As you walk through the factory patches, you might notice some patches are louder than others. Or perhaps you programmed your own patch and can’t quite get it to be loud enough to be in balance with other patches in your set. Here are a few quick tips to take a quieter patch and make it go to 11.
Make Sure the Amp Volume is set to 127
Hit the “Shift” button and navigate to the “Amplifier Page”. Verify that overall “Volume” is set to 127. Note the “Velocity” parameter is a global patch parameter that determines how much velocity effects volume. If you play with a light touch, you might want to take this parameter down some. If it is set to 0 velocity does not effect the volume.
Crank Up Your Oscillator Volumes
Make sure the oscillators that are active are high enough for your needs. Click the Oscillator button in the matrix to turn select the first menu for Oscillators, and crank the 4th knob over. Repeat for other oscillators.
This Parameter Goes to 11!
Now for the secret sauce. Let’s say you have a patch and all the levels are perfect and in balance, yet it’s still too quite relative to other patches in your set. You can get a volume boost quickly with on parameter set, Filter Drive.
The “Tube” drive curve with values down in the teens can add a volume boost without distortion. To make the patch rip the audience's face off, set the value to 127! Experiment with other drive curves.
More Blofeld Please
I hope you found these tips helpful. You can view other posts on the Blofeld category of Modulate This here.
I’m slowly working on some patches that I plan to make available as a library down the road. If you’d like to be notified opt-in to the Modulate This! mailing list and check the box for “Patches for Waldorf Blofeld”
Mark Mosher
Electronic Music Artist, Boulder, CO
Synthesist | Composer | Keyboardist | Performer
www.MarkMosherMusic.com
www.Modulatethis.com
Nice one bro!
Posted by: saintjoe | April 23, 2011 at 11:28 AM
Nice tips here! I noticed something about the Blofeld filter stage as I've been getting deeper into programming sounds on it. The output of the filters are nearly always driven/saturated to some miniscule degree depending on curve type selected. This is heard by switching through the various drive/saturation types with Mix set to 0 and listening to the slight yet audible results. One thing I do now to get a tad more boost from a plucked or stabby type patch without driving it is to switch the drive curve to Pickup 1 or 2, while leaving mix at 0. It seems to add a very minimal amount of drive to bring the filter output forward just that much more. It's also important to not forget about the wonderful Brilliance parameter which many of the WT's featuring waveforms with multiple harmonics can make good use of in order to bring elements of a patch forward in a program or later on used to enhance a Blofeld sound inside a project. With some WT's the sharpening of the waves' harmonics is audible to the point that it actually alters the timbre of a waveform to some degree and this can give a different character to some WT's as a whole, esp. when doubled with PWM.
Now if I could only get the arp on this thing to stay in sync and not glitch at the end of a bar inside Ableton Live I will be very happy. Got tips for this? I tried the suggestions on Ableton's forum and adjusting sync delay times etc. Still not seamless.
Posted by: Jasonswe | May 11, 2011 at 04:43 AM
Great additional tips! I've not tried syncing the arp. I'll give it a go soon and let you know if I have the same problem.
Posted by: Mark Mosher | May 11, 2011 at 06:50 PM
I tried it with Ableton as the master with Blofeld set to auto communicating via MIDI (not usb MIDI). There were timing issues with default settings. My experience with Tenori-On and live also had some timing issues with default settings so I don't think this is all the blofelds fault.
I had good results by retarding the timing in the track for blofeld. I had to set different delays for different tempos in live so you'll need to experiment. In once case I had to delay 100ms.
Posted by: Mark Mosher | May 16, 2011 at 03:41 PM