Hello.
I’ve tested MIDI Guitar 2 and I can’t make it work with bends (bending the strings) on external VST plugins.
Using the synth that comes with it, it works flawlessly. If I import a 3rd party VST Synth (ANA2, Diva…) the bends don’t work. If I bend the string high enough, it would hard jump to the next note not doing the “slide” as it should.
Any ideas how this should be setup to work?
bend issues are often caused by a mismatch in the bend range. the 3rd party vst synths are probably set to plus/minus one octave. try changing that to +/- two steps.
I’ve tried that. As I said, if I bend the string for one note, the synth recognizes that as the next note and hard-jumps to that note. The easiest way to understand this is like using hard autotune on vocals, getting that “Cher” effect.
Maybe MIDI Guitar doesn’t output pitch wheel data to the right CC for 3rd party VSTs?
The built in synths work well…
Do you have “Legato” enabled in MG2? Try disabling that, and let us know if it works. I vaguely remember there is a bug here.
Hello Ugo, welcome here 
We know what you mean, we’ve all encountered this problem at one time or another with certain synths.
As @kimyo clearly explained, it’s on the synth that you need to set the pitchbend operating mode and it can be different for each device, MG has nothing to do with this issue except that depending on the synth, you may also need to test the different range options in the MG Bends window.
The bend even works with organ or piano synths.
On the subject of legato, if this is engaged, no change in note pitch is possible.
not to belabor the issue, but also, most current vst synths store the pitchbend range in the patch.
changing the pb range in the default config may not override the patch-based setting.
It’s not the pitchbend in the VST. It works just fine, if I use the pitch bend on my hardware MIDI keyboard.
In MG, if I enable the MIDI monitor, I can see the pitch bend CC being sent all the time. It looks like the VST is not receiving the pitch bend CC signal from the MG.
Ok, just to be clear, you don’t have “Legato” engaged in MG2?
No I don’t. Never had it.
Great! So what DAW are you working with? Or are you talking about external plugin inside the standalone version of MG2?
Cakewalk. I put the MG2 in the Audio track Insert slot, and I load the VST inside MG2, in the Instrument slot.
Ok, I haven’t used that myself: Do you know if you have a MIDI Monitor in Cakewalk as well? To compare what is going out from MIDI Guitar with.
You can correlate the pitch wheel data in MG2 with BND here (in Abelton), to make sure it is coming in on the software channel ok.
for reference: pitchbend is its own thing, it isn’t transmitted in the same way as midi cc messages, it’s grouped with note on/off, velocity and aftertouch data. mentioning this just in case you’re monitoring cc input data only in cakewalk. you should see pitchbend messages in the same stream as note on/off messages.
the pitchbend range on your midi keyboard is most likely set to +/- one octave, which will match many vst synth patches.
If I bend the string high enough, it would hard jump to the next note not doing the “slide” as it should.
are you still experiencing this behavior? if so, the vst is receiving pitch bend data, but isn’t processing it properly.
If you send the MG2 MIDI out to another track with VST instrument, the bends work just fine.
It looks like the problem occurs only if you load the VST directly inside MG2.