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Song for Flute and Piano (Swam Variflute, Pure Piano)
Hey Forum, it's been a while.
This started as a piano doodle I've been playing for about 20 years that I eventually resolved to do something with, the catalyst being the purchase of an IRIN S58 electric flute (more on that below). In prior pieces I've been dissatisfied with the lack of expressivity that comes from simply playing Swam instruments with a keyboard and wanted something more. Unable to match the likes of GeoTony on GeoShred, I went for the flute.
Composition and technical notes
With the piano theme locked in (for several decades) I played the flute over the top, varied it to a minor key, then went on an early 19th century adventure, before returning to a variation of the piano theme. I played as much as I could, but with my musical ambition eclipsing my playing skill, I manually entered notes in some places too and faked it.
Overall the IRIN flute was really nice, and MIDI worked both wired and through bluetooth (with usual latency). It has a few quirks like always sending NoteOn velocity 127, however Swam instruments can use expression for attack velocity instead so that worked out.
I wrote a Mozaic script to clean it up a bit.
https://patchstorage.com/irin-s58-midi-processor/
Another thing I did was write a script to imitate 'vibrato curves' of real instruments.
This is also subtly at work in the background. Haven't put it on patch storage yet, but probably will.
Comments
Beautiful composition with a strong, emotional melody. I would love to hear a full orchestral rendition.
This is really nice. Great composition. Love the flute sound.
Enjoyed this.
I agree with Paul, very tasteful, lovely melodies.
I think the biggest compliment I can give is that it sounded like somebody playing the flute.
A lot of the time with virtual instruments being played on ,for example a keyboard, you can just tell it’s a keyboard but this, to me anyway, just sounds like somebody blowing into a tube.
A quick google search reveals the IRIN S58 to be a very reasonable price compared with other EWIs.
Lovely work 🙏
Very nice. Nice to see another "EWI" player here. 😎
Thanks for the lovely comments. The flute was an optimistic purchase from AliExpress, not a marketplace I've bought from before and with no online video reviews either. There are lots of these types of flutes and for the price, i was impressed. The breath control in particular was really good. Paired with Swam Variflute, it was an absolute bargain, I think I've finally managed to coax out some digital expressivity. Now I need to figure out how to get similar expressivity out of a Swam Violin, Viola, and Cello for a future piece!
@belldu What a beautiful melody!
Do you have an original SWAM Flute btw? I played with both and found that the original one fits easier into such classical pieces. Especially it's "classic" tone with a bit of key clapping sound.
You may try a mozaic script I wrote recently. (if you have Mozaic already). I tried various approaches to straddling the expressivity of the SWAM engine in a convenient way for both live playing and MIDI editing. And A-to-B morphing of groups of parameters seems to work best for me. A good balance of freedom and predictability if you carefully pre-plan these A and B states. And here is a viola demo
Sounds very nice, @belldu! Which AliExpress flute did you end up with?
in the description of the Aliexpress article it says 15 levels of blowing sensitivity. That’s probably a translation thing, as it has at least 127 levels of sensitivity per MIDI standard. Maybe there are 15 presets (curves) for the breath sensor.
On the other end, the sound generator side, there are often clever smoothing algorithms. I always played the EWI with normal MIDI, not NRPN.
https://de.aliexpress.com/item/1005010518878094.html?gatewayAdapt=glo2deu
Thanks for more lovely comments. With respect to the flute:
Yes, 15 levels of sensitivity but across 0-127 values.
So think of it as 'resistance' or how hard to you have to blow.
And yes, that's the model I bought, it comes in light blue or black.
I swear that I hit the colour selector for black, my kids think I fumbled it, and... I have light blue.
My overall review is that the breath control was really good, the touch sensitive keys are sensitive to any kind of touch (you can't rest fingers on them idly), and the octave shifters at the back took a bit of getting used to. Built in presets weren't really worth it, although i do like the french horn. It's main use case is what I used it for, as a breath controller for SWAM instruments, and I wired it via the USB C port it has at the side of the instrument to the iPad. All worked fine. It has Bluetooth too, but I didn't bother with that because of the latency, no worse or better than usual.
I would have loved a 'vibrato pad' and had to resort to waggling my jaw around, and the MIDI implementation with attack set to 127 felt a bit limiting too.
Overall though, for the price, considering you can pay a lot more for not a lot more, I'd recommend it!
And thanks to @vlaoladis, I've downloaded your script and will give it a go!
Listening now, and your piece definitely has a Classical vibe to it.
Okay, so strange question @belldu . How do I break out of the 8-bar loop to create Classical music like this? Or conversely, what thought processes went through your mind when creating this beautiful piecenof music?
@jwmmakerofmusic, thanks for the listen and the thoughtful question.
I expect you'd get a different answer from everyone, but here's mine.
I usually start with something in AUM or in this case with a piano theme which I recorded into AUM. I have to noodle. I can't just stare at a blank page and make something up.
It's never anything more than a self contained theme or chorus.
In this case I started with the piano theme in the version you hear in the last two minutes.
I played this repeatedly and eventually found something that worked for flute above.
I'll then move into Cubasis, as if I stay looping in AUM, then I'll be stuck there.
I then think about structure and map out the shape and tone/energy.
For this one, I had the final statement of the theme.
I then quickly wrote the initial version of the theme in the same key.
After the initial e flat major theme, varying it in the relative c minor key, felt natural, and I knew I wanted to switch tone from something that just bubbled along peacefully under my fingers, to something more dramatic and moody suiting the minor transition.
It was at that point that I thought of the tonal and modulation shifts Beethoven used, and I started to wonder whether the flute was a good choice of lead instrument :-)
Firmly rooted in the early 19th century, I decided that as I was there, I'd go on a little adventure. This bit took ages to write with increasing drama which I couldn't even play on the flute. The challenge was to stay centered in the relative minor to make it easy to get back 'home' for the restatement, which I'd already decided would be a shift back to peaceful rather than escalate further.
So, best advice, considering I'm no expert myself, is that once you have something, stop and think what shape you want it to be, and how you want to vary the tone/energy. You'll then absolutely know what feels right given your skills and experience.