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?! 🦶🏼🎹🦶🏼🎹🦶🏼