Its a problem that hasnt been fixed for ages. Cant get a vibrato or tremelo in time with the song.
Also, I dont think its possible to get the pitch of the vibrato to go up/down by semitones so its innacurate in that way too.
If you want super control over vibrato and tremolo, I’d recommend setting envelopes, and assigning a macro to control the depth so you can bring it in and out whenever you want.
Its a problem that hasnt been fixed for ages. Cant get a vibrato or tremelo in time with the song.
Also, I dont think its possible to get the pitch of the vibrato to go up/down by semitones so its innacurate in that way too.
I don’t understand what you mean with this statement as i don’t find anything wrong with these commands. Are you using them correctly?
The vibrato shouldn’t go by semitones, that would sound completely useless for any normal use of the command.
If you want to vibrate between semitones i’d rather insert the notes in the pattern and use the Gxx or even easier just use the Uxx/Dxx. If you want it to glide faster or slower between the seminotes you could paste the effects into a phrase which you may speed up or down as you want.
There are several ways to make a tremolo, sometimes i use the pattern effects, but more often i just use an LFO with a gainer. Either way, if you know how to use these features, i’m shure you’ll get the result you’re looking for.
You could do as Carbonthief suggests, but it will be a much more complicated setup to make the macros snap to whole semitone.
I don’t really see why the vibrato has to go up/down by semitones in the first place, sounds to me like you want an arpeggio sound? Anyway, if that part is not so important you could use an operand on the instrument modulation pitch and assign it to a macro. Then you can use an LFO to contol the macro, making it vibrate exactly the speed and depth you want.
As it doesn’t seem to be listed on the manual page for pattern effect commands…well, what “formulas” are these effects actually using, for pitch, speed and such? Some might just not care and use anyways, other people might want to use exact behaviour with these beasts. And why complain when there isn’t any expected behaviour published that the behaviour isn’t right? Rather complain to let the behaviour be explained in detail first! But maybe I just haven’t found the “formulas” though they’re written down somewhere in the man or this forum?
As it doesn’t seem to be listed on the manual page for pattern effect commands…well, what “formulas” are these effects actually using, for pitch, speed and such? Some might just not care and use anyways, other people might want to use exact behaviour with these beasts. And why complain when there isn’t any expected behaviour published that the behaviour isn’t right? Rather complain to let the behaviour be explained in detail first! But maybe I just haven’t found the “formulas” though they’re written down somewhere in the man or this forum?
I don’t know the exact formulas, but the easy explanation for vibrato and tremolo is that the first digit (x) decides how fast it should swing and the second digit (y) decides how far it should swing (depht). Then we have the ticks per line (ZKxx) a global setting that decides the resolution of the effects. The default ticks per line is ZK0C if i’m not mistaken, which means the effect is chopped up in 12 pieces at every line. If you set it to the lowest resolution, ZK01, then it will more or less sound like an arpeggio because every line only plays 1 “chop” of the effect.
The BPM and LPB
I’m not exactly shure how deep the vibrato goes, but to me it sounds about 2 seminotes is the max depth (f).
Examples:
A-4 01 .V38
.. .. .V38
.. .. .V38
.. .. .V38
.. .. .V38
.. .. .V38
This will make the instrument glide the pitch approximately 1 semitone up and down, at 4LPB the cycle will last for 4 lines.
A-4 01 .V63
.. .. .V63
.. .. .V63
.. .. .V63
.. .. .V63
.. .. .V63
will go double as fast, cycling at 2 lines at 4LPB, but not as deep, more like 1/3 of a semitone up and down.
My personal favorite is V23, which has a cycle of 6 lines at 4 LPB, or like i use more often, 3 lines at 8 LPB.
It’s the same principle with the tremolo.
I’m not exactly shure how the speed value is for all the numbers, but i think it’s something like:
1 = 8 lines per cycle
2 = 6 lines per cycle
3 = 4 lines per cycle
4 = 3 lines per cycle
5 = uh, 2 1/2 maybe?
6 = 2 lines per cycle
not shure about the rest as they go far too fast at the speeds i’m usually working at anyway, so i don’t really care.
These are effects that made more sense a million years ago when the trackers were introduced, now we are much better equipped and can achieve more precise results with other features. They’re hard to reproduce exactly though and may sometimes sound better than the more precise alternatives.
regardless of what value is entered for speed, the cycle of vibrato (and tremelo) can never loop smoothly from the end of one pattern to the beginning of the next. Its never exactly 4 lines per cycle, 8 lines per cycle etc., it can be almost but not quite. thanks for all the workarounds.
When i check now with the metronome i see that i’m far from spot on with the speed values, it’s indead not in sync. 
Thanks for checking it. Seems like its impossible to get it in sync, even after trying different ticks per line settings. I know its not exactly a massive problem but it would be cool if the vibrato and tremelo got a little update to fix that.