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So I bought one of those cheap wind controllers...
On Amazon.ca and .com it's the Vangoa EWI-100. On Temu it's the Irin Blowpipe Instrument. (Like many of these things they are under different names in different parts of the world.) There some decent reviews on YouTube, such as:
I was curious to see how good or bad this thing is, and given that the Vangoa EWI-100 was $150cdn. I instead ordered the $70 Irin through Temu.
Findings:
the internal sounds are "meh" through its tiny speaker. I bought this thing as a controller and haven't yet run the stock sounds through headphones or speakers. (And when using it as a controller there's no Off switch for the internal sounds, so you have to use the volume button to drop down to Zero.)
As a basic controller, it actually works very well! Breath control is particularly good.
Interestingly, below each set of three main buttons are two others. Depending on what fingering one chooses (I use F2), the upper button that would normally just be G#/Ab on a sax or flute raises the pitch of ANY note by a semitone. And the lower button drops ANY note by a semitone.
This comes in handy at times, because my big hands struggle with playing G# since the button is so close to the main G, so I can just use what would normally be the Eb/D# key on the lower half for the same G#. Oh, and when playing low C you can add the lower button in the upper section to get low B!)
- The octave keys taking some getting used to, as the middle one is the same as not using it at all, with the upper button for octave up and the lower as octave down.
The biggest issue:
- if your device has a Lightning port it's hit and miss as to whether or not your app will "see" the thing, if you don't use a powered hub in between.
Examples:
- AUM on my 2018 iPad Air sees it using the Lightning-USB powered camera connection (w/o being powered), but not the basic Lightning-USB connector.
- ditto for my old iPhone SE (1st Gen.)
- AUM on my 2017 iPad Pro does not see it with either connector, and requires a powered hub.
I would presume that newer iPads and phones will see it just fine since they can handle more power draw. (I run older gear to have headphone jacks.)
All things considered, I'm glad I only paid $70Cdn. for this experimental entry into wind controllers. I used to play sax and still play recorder at times, but it's not important to me how much this thing resembles either of those, as I'm simply using it to augment my rig used for accompanying dance classes. It works perfectly well for this, and I'd only look at a fancier controller if I wanted more features.