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Wind Controllers


cloudburst
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Do we have any EWI-ists or WX-ists on here?

I'm a long time sax player and I bought myself a lovely mint (it's a bit mad to be able to call these things vintage) Yamaha WX7. And last night I bought a Yamaha VL70-m tone generator which I haven't yet received.

Any other BC-ers in this space?

CB

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Yes and no. Haven't used it for two decades or so, but I used a cheap one that was almost a toy.
A Casio, if I'm allowed a guess. The thing not only had MIDI, but also on-board, bad, sounds as well as a built-in amp and speaker. Nice feature was that it was easy to switch between vari-blow and fixed volume.
Despite its limitedness (limitedity), it worked a treat.

My background was playing the flute (and a tiny bit of sax).

Congrats with WX7. Fine instruments if memory serves, and a lot more sexy than my plastic blob.

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Regarding your Casio wind controller - a DH perhaps? - I think this is what finally started me on sax.

I'd played bass guitar and trumpet from about 9 years old. But always had wanted to play clarinet or sax (I guess because I'm not an alpha male, so the trumpet didn't suit me). Finally one day in the early 90s, a colleague in work gave me a Casio wind controller to bring home and try over the weekend. That did nothing for me, only to persuade me to go out and buy a real sax - which I did that Saturday morning when I came home the proud owner of a secondhand Yamaha Alto YAS52.

I taught myself sax by practising 3 hours every night for a couple of years and then ended up playing sax in the Belfast Jazz Orchestra. I think the sax is one of the easiest instruments to play. All of the controls are exactly where you need them to be when you want to 'express' yourself, if that makes sense.

I'm looking forward to getting some serious time with the WX7.

And sorry to bore you all with that little bit of reminiscence.

CB

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I checked, and Yup! A Casio DH-100.
I liked that thing. It did what I needed - at budget price. Several times, audiences gasped at the noise from that bit of plastic, not realising it was connected to six or eight thousand quid worth of synthness.

When you took that thing home, did you only have the built-in sounds, or connect it to MIDI equipment?

IMS, the YAS 52 was the exact sax I used to play a bit, and I too think the sax is not too demanding to start on. I see it as very forgiving in that everyone gets a sound out of it. I'd played the flute for a decade or more before, but liked the sax better and wanted to eventually be as cool as the Dutch sax player I'd seen who put his soprano flute in the horn of his tenor sax. :)
Sadly, I never got a tenor, and only ended up building my own flute floor stand, where the flute would stand vertically over a thin stick covered with flute cleaning cloth. Yes, I'm lazy AND smart. :D

I'm impressed you would practice that much on a new instrument. I've never managed that.

Do you NOW feel better about abusing other people's time with your reminiscensing?
In case: mission accomplished! :D

Edited by BassTractor
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So how easy are these things to make tuneful sound come out of? I understand midi very well in terms of synths, but I don't understand these things at all. What do you do, in terms of blowing, and in terms of making it play notes that are in tune? And do they work with any midi sound source? Or do you need a special synth/software/sound-producing device at the other end?

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[quote name='BassTractor' timestamp='1399235496' post='2442359']
When you took that thing home, did you only have the built-in sounds, or connect it to MIDI equipment?
[/quote]
I actually just had the built in sounds. Not good at all. But it was enough of a spark to relight an old unfulfilled ambition, so I'm happy about that. :-)

[quote name='Zenitram' timestamp='1399237224' post='2442383']
So how easy are these things to make tuneful sound come out of? I understand midi very well in terms of synths, but I don't understand these things at all. What do you do, in terms of blowing, and in terms of making it play notes that are in tune? And do they work with any midi sound source? Or do you need a special synth/software/sound-producing device at the other end?
[/quote]

They are easy to make a tuneful sound out of. However, if your sound generator is not capable of dealing with breath control and doesn't have appropriate patches that are suited to breath control and a load of other aspects such as modelling of transitions between blown notes, then you will have no dynamics and no expression. In that case pushing a key on the wind controller is the same as thinking about what key you're about to press on a keyboard and blowing into the wind controller (in any way at all, doesn't matter how) is nothing more than the equivalent of pressing your chosen key on the keyboard.

However, if you have the right sound generator loaded with the right patches, then you have an instrument that's pretty much as expressive as a real sax, with a range of 7 octaves and with a range of sounds - realistic or synthetic.

CB

Edited by cloudburst
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@Zenitram
In other words, these things are like MIDI keyboards shaped like horns, and it depends on the model what MIDI signals you can get out of them. In their most essential form, they emit what key is depressed (and released again), as well as info about the volume (roughly akin to key depression speed and aftertouch combined).

Though they will basically work with any MIDI sound source that has a MIDI IN, in many cases you will need a little box inbetween that translates the MIDI wind parameter into another one. That "box" might be part of the MIDI sound unit or might be external, like the MIDI Ox.

A Casio DH will send few parameters (key, volume, portamento IMS). More advanced ones like the WX7 will send more. The rest is up to the programming of the sounds in the sound unit, as Cloudburst explained.
For example, you might start blowing a new "tone" with a volume starting with 0 and rising. On the synth you could program the sound to follow this, OR for example to have a fierce attack when the blowing reaches a treshold level of say 1 (or 128, in which case your timing probably gets to be all over the place).

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Wow. Who'd have predicted that anyone would have the wit and imagination to post a picture like this?

How on earth did you manage to find such an appropriate picture so quickly?

CB

Edited by cloudburst
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