Bigglesworth

Bigglesworth is an editor and librarian for the Waldorf Blofeld synthesizer.

This is a pre-release version, some of the features are not available yet.

Features

Features in italics are still under development

• Works on Linux and Windows (Windows releases are experimental)
• Direct sound parameter editing
• Virtual keyboard (with input from the computer keyboard)
• Dumping sounds from Blofeld
• Dumping sounds to Blofeld
• Organizing sounds and adding/restoring them from factory presets
• Import sounds and sound sets from .MID files
• Import sounds from .syx files
• Wavetable editor

Linux requirements

• Python 2.7
• PyQt4 >= 4.11.1
• pyalsa

Windows requirements

• Windows XP with Visual C++ 2008 SP (usually already installed)

Installation

There is not an installation procedure yet for Linux, just clone the repository and run the script in the main directory:

$ ./Bigglesworth

For Windows, just visit the Releases page.

Usage

A small window will show, listing the latest version of the presets from Waldorf, from here you can edit a sound by right clicking on it.

Bigglesworth will try to automatically connect to a Blofeld if it's connected through USB, if not you'll have to connect it manually, using Patchage or QJackCtl, for example.

Remember that sound dumping (receiving sounds from the Blofeld) works only if you own a Blofeld Keyboard or by connecting it via USB, since the Desktop version doesn't have a MIDI out port.

What works

• Sound dumping (single, bank or full).
• Sound parameters send/receive for the current sound in "Sound Mode Edit Buffer", not for Multi Mode.
• Virtual keyboard from the Editor window.
• Global parameters send/receive (requires USB connection the Desktop version, since both input and output MIDI is required)
• MIDI connections (through menu and dialog), remember connections

What doesn't work (yet)

• Multi Mode editing

Future

Apart from completing what is in the What doesn't work section above and fixing the whole Editor window, I'll add:

• Factory/User library, even with custom libraries (older versions, etc.)
• MIDI input and mapping, to allow the use of an external control surface, also using a "live mode": a simple MIDI interface for the control surface, without the need to load presets or the whole editor window
• sound template "favorites" library
• arpeggiator template library
• Online shared sound presets
• coffee maker

Known issues

Since I'm still in the middle of the development, a lot of (unexpected) things still happen... Anyway.

• Windows releases are still buggy
• widgets in the Editor window are ugly on HiDPI screens
• some scaled dials don't look very good
• the whole Editor window layout is temporary and resizing is allowed. This means that the controls can look ugly and in unexpected places
• the Librarian doesn't know the current sound if you don't manually change it from the Blofeld, this means that if you manually send a sound dump from the Blofeld, it will not know what to do with it. If you want to edit a sound coming from the Blofeld, you have to select it by changing at least 2 sounds from it (I suppose it's a firmware bug).