WEDGE FORCE OOLONG Acoustic Guitar User Manual
- June 9, 2024
- WEDGE FORCE
Table of Contents
WEDGE FORCE OOLONG Acoustic Guitar
INTRODUCTION
Thank you!
We would like to thank you for purchasing one of our fine musical instruments!
About Us
We are an innovative company with a mission to deliver authentic software
sound synthesis.
We enable musicians to create mouse click perfect guitar parts with
professional sound quality.
Our software musical instruments are equally well suited for live on-stage
performances as well as studio recordings.
REQUIREMENTS
Supported Formats
- Supports Mac OSX and PC Windows OS
- Supports 64bit Intel and Apple Silicon Platforms
- Supports AAX, VST3, VST2 and AU plugin formats
- Supports Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic Pro X, Studio One, Ableton and other compatible DAW containers
Hardware
Minimum
CPU: 2.5 GHz RAM: 16 GB HDD: 16 GB
Recommended
CPU: 3.0 GHz RAM: 32 GB HDD: 16 GB
FEATURES
Tone Shaping ‘Oolong’ mini console allows you to mix three different
sound sources DI, MIC, and AMBIENT MIC tone.
The gradual string damping and the picking position selection (with the MOD
WHEEL) gives you infinite possibilities to craft your authentic tone!
Surround Effects
‘Oolong’ supports not just mono and stereo but also a surround sound from LCR,
Quad, 5.1, 7.1 up to 7.1.2 channels!
Once you play ‘Oolong’ on surround speakers you will not go back to stereo.
Neck Play Position
Identical notes are available on multiple different frets on a guitar neck and they all sound different. This is why we provide you with the option to choose the proper neck mapping for your sound preferences.
Strumming Note Offset
When you play a chord with multiple notes on the MIDI keyboard our sound
engine plays the notes slightly offset from each other to mimic the guitar
strumming technique.
Try experimenting with different note order for up/down strumming.
How are we different?
At the heart of our massive and authentic tone is our proprietary ‘Synthetic
Force Engine III’.
Sampled sounds on their own would never sound like the real guitar instrument.
Harmonic resonances are different for each combination of notes. This is why
our ‘Synthetic Force Engine III’ combines pre-sampled waveforms with real-time
synthesized sounds.
Built in Effects
Our mantra is to focus on crafting the best possible DI guitar tone and then
let you use the 3rd party effects of your choice.
This is still the case with ‘Oolong’ but this time we decided to include a
couple of onboard effects, Flanger and Delay, because they sounded great with
surround speakers and are a perfect companion to the surround sound output of
‘Oolong’.
Turning the ‘FLANGE’ or ‘DELAY’ knob all the way down to zero switches the
effects off and lets you use external 3rd party effects.
The onboard RIG also includes a multiband compressor which was purposefully
designed to preserve the Oolong high-band frequencies while compressing the
low-band.
HINT: Changing the ‘TYPE’ setting of both Flanger and Delay will change a
variety of parameters including the surround panning, number of oscillators
and their shape.
HINT: These are surround effects which require at least a stereo track.
They are disabled on a mono track.
You can start with the effects from the Plugin Alliance bundle or other 3rd
party effects like TH3 or Guitar Rig. Hardware digital effects like Kepmer or
Axe FX sound great as well.
Fully Customizable
- Customizable pitch bender for BEND or SLIDE the notes over semitone intervals
- Customizable velocity mapping of your keyboard
- Customizable behavior of the sustain pedal
- Play extrapolated notes outside the guitar neck
Under the Hood Studio Sampled Waveforms Lossless Hi-Res Audio
It took us an insane amount of crafting to sample the world’s most iconic custom-made guitars (the exact customizations are our trade secret) with the best possible (to date) sound equipment.
Real-Time Synthesized Sounds Internal 64bit double precision
We simulate the string resonance in real-time to synthesize the right
harmonics and damping forces to blend them into the main studio sampled tone.
This is our unique way to preserve the authentic guitar timbre.
DEPLOYMENT
Download
We recommend that you download the latest ‘Oolong’ version from our partners at Plugin Alliance.
Installation
Make sure that your account has administrative privileges before you launch
the installation.
During the installation you can choose to install all different plugin formats
or to exclude the ones which are not relevant to your system.
HINT: For best performance we recommend installing ‘Oolong’ on a SSD
drive. Installing it on a slower HDD is alright and will not impact the sound
quality but the initial plugin loading time.
Activation
You need to activate your product with Plugin Alliance activation workflow.
Telemetry
To improve our product, we might collect telemetry data. It includes product
settings, environment configuration and crash reports.
Please help us to make better products.
Updates
‘Oolong’ will kindly prompt you at startup to download and install new updates when they are released.
SETTINGS
Volume Controls
The ‘V’ knob works like the guitar volume knob. You can keep it at max level and use the GAIN slider to adjust the output level. You could connect an external MIDI CC volume pedal as well.
Mute
You can mute the Notes with the sustain pedal.
Sustain Pedal
The behavior of the sustain pedal can be changed.
The HOLD option makes the sustain pedal hold all pressed notes until you
release it (like on a piano).
The HOLD behavior is not always useful for guitar parts so we introduced the
MUTE option where the notes will sound muted while the sustain pedal is
pressed.
HINT: You can invert the sustain pedal behavior by clicking on this icon:
Picking Behavior
Auto AI: Predict the correct picking direction (plucking finger, up or down
picking) based on the tempo of playing, neck position and velocity of the
previously played notes.
Down/Up: Always down/up picking.
Alternate: Start with down and then keep alternating – up, down, up, etc.
Status Badges
These badges show the current settings you are using.
The default badge color is black. They turn red when you run in sub-optimal
settings.
MOD Wheel
You can add change your picking position by using the MOD WHEEL controller of
your keyboard.
The upper slider controls (in %) the maximum amount when the MOD WHEEL
controller is all the way up. This ensures that you won’t go beyond this limit
while playing live.
The lower slider controls (in %) the minimum amount when the MOD WHEEL
controller is all the way down.
Pitch Bend
This slider adjusts the PITCH BEND interval in semitones. When in ‘BEND’ mode,
this interval works only for bending up, the down interval is always 12
semitones.
When in ‘SLIDE’ mode the down interval can be adjusted up to 12 semitones as
well.
Neck Position (available in update)
The neck of the guitar is richer than the piano keyboard in a way that a
single note is available on multiple different frets and each of them has
unique sound because of the different string lengths and gauges.
The neck mapping position sliders adjusts the starting fret from which the
keyboard will be mapped. The current mapping is marked by the dots on the
guitar neck. There are separate sliders for each of the strings (1, 2, 3, 4
and 5).
You can experiment with lower frets and open strings for cleaner ringing
tones, while the upper frets will give you warmer and tighter sounds.
Note Release
You can adjust the RELEASE of your notes from the ‘R’ knob.
You can experiment with the POLYPHONY set to 1 and high ‘R’ values.
Note Attack
You can adjust the ATTACK of your notes.
Brighter attacks (close to zero) always use samples with higher articulation
which sounds great when all notes are with similar velocities.
Dynamic attacks (close to 100) use mellow samples when you play at low
velocity and bright samples when you play harder.
Note Detcne
Guitar players can hardly play in perfect tune all their notes. This leads to
slight detune into their guitar parts which sounds realistic.
The DETUNE setting helps keyboardists to do the same.
HINT: Effects (like FLANGER) can add additional detune which could become
too much.
Gradual String Damping
This parameter controls the amount of force applied to strings when muting
them. From 0% (open) to 100% for fully muted strings.
It affects only the muted notes while the sustain pedal is pressed down.
HINT: Values from 0% to 50% lightly presses down on the strings while
values above 50% result in greater damping and muting.
Picking Position
You can use the MOD WHEEL controller of your MIDI keyboard to change the
picking position in real-time while playing to achieve a more diverse sounding
tone.
The Synthetic Force Engine III is capable of synthesizing near infinite
different tones from the different picking positions combined with the gradual
string damping feature.
Polyphony
You can adjust your POLYPHONY from this setting.
HINT: If you need to play cleaner parts where only one note is audible at
a time try setting the polyphony to 1 on solo parts with high effects. Another
reason to lower the polyphony setting would be to limit the CPU load by
ensuring that no more than a certain number of voices will be playing at the
same time.
Velocity Mapping
These controls allow you to adjust the velocity mappings depending on your
playing style and your keyboard sensitivity.
HINT: The slider knobs will light to indicate where the currently played
note is mapped. This will help you to further adjust the mappings.
Velocity Presets
Use the default velocity presets to quickly select a mapping which matches
your playing style.
We encourage you to start from a preset and then adjust the individual
velocity map sliders and gain level (if needed).
Presets
We provide you with default presets. You can explore them to hear how the sound changes. For example, each preset comes with its own demo song.
Once you get familiar with the settings you can start customizing them to find your unique sound.
Keyboard
The on-screen keyboard contains the typical notes which are present on the
guitar neck.
Our ‘Synthetic Force Engine III’ is capable of synthesizing notes outside the
guitar neck range.
HINT: When lower notes are used the guitar tone starts to sound deeper
and quite cool if you are after a unique sound. Oolong’s unique sound engine
sounds great even outside the guitar range so don’t be afraid to experiment
with it.
PB and MOD Indicators
These indicators show the current position of PITCH BEND and MOD WHEEL controllers.
Bent Notes
Guitar players often hold a note on one string while bending a note on a
different string.
By default, the PITCH BEND controller affects all currently pressed notes. To
achieve the same technique, you need to adjust the ‘BENT NOTES’ settings.
For example, if you set it to ‘1’ then only the last played note will be bent,
leaving all other notes playing in the background without bending them. If you
set it to ‘2’ the last two notes will be bent.
Fine Tune
Our samples are in A = 440 Hz tune but sometimes you may need to tune your
synth to match another instrument or to match a different tuner.
This vertical slider allows you to fine tune your ‘Oolong’ synth.
MIDI Control Channels
You can map most of the settings described so far to the hardware knobs of
your MIDI keyboard.
Different keyboards use different MIDI CC values. You can customize yours from
here: HINT: The easiest way to find out the MIDI CC values of your
keyboard is by using the LEARN button.
546 5TH AVENUE FL 9 NEW YORK, NY 10036, USA
References
Read User Manual Online (PDF format)
Read User Manual Online (PDF format) >>