Regarding pitch bend, there are a few things to keep in mind which can be helpful:
(1) The Pitch Bend MIDI message has two data bytes, MSB and LSB, so in theory there are 128 * 128 = 16384 steps from the wheel's lowest value of 0 (pulled all the way forward) to its highest value of 16383 (pushed all the way back). However, in practice a lot of MIDI hardware and software ignores the LSB value, using only the MSB value, reducing the number of steps to 128, hence each step is 128 times larger than it "should" be. I'm not sure which Yamaha keyboards fall into that category, but the PSR-E models certainly do; if you record a song using the pitch bend wheel and examine the data in a MIDI editor, you can see that all of the Pitch Bend messages have a value of 0 for the LSB-- that is, the possible values are 0, 128, 256, 384, etc., up to 16256, rather than 0, 1, 2, 3, etc., up to 16383.
(2) The Pitch Bend Range is a plus-or-minus value, so setting it to 12 semitones actually gives you a range of two octaves, or -12 semitones to +12 semitones. There are always 16384 steps-- or 128 steps if the LSB is being ignored-- so the size of each step is obviously determined by the Pitch Bend Range, and can be calculated by the formula SIZE = 2 * RANGE / STEPS. Thus, setting the range to 12 gives SIZE = 2 * 12 / 128 = 0.1875 semitones per step. That might seem small, but it means there are only 5.3333 steps from one note to the next, making the steps easy to hear if you're trying to make the change slowly-- especially because it can be difficult to move the wheel smoothly, so the change in the pitch bend value is likely to jump by some multiple of 128 instead of "only" 128.
(3) The Pitch Bend message is a channel message, and you can set the Pitch Bend Range to different values for different channels.
Taking those things into consideration, the way I'd do it is as follows:
(1) Set up the voices and effects to get a good approximation of the sound you're wanting. I'd try the settings Bob suggested; the voices numbers might not be the same as on the PSR-E433, but their names should be the same.
(2) Set the Pitch Bend Range to 6 semitones, which will give you a range of one octave, or -6 semitones to +6 semitones.
(3) Turn on the song recorder, but before you play any notes pull the pitch bend wheel all the way forward with your left hand-- and keep it pulled forward-- so any notes you play will be lowered by 6 semitones.
(4) Instead of playing a C, play the F# that's halfway between the two Cs you want to begin and end the slide with.
(5) While holding the F# note with your right hand, use your left hand to move the pitch bend wheel from all the way forward to all the way back, as smoothly as you can and at the desired rate.
(6) Keep the bent note held for a while, then release the F# key, stop the recording, and wait for it to finish writing the data for track 1.
(7) Unfortunately, there's no Pitch Bend Range of plus-or-minus 1.5 semitones, and if we were to set it to plus-or-minus 2 semitones it would be tricky to slide down 3 semitones from C to A, so let's just change the Pitch Bend Range to 3 semitones.
( 8 ) Push the REC and TRACK 2 buttons at the same time so you can record just track 2 by itself. The little "1" indicator in the bottom right corner of on the LCD screen (for track 1) should stay steady, whereas the little "2" indicator should start blinking to signal that track 2 is ready to be recorded.
(9) Press the START button to begin the recording, but don't play anything yet-- just listen to track 1 playing back.
(10) Sometime before track 1 completes its slide from C to C, push the pitch bend wheel all the way back (so it will be at +3 semitones) and hold it there.
(11) When track 1 finishes sliding up to the higher C note, play and hold the A key that you want to end on, which will play as a C and blend with track 1.
(12) Wait until you're sure the C note on track 1 has stopped, then slowly move the pitch bend wheel back to its centered position, which will slide from C down to A, and hold the A note as long as desired.
(13) Then stop the recording and wait for it to write the data.
When you press START to play back the recording, you should hear the lower C slide up an octave to the higher C, then slowly slide down a minor third to A.
To achieve the best results, what you can do then is use the FILE CONTROL button to save the song recording to SMF on a USB flash drive. Then you can load the SMF (or standard MIDI file) into a DAW, view the Pitch Bend events on the MIDI channels as automation lanes, and use the DAW's functions to edit the Pitch Bend events so their values form a smooth slope. There should be four MIDI channels in all-- (1) the Main Voice sliding up from C to C, (2) the Dual Voice sliding up from C to C, (3) the Main Voice sliding down from C to A, and (4) the Dual Voice sliding down from C to A. After you've smoothed the Pitch Bend events, save the changes back to the MIDI file. You might want to rename the file so you know what it is, such as "RidnStrm.MID" (only the first 8 characters will be displayed on the keyboard's screen, so you might as well abbreviate the name of the song file). Then you can either put the USB flash drive back in the keyboard-- or even better, you can use the Yamaha Musicsoft Downloader to transfer the MIDI song file from your computer to the keyboard's memory, so you won't need the USB flash drive to be plugged in whenever you want to play the song. You can also erase the original User Song recording, since you won't need it anymore.
I don't know how much experience you have with keyboards in general, or with MIDI editing in DAWs, but since you're just getting up to speed on this keyboard then I don't necessarily expect you to be able to do all of the above right away. Instead, I've done the first part for you, and I'll post the MIDI file in this thread as soon as I've finished the second part. But I'd encourage you to try it on your own as well, hence the lengthy explanation!
