New synth plugins appear every week, and many do not support MPE. Two recent examples are Våld Labs Tresse, a dual-layer synthesizer with 39 engines, and Stryde Audio Swayed, an emulation of the Yamaha SY77. The coverage we have seen for each, including Synth Anatomy's Tresse article and its Swayed article, does not mention MPE. That does not make them unplayable from an expressive controller. It just means you need to set things up deliberately.

What happens if you do nothing

An MPE controller sends each note on its own MIDI channel, with pitch bend, pressure and slide on that channel. A plugin that is not MPE-aware may handle this in one of three ways:

  1. It listens on all channels and merges them. Notes play, but per-note bend is applied incorrectly or ignored.
  2. It listens on one channel only. Only some of your notes sound.
  3. It treats channels as separate parts. Not typical for these plugins, but worth knowing about.

You can find out which one you have in under a minute by playing a chord and bending one finger.

Step 1: Switch the controller to single-channel mode

Most expressive controllers offer a non-MPE mode. On the Expressive E Osmose and the LinnStrument you can choose a single channel in the settings, and ROLI's tools offer similar options. Choose channel 1 and set your DAW track to receive on that channel or on all channels.

Be aware of the trade-off: with one channel, pitch bend becomes global. Bending one note bends everything you are holding.

Step 2: Decide what to do with pitch bend

Because bend is now global, use it sparingly. Two sensible choices:

Set the synth's bend range to match the controller. A mismatch is the most common cause of out-of-tune results.

Step 3: Map pressure and slide to controllers the plugin understands

Many plugins respond to channel aftertouch and mod wheel (CC1) even without MPE. Use the controller's own settings, or a MIDI-routing tool in your DAW, to send pressure as channel aftertouch and slide as CC1 or another CC. Then open the plugin's modulation section and assign those sources to something worth moving.

Tresse offers three multi-wave LFOs with 50 targets per the coverage, and Swayed lets envelopes modulate operator levels and filter cutoff. Check each plugin's own MIDI mapping options to see whether it can learn a CC directly. We have not tested either with MPE controllers, so treat the following as a plan and not a guarantee.

Step 4: Use layers to get back some polyphonic variety

Since you cannot shape individual notes, build contrast another way. Tresse has two layers; you can put a sustained pad in one and a plucked texture in the other, and play them at the same time. Because global pressure moves both layers, assign it to a filter in one layer and to reverb or chorus level in the other. That gives the impression of richer response.

Step 5: Work around limits with your DAW

If your DAW supports it, split your controller across several tracks, each on its own channel with its own plugin instance. You can then give each instance a different expression role. This is a manual form of MPE, and it works best for two or three voices.

What you give up

The honest summary is that single-channel playing loses independent per-note bend and pressure. Slides between chord tones, a single note swelling while others hold, and per-finger vibrato will not work. If those matter to your music, favor plugins that explicitly document MPE support. If you simply like what Tresse or Swayed sounds like, the approach above gives you a good deal of control.

Quick checklist

Finally, if you want a developer to add per-note expression, ask. Feature requests with a clear use case, such as "pressure to filter cutoff per voice", are the quickest way to make MPE support show up in an update.

Sources: Synth Anatomy, Synth Anatomy, Våld Labs, Stryde Audio.