In order to mimic bass gtr slides that I hear on old records, I use the pitchbend but limit the range to 2 semitones, right?

that works, but I find using exponential portamento can be more realistic. The problem is the portamento time really needs to be adjusted while playing to make it sound right.

psy

"exponential portamento" hmmm not sure what that means Psy? :-) Portamento is when the pitch of long notes slide into each other right? The glide function on my soft sythns should do this right?

What does the "exponential" bit mean?

Cheers mate.

yes glide, slide, that's the ticket. "exponential" means that instead of sliding the pitch at a set speed (linear), it starts fast and slows down as it approaches the note and "rounds out." Many synths are set up to do portamento in this way because it's more natural sounding (it's more like how a real bass player would react between notes). On my Nova, I have the option for linear or exp glide, but not all synths do.

Anyway, you can probably achieve what you want with a +-2 semitone pitchbend.

psy

No way psy!, I'll use the "exponential" function from now on. Excellent stuff, cheers! :-)

Now why don't you put off engineering for a couple of weeks and write a synth programming article for DT? :-)

Cheers matey.

I'd rather write a track :'(

Severe writer's block...

Skin up a joint and load up a load of individual drum shots into a sampler. Set your sequencer to play a random arpegiator over 3 octaves but using all the drum shots instead of a synth. You are bound to be inspired! :-)

There are a few different types of portamento (as well as exp/lin) some or all of which may be available on any synth. The basic one will slide between any notes you play, so if you play a C1 then a C2 the second note will slide up an octave. Autoglide (or sometimes just glide) only slides between overlapping notes. So you can write a bass sequence and only slide between certain notes. This is probably the most useful. There's another one where you can set each note to slide by a certain amount, ie up 2 semitones. Sometimes you can set the rate of slide and sometimes you set the time of slide and the rate varies with the interval. Then you can get into stuff like assigning velocity to slide rate.
And sometimes its just easier to use pitch bend

"skin up a joint" is exactly what psy should stop doing if he's to write another track this year  

no i think "playing golf with your sorry ass" is impeding my creativity more.

psy

I know, I know! My fault!