Anyone else play a wind synth?

Here's mine:

how's it sound? i saw one in a catalog recently and i was intrigued. the woodwinds sounds on my Keyboard synth are somewheat lacking...what are yours like?

Yes. We demand mp3s. And maybe if you work real hard you can become the lug of the woodwind and brass forum.

I pulled out the EWI last night for the first time in a few months. Living in an apartment, I can't play my tenor. I haven't in close to 6 years. I'm a guitar/headphones guy at this point. I'm looking forward to home ownership (maybe by the end of the summer). When I get a house, I'm taking up the horn again. The EWI is a nice way to keep the fingerings fresh and work the lungs a little. It does nothing for embouchure though!

I love the EWI's feel. I much prefer it to the Yammi's. The sound module is a mediocre analog synth though. It's all warm and analog which is nice, but it's tweakability is pretty poor. There's no way to fake other instruments on this setup. I could MIDI to something like your VL-70m, but I hate MIDI. Those stair step volume swells kill me. I'll take CV any day!

Yeah, granted the Yammi does have a bit of a toy-like feel, and wind synths in general are crap for maintining embouchure.

The yamaha pair, though, has fantastic volume response to breath pressure and pitch bend response to lip pressure. And since the VL70-m is a monophonic modeling tone generator, rather than a polyphonic sampled tone generator, it actually responds believably to overblowing. It'll honk and squeek like a 3rd grader blowing a tenor for the first time if you let it.

There are some "traditional" keyboard/synth sounds on the VL, but it really excels at the acoustic instrument voices. Saxes, horns, monophonic strings...

The new Akai is due out soon - should be interesting to see where they take the new EWI. I've got two Yammis - a WX11 and a WX5 - I actually like playing the 11 (the other model) better...of course, the VL70-m is de riguer!

that's a strange instrument! how does it sound and work

Originally posted by raggety that's a strange instrument! how does it sound and work

The Yamaha uses a sax like fingering (with moving plastic keys), and outputs MIDI. The Akai uses CV to control an analog synth. It has no moving keys. There is a grounding plate for your right thumb, and by touching the keys, you complete different circuits. It is touchy (all pun intended), but expressive.

The Yamaha has a fake reed that does not vibrate, but does sense pressure for lip control. The Akai has a rubber nipple for a mouthpiece. A bite creates a pitch blip in one direction, releasing the bite creates a blip in the other direction. Both can do realistic vibrato, but for lip control the Yamaha wins.

Both units sense breath pressure, but the Akai's CV is a lot smoother a ramp up than the Yamaha's MIDI. The Akai also has a glide plate by the left thumb (octave controls) which creates portamento for smoove gliding.

The Akai sounds like a monosynth with amazing volume control. The Yamaha sounds like whatever you hook it up to. The VL70-M is their flagship sound module which uses COSM to create very cool replications of real wind and string instruments. The AKAI sound module is a true analog synth with all the warmth and goodness of a true analog synth. As analog synths go though, it is pretty limited, and VERY hard to tweak. The editing is all digital and menus are not well laid out. The synth does output MIDI, so you can use it as a "brainbox" to connect it to whatever you want (even a VL70-M, though there are specific functions that I don't think you could take advantage of from an AKAI controller...it is designed to work with the Yamaha WX series).

I have a semi-functional WX-7 floating around, but no good sound modules to use with it. I much prefer the Akai, but it's different strokes for different folks. The feel is completely different. The Akai is touchier, and has a much greater learning curve. I like getting synth sounds, but once in a while I do get envious of the Yamaha guys that can record horn sections at 3:00AM in their apartment.

What's this about a new AKAI controller? I'm hoping the controller hasn't changed and they're going to bring out a killer synth. The EWI3000 is the same as the EWI3030. It's only the controller color that changed (and the synths). I'd love to hook my controller to a synth with knobs to adjust the synth instead of only having knobs that control the controller's sensitivity (pretty much set and forget). I'd like to have parameters edited on the fly!!!

Wow, I just looked at the new EWI4000 it has a built in synth

I like that it is self contained, but at $700 for controller and synth, I think it'd be a better value to use my 3000M as a brain box, and dump the money into a better midi synth. Then again having an integrated unit does sound nice, and probably will have better integration with the glide function and such than a midi synth...

I'll have to wait to hear the patchman samples.

I also play a WX-5 and vl70-m combo. I also use a Behringer FCB-1010 foot pedal to control switching the patches.

Here's some Christmas music I did several years ago and still have up on my website (yeah, gotta maintain it more and get the old content off like everyone else....):

O Come All Ye Faithfull

Angel's Medley

Nice stuff.

Originally posted by Jaydubz The new Akai is due out soon - should be interesting to see where they take the new EWI. I've got two Yammis - a WX11 and a WX5 - I actually like playing the 11 (the other model) better...of course, the VL70-m is de riguer!

I'm playing a WX11 with the VL70m at the moment, but I've been thinking about upgrading to the WX5. How come you prefer the WX11?

Is there any way of hooking up two or more VL70-m's to try and get close to a 'horn section'? I've been lead to believe that simply daisy chaining via MIDI will loose much of the expressiveness (ie data) that makes them so convincing.

^ I like the setup of the octave keys on the 11 much better than on the 5 - it's too easy on the 5 to inadvertently trigger the wrong octave. The pitch bend wheel on the 5, however, is very cool!

I have a WX-11 and VL70m. I like the VL, but prefer driving an OasysPCI with the WX. The O'PCI blows the VL away when it comes to brass sounds, imo.

the WX is also great for creating bass lines.

No, but I've had a synth farting out on me Guess that doesn't count

I wouldn't mind something like this for trumpet!

Brad

Check out Brad Mason of the Bombsquad ( www.bombsquadonline.com ) for some killer EVI

I saw a big jungle event where they had a guy with a synth wind of some kind, it was foward facing, so maybe a clarinet?

Except he has some beasty aggressive distorted synthesis and sub coming through it!

Come on with this technology we can do so much more than replicate the original instrument!

So you know where I'm coming from, I've never played a wind controller so please forgive my basic question. It's about the Akai bite sensor and how it works with pitchbend vibrato. I understand that a bite creates a pitch blip up. What I don't understand is when the bite is released, does the pitch go down to (zero) the reference pitch, or below it by the same degree that it was previously above? To put it in MIDI terms, let's say a bite pressure sends a stream of Pitchbend events that climbs to +100. When the bite is released does the MIDI stream fall back to zero, or -100?

Thanks!

On an AKAI, when you bite, the pitch jumps up a little, and returns. When you release, it jumps down a little and returns. Believe it or not, you can get a pretty realistic vibrato out of this system. You can NOT bend the pitch and keep it there with the mouthpiece. For that, you have to use the pitch bend plates.

Your right thumb rests on a ground plate. There are angled plates above and below the ground plate. Barely touching the plate above the ground, barely raises the pitch. More surface area on the plate, bigger bend. You can bend up or down a whole step using the pitch bend plates. As you roll off of the plates, the pitch ramps back to normal. Being CV instead of MIDI, you get very smooth transistions.

Very interesting. Since the Akai bite sensor has no physical "negative state"--like the WX5 reed is capable of--it's very clever programming on Akai's part to achieve positive/negative PB vibrato. Thanks for your detailed answer.