LinuxMusicians

A lot of synthesizers, and midi controllers have two wheels.

One is pitch-bend one is modulation.

Can somebody explain what this modulation wheel does ? Or is this different from synth to synth?

I am trying to figure out if I can do this with the build-in LMMS synths.

Those build in synths have a pitch knob which I can automate, and then have a pitch bend.

That other wheel though confuses me, and I don't see a modulation knob on the LMMS synths, so maybe this is only possible with vst that have a modulation wheel ? Synth 1 for example seems to have controls for both wheels.

I also asked about this on the LMMS forum, and got the question what I want to modulate.
I have no idea, I want to do what that modulation wheel does, but I have no idea what that modulation wheel does.

I hope my question is clear ?

The short answer is that it depends on the synth or virtual instrument that you're using.

The mod wheel controls midi CC#1, which is just labeled "modulation" and can do any number of things.

One example is in the "performance" version of Virtual Playing Orchestra, the mod wheel controls instrument dynamics, including crossfading between different timbres instead of just changing the volume of the same sound samples.

Other virtual instruments may respond to the mod wheel with a completely different effect, like a vibrato or changing the shape of an oscillator waveform or whatever. Additionally, you may be able to customize it to control whatever you want in a more elaborate synth like Yoshimi.

Thank you now it starts to make sense.