Hidden Fine Tune Pitch Modulation Trick For The Access Virus TI

If you’re anything like us, you like to make your patches sound as natural and organic as possible. And pitch modulations are an easy way to do that. We like the subtle pitch decay trick, for making patches behave like acoustic instruments, and for synths like the Nord Lead 3, JP-8080, Mininova, and Blofeld, that’s not too hard to do.

The Virus TI2 however, has been a thorn in our side for a decade on this one. Setting up a basic pitch modulation routing for say, a Mod Source of Env 3 or the Filter Env, and the destination as the oscillators, ends in squeaky disaster. The Osc Pitches are all Coarse by default, and if you mess with those even a little, it sends the tuning to hell in a ham sandwich. Unless you use LFO 3 to modulate the fine pitch for vibrato effects.

But if you want more flexibility in your pitch modulations, check out this technique we just learned!

Set up the routings like this (any mod Slot will work, but I chose 1 and 2 for simplicity’s sake), using any Envelope or LFO for the first slot, with the amounts all set to 0. Then set up 1% or 10% constant as the source on the next slot page, and experiment with the Slot 2 Amount numbers to dial it in and get the exactly amount of pitch change you want.

You can use the 1% constant instead of 10%, if you want even more granular control over the pitch.

It’s a little complicated, but it opens up the Virus sonically sooo much more to be able to add subtle pitch changes.

Happy sound designing!