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Did I mention I'm not a wind instrument player? So there should be quite a steep learning curve, I reckon
Great to see that there are some EWI players here on the forum. I got an EWI - USB five or so years ago while trying to find an instrument that was easier on my carpal-tunnel damaged wrists and hands. I still don't get to play it nearly as often as I'd like to, but considering that I can't play my alto sax anymore, playing the EWI at least once a week is a godsend.
It took me alost a year after I'd got my first iPad to realize that the USB hub, which connected inbetween the CCK and the EWI (as a previous commenter explained), didn't have to be plugged in for power. What a revelation! Ha ha.
As for sounds and such, I whole-heartedly agree with the others here who have recommended the Sample Modeling VSTs. Last summer I finally had some money I could use to invest in some Sample Modeling instruments and other paid VSTs (as well as finally purchase a license for Reaper!). Previously I'd made do with free VSTs and the Garritan sound pack that came with the purchase of the EWI -USB. The Garritan sound pack is alright, but what I always missed was a "growl" effect. I experimented with several free tremelo and vibrato plugins and ended up using the tremelo plugin that comes with Reaper to fake a growl sound. I tried to repeat the process on ios, but wasn't successful. The Holderness Media tremelo app called Johnny almost worked. It has midi learn so that I could set the EWI - USB's bite sensor to control the tremelo start and stop and amount, but, like some of the free PC VSTs that I'd experimented with beforehand, the Holderness app would leave the tremelo and hence overall volume at the level it was when the bite sensor was last released, thereby causing jumps in different volume levels as the EWI was played. The Reaper plugin, on the otherhand, immediately resets to 0 when the bite sensor is released and therefore doesn't affect the overall volume in between blowing into the mouthpiece. Here's an example of what I eventually could achieve with the Reaper tremelo plugin together with the soprano sax sound that came with the Garritan sound pack that came with the EWI - USB.
Concerning good ios sounds for the EWI, here is a free pack of Magellan patches (and a demo by the guy who made them) that I found on the internet. They are set up for CC#2.
http://www.matrixsynth.com/2016/01/ewi-wx5-magellan-patches-demo.html
One thing I miss with the jump to 64 bit ios is the leaving behind of the free FreEWI app that worked in tandem with the MidiBridge app. It would automatically route CC#2 to CC#7 thus making it possible to play, for example, instruments in the SampleTank app without first having to connect the EWI - USB to a PC in order to change CC message controlled by the breath sensor. I suspect that apps like Studiomux can do the same thing though.
To close, it would be great if other EWI players here could use this thread to link to some examples of their EWI playing. I'd love to hear more EWI sounds and music.
Thanks for the link Kirth. Much appreciated. The modulation section in Magellan is a monster, but very comprehensive if you want total control and have loads of free time. Magellan Jr. is really nice to be able to play EWI on the iPhone too. Bernie Kenerson's Thor patches are great starting points for tweaking and very affordable.
Thanks for sharing, @Kirth_Gersen_ !
Can I expect to learn to play real saxophones when starting out on the EWI to some degree? Surely the fingerings should be exactly the same if I choose that preset, right? What probably differs most would be the actual sound shaping by mouth and breath pressure, I would assume. But having learned the EWI probably should enable me to get something musical out of a real sax with relative ease, I hope
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Although maybe this kind of statement may sound to sax players like somebody expecting to learn to play guitar by playing Guitar Hero to a guitarist
Nah… It’s not quite that funny. But it’s a little bit funny.
And maybe playing the EWI will indeed give you a headstart on the saxophone. (Haven’t tried the EWI itself but it’s fairly similar to my WX-11, in these respects.) The fingerings are pretty much the same and the tongue technique is rather similar.
Since you don’t have to worry about playing in pitch or, as you say, producing the sound you want to produce, the EWI is probably easier to learn. At the same time, each instrument has its quirks.
It’ll be interesting to hear how easy it’ll be for you to learn the sax afterwards because there’s a fair bit of stuff happening in the mouth when we play sax which doesn’t need to happen on the EWI. Maybe that stuff only comes later and you’ll be able to do what you want to do after a short amount of it. After all, people pick up the sax much more quickly than the piano or violin.
actually I learned to play a little bit of tenor saxphone after having gathered some experience with the EWI. It surely helped a bit, or at least encouraged me to pick up a real sax. But I'm sure @Kirth_Gersen_ can tell more about it.
You bet! So glad @Munibeast woke us up!
Ugh!
Nice!
(And that’s also something which can help @Munibeast: the “action” on a sax is much different from the EWI’s.)
Really nice!
Oh, thanks! Know if they’ll work on Magellan Jr.? Haven’t bought the full Magellan and been trying to focus on the iPhone, especially for synths.
Midiflow does this really well and it’s coming up with some new filters, in parallel with AB3.
Also, there are several apps which do MIDI Learn, including Korg Gadget. Because of this, it’s been more appropriate for me to run the gadgets than the standalone apps to get M1 and Wavestation sounds from my wind controller.
Well, mine is a Yamaha WX-11 instead of an EWI, but this is a little experiment with iWavestation running through mucoder’s tonespace chorder via Studiomux:
Yay! Been searching for exactly these kinds of patches! Tried driving filter cutoff with breath on some other sounds, recently, and the results weren’t as neat.
Upon listening to the demo, thought that there might be something special about the player’s style and that my own playing wouldn’t fit as well. Turns out, several of these patches do fit my playing style.
Can’t wait to use rotating chords with these, to reproduce the “Michael Brecker Effect”. With MIDI filter support in AB3, we should eventually get a chorder or something like that.
But this is already very satisfying. Thank you so much, Kirth!
Played more with these Magellan patches to compare with other of my iOS synths. Really, most of these are among my favourites, now. Could probably learn to reproduce them in other synths, to give me some flexibility. For one thing, it sounds like Magellan Jr. is draining my battery faster than other synths. Wouldn’t work very well for performance, in that case.
Part of the attraction is that these Magellan patches are relatively simple. There’s a lot of whacky synth patches out there. To my ear, the simpler ones tend to work best on a wind controller. Since you control the modulation with breath, having a lot of movement in the sound itself tends to be more distracting than anything. For instance, would probably not use an arpeggiated sound with my wind controller, but it can be quite fun on a keyboard (especially something like TF8). Even LFO can be kept at a minimum or avoided altogether, IMHO. You can use your lip for vibrato which is more “organic” than any LFO.
Then, there’s the effect of the filter. Since you drive cutoff frequency with breath, that cutoff better have the kind of impact you want. In my experience, this works best when filters are in a series instead of being parallel (unless you can control two filters’ cutoff frequencies through the same MIDI CC).
And envelope is pretty important. Typically, my preference goes to a fairly percussive attack but a legato mode. So you can contrast between punchy attacks and the legato effect. Velocity might be a bit less important as breath takes over, but it’s still useful to have a pretty responsive sound, altogether.
Among my other favourites are a few things each in Sunrizer (e.g. Disappear) and in iWavestation (e.g. Group Sax). Overall, wave sequence is particularly appealing to me. In part because it’s so different from Virtual Analog. Now, with this Magellan bank, VA sounds are less useful to me. Got Sunrizer on my iPad and Magellan Jr on my iPhone so it’s part of the reason to have both.
Getting interesting results in iM1 too, but haven’t found the best way to modulate the sound with breath. In Darwin, it sounds like filter cutoff doesn’t have the desired effect. In the standalone, haven’t found a way to assign filter cutoff frequency to a MIDI CC.
Also went back to NLog Pro and Thor. Plenty of cool stuff in both cases but have yet to find a way to make a patch which works well as a wind controller sound, for me. Did assign filter cutoff to breath control in Thor (haven’t found the way to do the same in NLog Pro). But the factory presets aren’t really doing it, for me. It’d be a matter of designing my own patches, which can be fun but a bit time consuming. There’s also Bernie’s soundbank for Thor, which is much more reasonable than Patchman’s banks, but they’re still an added cost. Since Thor doesn’t work on iPhone, investing that time or money makes less sense for me. Kind of the same thing for NLog Pro.
Have yet to try any of the AU synths. There could be a benefit in performance which might have a positive impact on battery.
Next step might be to check romplers and other samplers. Sounds like bismark bs-16i could be a good bet, especially since there are many soundfonts out there. Storage can be an issue, especially on my iPad.
Ah, well… Fun times!
So, it sounds like it’s a new phase in my quest for optimal wind controller patches. Pretty encouraging overall.
It seems you have an iPhone, if only you had a pair of rubber bands, also. One thing that wind controllers are lacking in is the positional / directional orientation and velocity sensors integral to the phone. Strapping a phone to the wind controller would give an extra few axes of control, (perhaps through TC-11 or something similar, not sure how that would go with an external midi in).
That's a good idea! I have Velcro on my iPhone case so I can stick it to things pretty well. I'll see if I can mount it on the EWI in a useful way.
I didn't notice FreEWI in the 32-bit apps list but, yes, there it is. I bought an Anatek Pocket Mapper (a little hardware box) from Patchman's used gear page to remap CCs, but I experimented with a lot of hardware before iOS.
I played through the Magellan wind controlled patches, but I can still hear a bit of aliasing in the filter. Picky, picky. ;-)
I posted my problems with the MIDI bogging down in FL Mobile 3 and have had a couple of back-and-forth Q&As with the developer. If they can get the MIDI working in FLM3 without bogging down under EWI CC bombardment then I'll stick to their GM Synth. It's still the best I can find for my purposes.
Onyx Ashanti’s exohands evolved out of this precise thought (WX-5, iPhone, and extra hands). Except that they’re vinyl, not rubber.
http://www.ted.com/talks/onyx_ashanti_this_is_beatjazz
@Enkerli thanks for sharing your "little experiment"! Really interesting. I'd never heard of mucoder's tonespace before. I'll have to check it out. Right now it's a mystery to me as to how you can get different, changing harmonies as you play your WX-11.
@Munibeast I'm sure that playing an EWI will give you a headstart when you eventually pick up a saxophone. As others have said, the fingerings are practically the same. One thing to keep in mind though is that a big part of playing the saxophone is the embouchure. An Akai EWI - USB doesn't have a reed and takes a lot less breath to play, as compared to a saxophone.
On a related tangent, has anyone here tried the new Aerophone, Roland's first EWI? Supposedly it's very similar to a sax. It even has a "reed".
And going back to the opening post of this thread, here's an interesting way to use an EWI: as a vocoder controller. I've never tried it myself, but maybe someone here has. I'd think an EWI would work with iVoxel on iOS. Here are two videos of an EWI being used to control a vocoder. The second is a how-to video with an EWI and a hardware vocoder, but the principles must be the same for a software vocoder.
Honestly, it’s a real joy to use the tonespace plugin on desktop. It produces chords in either random or cycles.
Been thinking about it a fair bit. Kind of sad it’s not Bluetooth. Not in love with the patches, but the control with the right thumb is a nice touch. (Yamaha’s WX- wind controllers also use reed-like systems. Not sure that part makes so much of a difference, but it does feel pretty natural in the mouth.)
Makes sense. Never thought of that, tbh, and maybe it’s not so different from a keyboard. But the fingering makes more sense to me.
Hope someone can try it and report back. Don’t think my WX-11 allows for this.
Or this:
(Suggested by Youtube. More to my liking. Teases Mike Philips a bit.)
My EWI USB arrived yesterday. Initially it wasn't responding right to my fingers, so I thought it was broken but I figured it out that it had to be recalibrated. After that it works perfectly! I haven't really tried it on iOS yet but it's pretty cool with the software it comes with already. I'll check out my iOS apps with it later. So far it's a lot of fun but I do have to get used to those fingerings.
Try it with this plugin:
Sorry for OT
Well, it’s not that off-topic if we complain about aliasing!
Let us know if you find some use for it in your iOS setup.
As the developer of LayR I've had a few EWI owners express interest in the synth. In LayR you can assign any single MIDI controller to as many parameters as you like, each parameter can have a separate range of control and you can invert the direction. Thus you can build quite complex and subtle morphing arrangements using a single controller. ( eg 2=Breath ).
I know I'll have to get LayR eventually but I'm holding out for AB3 to drop. Then I'll know how much will be left on my iTunes account. Probably not enough, though
I resemble that remark! ;-)
Same here. LayR has been on my AppShopper wishlist from the start and the level of flexibility is enticing. But it’s all a question of balancing my app budget.
Is the consensus here that EWI mode is the best one for the fingering options or should I rather learn the sax mode? And can anyone recommend a particular fingering chart with alternative ways to finger all notes in EWI mode?
If you have muscle memory from saxophone then you should see if that mode takes advantage of it. Otherwise pick what works for you, and the standard mode is a good place to start.
Given that the main keys may work differently with forked fingerings and that the accessory keys move notes up and down half- or whole-steps, there are literally thousands of ways to to finger all the notes an EWI can produce, so a comprehensive chart is not really realistic. Start with the standard fingerings and experiment from there if you find difficulties in certain passages. I do, however, find it's generally best to pick a consistent set of fingerings and practice through problems, rather than trying to come up with workarounds for every little difficulty (unless your mind can hold those thousands of alternate fingerings).
Thanks @bigcatrik.
I'm having some weird things going on with the EWI USB: Sometimes everything works as expected and other times some keys (usually the lower ones) are totally unresponsive and even resetting several times (not touching metal) doesn't help at all. It's very weird and I haven't really been able to make a definite verdict what could be favourable or less favourable conditions. Once it's working with all keys it's great and there are no glitches or anything. But other times I just can't seem to get it to work at all. It may be something to do with grounding but I'm not sure. I hope it isn't broken. Is there anybody out there that has experienced this kind of problem and found a solution?
It seems I get the best results playing through my macbook resting on my lap with headphones and no peripherals attached. When I put the macbook on my desk it won't work properly anymore. Weird.
The first three letters of "weird" are "WEI" which spelled sideways is "EWI." ;-)
Oh man, the dreaded conductive issues of the EWI. I don't have an EWI-USB but it's a balancing act with my EWI4000s. As a matter of fact, I attached my EWI4000s to my old computer this morning and that was enough to change something about the environment that I had to turn the touch sensitivity knob down. Since I don't have an EWI-USB I don't know how the sensitivity is adjusted, but that would be my suggestion. (I have dry hands and had to use lotion to play the previous model, the EWI3020, so different models do behave differently, it seems.)
And you might want to find your way over to the forum at Patchman Music where the really knowledgeable people are for these kinds of problems if you can't come up with a solution.
Noticing that Filtatron was updated to support AB3, started playing with it, routing CC#2 to filter cutoff, using iWavestation as “line”. To my ears, it works like a charm. But my sensitivity to aliasing is very low, so others might disagree.
Still, it means to me that just about any synth is now breath-compatible.