Advanced Arp Techniques for Waldorf Blofeld
I’ve already explored some basic arpeggiator techniques for the Waldorf Blofeld in previous posts, but the one thing that I still haven’t gotten my head completely around is the “step” parameters. They are: normal, pause, previous, first, last, first+last, chord, and random. I won’t explore all of these options in this blog post, but I will try to recreate a bass sequence using some of the step parameters. There’s this track that I like the bassline to this track “Find You” that I’ve figured out the basic notes to. It appears the bassline is a dotted 16th note progression, the first phrase of which goes like this (with an end phrase that I’m leaving out right now):
1 – 4 – 1 – 4 – 1 – 4 – 1 – 4 – 8
So what I need to do here is hold down 1 / 4 / 8, have it cycle through the 1 / 4 three times, and then the fifth time continue up to the 8. (1, 4, & 8 only refer to the interval between the notes.) I am thinking this will extensively use the previous or first settings, as is indicated in the manual:
If previous is selected, the Arpeggiator plays the same note as it had to play in the previous step that was set to • normal or ? random. With this setting, you can repeat a particular note of the note list several times. The note list is not advanced.
If first is selected, the Arpeggiator plays the very first note of the note list. This might be interesting if you want to only play the “root note” of a chord in a bass sound. The note list is not advanced.
So just trying to think intuitively, one way to do this would be to set up the arpeggiator accordingly:
| Clock | Direction | Octave | Sort Order | Length | Ptn Lrngth | Ptn Reset |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1/16. | Up | 1 | Key Lo>Hi | 1/16. | 16 | yes |
And here is a photo of how the user pattern is set up:
This isn’t exactly what I want because it never gets to the “8,” but now that I examine the song further, the 8 actually appears on the 1 of the second 16 step bar. I set up the first measure how i want it to be, then use the next three measures to basically repeat that first measure. It’s necessary to change the steps in between to “pause” because that prevents the note list (the arp) from advancing. So, let me change up the arps. Let’s move the 8 to the first of the second part of the arp:
8 – rest – 4 – 8 – 4 – 8 – 4 – 3 – (-1oct) – 4 – 8