamaha actually improved it by allowing you up to eight independent sequences (for e.g. verse, chorus, solo etc.) easily selectable. I am DEFINITELY jealous of that after hoping for years for Roland to improve the one sequence system they first invented 20 years ago or so!

Hopefully someday. For now, I can only dream

Bending up is the only realistic way for guitar sounds.

Mind you, that’s really just for guitarists. You actually CAN bend down on a guitar by bending up first THEN picking the note and bending back down, and if doing it with your feet, that’s the only alternative to using the lever.

When I use the lever for guitar solos, it’s rare for me to actually play the bent notes, most of the time it’s notes above or below where I want to be and then I bend towards it. This way, you can continue playing new notes at pitch once the lever is back at zero.