Overview of Aerophone Models and Sound Packs

Matt: 0:02

Welcome to the Aerophone Academy podcast with me, Matt Traum.

Alistair: 0:06

And I'm Alistair Parnell. Join us each month as we discuss the wonderful world of wind controllers and you get the very best information and answers to your questions.

Matt: 0:18

The Aerophone Academy podcast THE source for accurate information on wind controllers, so make sure you subscribe to the podcast.

Alistair: 0:26

And, while you're at it, why not check out www. isax. academy?

Matt: 0:32

and patchmanmusic. com.

Alistair: 0:36

So welcome to episode two, everybody. It's really been great to get this podcast started and we've had some lovely feedback from the first episode.

Matt: 0:49

Matt, yes it's been going well. I think the download number is pretty good and we're happy a y to get another episode out as soon as possible. So we sort of promised one per month, but we're shooting for more than that, more frequent yes.

Alistair: 1:04

And in this one we're hoping to have a little talk about some of the different Aerophone models, just a general kind of rundown on that. We're also going to have a little talk about one of the questions that we've had on the Speak pipe. For those of you that don't know, we have a I think called a Speak pipe link underneath in the description of the podcast. You can click on that and you can send us an email. There's an email address down there as well, but if you'd like to be included on the podcast, you can actually send us a voice message and then we'll play that on the podcast and we'll do our best to answer the question for that as well.

Alistair: 1:45

So today we've got a question on using drums on the Aerophone, believe it or not. So that's going to be an interesting one, and we're also going to talk about some of the sound packs that Matt's actually written for the Aerophone and how we did some of those video demonstrations and audio demonstrations as well. So there's a lot to get on with Before we do that, Matt, I mean any news from you. Have you been looking at anything recently? You know, business-wise or sound-wise, what's been happening?

Matt: 2:21

Oh, I'm always working on new things. I usually don't like to announce them until they're ready, because you just never know when they're actually going to be released. But one of the latest things I did was the two sound banks for the Korg Mono/Poly, softsynth, which is available for Mac PC and then also mobile devices, and that's probably one of the newer banks, even though it's been maybe a year or so more than that since they came out. But yeah, there was a nice bank. I wanted to do something that was usable for me, like in a jazz setting. So I have some nice muted brass sounds that I thought came out really nice. I was formant some formant filters in there. It kind of gives it a human acoustic instrument quality to it.

Alistair: 3:38

And it'll even work on iPhone, right? Yes?

Matt: 3:41

that bank runs on the iPhone. That's amazing isn't it.

Matt: 3:43

Yeah, that was a goal. I want to have something usable on the iPhone, so I'm real happy with that. Jeff Kashiwa, the famous sax player and EWI player from the Rippingtons, just did his own video on the sound bank. He was playing the Berglund N uRAD It's kind of interesting. He goes through quite a bit of the sounds and, of course, masterfully plays them. So if you want to check that out, just you could go on YouTube and search Patchman and that'll bring it up at the top. It's K-A-S-H-I-W-A Patchman.

Alistair: 4:15

And he plays them so sensitively on that video. You know he's not just kind of showing off, he really demonstrates the huge dynamic range and the nuances in those sounds and you know it's just lovely to hear that. It's just like a warm blanket.

Matt: 4:32

Yeah, I really appreciate that and that's one of the things I appreciate about your playing, Alistair. You know how to play, you know within the ranges of patches and you're not always blasting, and you know it just sounds very expressive. And that's sometimes a problem with new players they're blowing too hard into the breath sensors on their wind controllers and kind of topping out the breath level, because it has a finite level that it stops at. So if you hit that level and all the expression goes away and it just kind of sits there at one volume, there's no place to go.

Matt: 5:06

Yeah, that's one of the you've always done great demos and in fact we can well thank you. We can talk about that a little bit too, those demos that you did for the Roland Aerophone AE-20 and AE-30.

Alistair: 5:58

Yeah, so for me I've been busy with some more iSax Academy stuff. I do a regular monthly webinar on the Academy and I've also introduced every other two weeks I'm going to introduce a kind of live session idea. That's going to be like a Zoom call where everyone can kind of play and play to each other if they want to ask questions and I'm there to answer. So you know, the iSax community is all doing really really nicely. Such a nice response from people. People are really getting a lot out of those courses, so I'm really pleased with the way that's going.

Matt: 6:39

Yeah, you said you were surprised that the response was better than expected on this whole project of yours.

Alistair: 6:44

Yeah, you know, two years ago I'd never dreamt of doing anything like it and a friend of mine suggested maybe I should and you know I dismissed it straight away and then I got thinking, hmm, maybe he's got something there, and I'm so pleased I did, but particularly the community aspect, bringing people together, both in terms of kind of video connections and on the forum that we have in communities working really well.

Matt: 7:13

So I can tell it was a lot of work. Oh yeah, absolutely. You put a lot of love into that and it's really highly recommended. I always point people that call me and they're asking for tips and things, and I generally don't have time to give private lessons or go into much detail on the phone, but I always recommend that they check out the Academy, for you know, if you really want to learn about wind controllers and not just Aero phones but all of them, you know EWI/WX yeah.

Alistair: 7:42

It's been great. Yeah, my courses are around Aerophone primarily, but there's a basics course, you know, you get to learn the fingerings, and then there's a more advanced course where you get to learn all the kind of tricks and special things that the Aerophones do.

Matt: 7:59

So for sure. But even when you start to talk about, you know, controlling external soft synths and synths like that. That applies to all wind controllers, more or less, so there's always something that could be gained there.

Alistair: 8:11

So, and then, when was the last time that you wrote one the sound packs then? So these are packs that are available on the Roland Cloud. And because you've done like what is it eight of those Eight, I believe now, yeah, yeah.

Matt: 8:29

So have 8 packs of 10 scenes each, and each of those Scenes we have to keep in mind can be layers. So some of the woodwind sections and brass sections, string sections that I did have several parts, and those all, most of those parts, are going to have new tones in there as well which could be separated out and used as solo instruments. So you're really getting 10 Scenes, but they're really it's almost like 10 Multis you know they used to call them Multis or Performances, where you have three or four patches layered. So there's quite a bit of stuff in there.

Alistair: 9:00

So that's interesting because just on Thursday I did a live stream for the iSax Academy. Somebody was asking me about doing, you know, the big gliss on the start of the Rhapsody in Blue with the clarinet.

Matt: 9:13

I love that. You really nailed that. Great job.

Alistair: 9:16

Yeah, and so you know I was telling them obviously how to set up the portamento and you know you've got those two controls like the the CC05 and the CC65, am I right? 65.

Matt: 9:29

Yep 65 is portamento switch and number 5 is the time.

Alistair: 9:34

Yeah, and so I took them through all of that kind of setup and then I said well, you know that's using the clarinet sound that's on board. I was using the AE-30. But of course I've got your sound packs on there as well and so I was able to demonstrate that. You know, if you go into it actually get stored into your user patches on there, and there you've got. Well, you've got at least three clarinets on there and there's some nice variation there. And as soon I think it was the clarinet, the second clarinet, one that you did, the classic clarinet two or something. Anyway, that's got a nice warm sound to it and so very easy just to switch out the stock sound into your sound and then you know you've got a whole variation on your clarinet sound as well.

Matt: 10:21

Yeah, absolutely, and there's already a few clarinets, I think, in the factory scenes as well. I'm really proud of the some of the bass clarinet sounds that are in those additional packs, so I would recommend people check those out. I love the sound of a bass clarinet. It's one of my favorite instrument sound timbers timbres all time.

Alistair: 10:58

And that's such a useful instrument because you know I can think of quite a lot of scenarios where I mean, you know you can have fun playing a bass clarinet, like in your own bedroom, right, but you know to be able to have that potentially in a little ensemble or something. You might have a wind band that's missing a bass clarinet, or there might be a part in a musical theater show or something, and they, those bass clarinets in particular, are, I think, very easy to put into an ensemble like that and I think people would struggle to know that they weren't a real instrument. Within an ensemble like that. I think you know they come across really well.

Matt: 11:40

Yeah, as far as blending in with an acoustic group, sometimes it's a good idea to turn off the reverb and the effects and just kind of have a dry sound coming out, because you know that's what the other instruments are doing too, and then let the room create the reverb so you blend in better with the acoustic instruments. And I also recommend having a speaker, preferably either under your seat or behind your head. If you can set it up that way, yeah, and so the sound is coming right from your position on the stage. That makes a big difference to it when you're trying to blend with acoustic instruments, I think.

Alistair: 12:30

So we both did. We've both done quite a few demos for that and you'll hear some of these little demos we did. We're probably going to include some of the little demos throughout this podcast. So you did yours first, Matt, because you did them as a wave demo, an audio demo on the Roland Cloud website, right? What's your approach to preparing a demo like that, Matt? I'd be interested to know how do you do yours and I'll tell you how I do mine.

Matt: 13:02

I know mine's a little different than yours. I know you're much more prepared. I just I generally just I guess I sort of play in the style that I was playing when I designed the sound. So I guess you're getting an idea of what I had intended when you hear those demos that I did. They're just audio demos, as you mentioned. I don't know, I just usually just start playing something in a certain style and I have to be careful not to play any licks from songs and things like that. You have to keep it very generic.

Alistair: 13:34

But then do you just press record on an audio recorder and just play and play until you get one that you're happy with. Is that how you do it?

Matt: 13:41

Yes, I just hit record and then I just cut it out and usually it's a complete piece of audio, start to finish. But it'll take several takes sometimes. Sometimes you can get it on the first try.

Alistair: 14:18

And do you sometimes find yourself having to kind of get a bit of new inspiration from somewhere or something? Because when I try and do it like that, it's easy to get in a bit of a rut with what you're playing right.

Matt: 14:32

Like everything's in the key of E flat. Yeah. Yeah, I get that way too. It's like wait a second. I better try a different key here. Yeah, that happens all the time. Yeah.

Alistair: 14:41

Yeah, so with mine I do tend to write them out, because when I'm doing the video versions I mean, one of the things is about that especially you know, Roland quite like there to be two different camera angles at least, and so if I'm playing and just trying to improvise something, I can end up chewing my way through quite a lot of gigabytes of data storage.

Alistair: 15:09

So it's, it's a little bit better for me. Anyway, I'll write them down and it gives me a little bit of a focus at you know, what I want to do with each sound and, like you just said, I'll very deliberately sometimes say right, whatever I'm doing, I'm going to be in the key of F or D or E, flat, or you know just something different to stop me doing the same lines in all the demos. And so I write them down. I even put articulation dynamics. You know I make a pretty full job of them, and then, when it comes to filming them, I pretty much can play them. Of course I'll do, I'll do several takes, but I'll pretty much know what I'm after with each one.

Matt: 15:51

Yeah, one of the dangers in doing these demos is that people will say oh, that it says classical clarinet.

Matt: 16:10

He's playing a classical type piece showing off that clarinet sound. But it it really doesn't have to be that. It could be a. That sound could be used for jazz or pop or whatever. So it's kind of yeah, I'd like people to realize that it's just a particular demo Doesn't mean you have to play in that style. Sure, by any means. In fact, that's the, that's the strength of a wind controller. It's so versatile and so expressive. The way you play it really determines most of the time how it can be used.

Alistair: 16:41

And that's why I sort of quite deliberately because I did my video demos after you'd done your audio demos I quite deliberately tried not to listen to yours at all because I didn't want to try and do something similar. You know, I just wanted to to be hopefully something completely different, to demonstrate exactly what you, what you said Great.

Matt: 17:03

Yeah, I love to hear that. It's a lot of fun to hear other people playing my my sound instruments. I always get a kick out of that.

Alistair: 17:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I love doing them. It's, it's a nice creative process and sometimes I'll I'll just, you know, a little bit of a melody will come to mind and I'll jot the next one down and and then I'll just decide on a, an hour or two. When I've got spare, I can just sit down, switch the cameras on, get the audio set up properly and and get recording them. So you know, it's, it's, it's a fairly time consuming thing. Even when you do have them written down, it's, there's still a lot, a lot of work involved.

Matt: 17:39

Well, you've done a cracking job, as they say over there.

Alistair: 17:44

Yeah, so, but they are, they are really great and they're brilliant to value, of course, because, well, the first three are free and then the others are like $10 or something.

Matt: 17:55

All right, so I believe. So $9.99 or $10. And that's, there's seven of those, and all 10 could be loaded into the Aerophone AE-20 or AE-30, no problem, they will fill one bank of scene plus two thirds of the another one, but there's still hundreds of slots available. Yes, so even with all 10 loaded, you'll still have plenty of spots for your own sounds.

Alistair: 18:19

Yeah. So how about we'll go on now and have a talk about the differences in the in the Aerophone range? We're just trying to help folks with that journey of deciding, perhaps, which instrument might be good, and of course, it doesn't have to be an Aerophone there's lots of other wind controllers. It's just that we we both know the Aerophones probably as well as anybody else does, so it's probably not a bad place to to to get that right information Now. We started off obviously more or less exactly the same time because we were involved very early on with the Aerophone range, which are we about eight years now.

Matt: 19:04

Matt, is it eight years? So the original model was the AE-10 and that came out in 2016. According to my, it looks like October 2016. So late, '16. So it's been about, yeah, seven and a half years, I guess, yeah.

Alistair: 19:20

And I I can remember, you know, in the early days with that instrument I believe we we only had like 40 sounds or 37 sounds or something, do you remember it was. I think that sounds about right. Yeah, yeah, it was fairly limited right at the very start and then they started to add some sounds to it. But you know, the Aerophone 10 was it had breath control and bite control. It had a full range of what? Seven, eight octaves, I believe. It had the option still of saxophone or electronic wind instrument fingering. Did it have brass fingering early on? I don't remember Matt.

Matt: 20:06

Yes, it did. Actually I'm looking at my, so I think that's right. When I kind of came into it at that point I wasn't in on it when they were developing it. I didn't do any of the sounds for it, but I did help develop a brass fingering. That was. It was transposed from the Nyle Steiner's system which had been around since essentially the late 1960s, but it uses both hands and it has a fourth valve that's in your left hand index finger lowers the pitch of fourth, just like it would on a four-valved euphonium or a four-valved piccolo, trumpet or flugelhorn or trigger on a trombone. So that, yeah, that was when I kind of came into it and they refined it as time went on. They added more sounds, they improved the operating system and the bite sensing and really it was. It a surprise surprise when that instrument out- out for me.

Alistair: 20:59

Well, yeah, I, I'd been contacted by somebody at Roland to say, you know, would I be interested in kind of giving it a try? The I guess it was a prototype at that point and you know I can remember early, early on, it wasn't that easy to, you know, make a decent kind of job of it, but it soon started to take shape. And then I was very fortunate, you know, because they actually asked me to do quite a lot of demonstrating around Europe. I think I probably did something like 10 or 12 European trips demonstrating the Aerophone to different countries out there, different kind of retailers that Roland had got set up and kind of Roland's own kind of conferences and things, and wow, it was quite an amazing opportunity. I mean, that was more traveling than I'd ever done in that short space of time.

Matt: 22:04

Wow, what a great experience.

Speaker 3: 22:05

Yeah, yeah.

Matt: 22:06

So how was the reception at that point from the people?

Alistair: 22:09

Well, really good, really good. You know people didn't really as we still find, not many people kind of knew what a wind synthesizer was at all. So there's always quite a nice kind of eye opener for them to say, wow, this is, this, is, this is a cool kind of new instrument. But yes, it was very well received. I use some internal sounds on those demos but I also used some of your sounds, Matt, on you know the ones you did for the ES2, I think, ES2. So that was on like Logic or MainS tage, yeah.

Matt: 22:48

Yes, an analog modeling type synth.

Alistair: 22:50

Yeah, I remember you doing that and it sounded great and it worked great as a controller. So you know that was the first iteration, but of course now that's been discontinued, am I right? Correct, I?

Matt: 23:03

I believe so, maybe a year or two ago. It's been a while now 2022, I think it went out of production.

Alistair: 23:09

Yeah, but you know it had its built-in speakers. It had its quarter inch out you could run. There was no Bluetooth on that one, but you could run out by a USB cable into a computer or, yeah, computer, and so you had a lot of flexibility. It worked very well as a controller. I think there were some limitations in the byte sensor in that first instrument, but things improved as they went on. They got up to about version three on the software and by that time it was getting a pretty nicely playable instrument.

Matt: 23:49

Yeah, it dramatically improved with the firmware. There were some major firmware upgrades Really did, and the byte sensing was something I actually did help them with and offered suggestions to get EWI type vibrato working with the right feel. So that was probably the hardest part was getting that vibrato sensor, the bite sensor, really working well and finally they got it going. But there were some hardware just the way it was designed hardware-wise. There's only so much you could do in software to get it to a certain level.

Alistair: 24:22

I mean, would that be worth just explaining to the listeners, just in case they didn't understand what the difference is between, say, a sax bite setup, because this applies to all of the earphones with the exception of the Mini, because the Mini doesn't have a bite sensor. So it might be worth just filling them in on what those differences are.

Matt: 24:46

In a nutshell, what do they call it? Sax style sensing, sax bite or something? Yeah, so that one is like a saxophone, where you can apply pressure to the reed and bend the note up or down, and hold it there, and then there's the E-wind.

Alistair: 25:04

I think they call it E-wind, Okay.

Matt: 25:06

So that type of sensing is a it does. It still responds to your jaw, but it automatically centers back to the center pitch. So as you wiggle your jaw you get a really nice vibrato that you can control the depth and the speed of. But if you were to bite and hold the reed tight, it'll come back to the center pitch, no matter where you're at in the pressure that you're applying to the reed. So it's just another way of doing it and some people prefer one, some people prefer the other.

Alistair: 25:35

Which potentially saves you the embarrassing thing of playing out of tune, right.

Matt: 25:39

That's right, that was. It's always in tune with the E-wind type senses, yes, whereas with the other one, with the sax sensing, you do have to kind of calibrate where your nominal pressure is and then center it and make that the center. It's almost like pulling the mouthpiece out a little bit and pushing it in on a saxophone. You're adjusting for where your center is, based on your preferred pressure on the reed?

Alistair: 26:05

Yes, and it can take quite a bit of setting up. And if anybody is lost on that, there's plenty of my stuff on YouTube, absolutely Highly recommended, where I've explained that because with a little bit of time and patience you can get that sax bite to work really, really well. But it does take a little bit of effort and a bit of experimentation. But the E-wind setting is brilliant and I still switch between the two sometimes. You know, it's just nice to be able to kind of relax with that E-wind bite setting and you just contrast it 100%. It's very responsive, it's very sensitive and it works great, you know. So it's nice we've got the options.

Matt: 26:49

Another thing I liked about the AE-10, was the joystick under the right hand thumb. That was a very useful feature.

Alistair: 26:56

I wish they'd kept that in the other models actually, because I thought that was great.

Matt: 27:01

Yeah, I had four directions to it up, down and side to side, and each of those directions, I think, could be programmed.

Alistair: 27:07

That's right, each one could be a different. Yeah, it's very powerful. That was great. It was great. So the next Aerophone, if we go, let's go in order then from the smallest to largest now that we've got on offer, because the order was kind of strange. It actually went AE-05 that came out next, then the mini right.

Matt: 27:33

Well, there was an AE-10G, which came out a year later, in 2017. Oh, a gray version color, yes. And then there was another one that was really kind of. You don't see too often. It was a red and black colored model that was, I was told, was made for the China market, right, and that was kind of. I actually have one of those. It really looks cool. It's red and black, it looks like a Ferrari, you know, really cool. But anyway, so there were a couple, three different colors of the AE-10 model and then, like you say, the AE-05, I believe, was next right.

Alistair: 28:05

I think that came out next. Yes, that would be 2018. Uh-huh, July of 2018. So shall we talk about the five. Next, what do you want?

Matt: 28:13

to do. Do you want to yeah?

Alistair: 28:14

Why don't you give us an overview? Well, the five yeah, the five was again. They came straight out with that graphite, gray or black color, didn't they? Because I think they did well with the Aerophone 10, the gray model was, I think, quite sought after Quite. You know, the white model was good, but I think a lot of people wanted the darker color, uh-huh. So now, this was a smaller instrument with a slightly more, a slightly more limited range of notes. The thumb keys on the back only had one octave up and one octave down. Um, but it was a nice compact instrument, I think, built in.

Alistair: 28:58

There are 11 sounds on the on the Aerophone Go. They call it the Aerophone Go. It's a little confusing. The Aerophone Go. It's also called an AE-05. But then, of course, sound wise, you've got the all the sounds that are on the app, because there's a specific app for the Aerophone Go, the Aerophone Go Plus app, which is absolutely free, and I believe, well, it started off at about 50 sounds. I think the list has been growing of those sounds and then they added also Bluetooth to this now. Now, this has got Bluetooth and it's actually got a very decent bite sensor on it. In fact, I believe it's now that became the default bite sensor and it works very, very well.

Matt: 29:46

Yes, it was completely redesigned the way it physically senses the read and because of that they were able to do even better sensing.

Matt: 29:54

And actually, the Aerophone AE-05 is a great controller If you're just looking for a controller. The built in 11 tones that are inside. There's four sax variations, a flute, clarinet, violin. They're okay, you know. They're okay for practicing. I wouldn't consider them professional in any way. No, it's a really good controller for a USB if you want to plug into a computer or a laptop and control via USB. There's no MIDI output on that instrument, it's all USB or Bluetooth as far as control.

Alistair: 30:25

But it has all the keys on it. There's all the saxophone fingering in there that you know you're not missing anything. And it's got its built-in speakers again, which I know we've. You know people have talked about this before. Now I wouldn't want to use those in performance. I mean, I have seen sometimes people you know play the Aerophone with a little speaker against a microphone or something. You know that's not the way it was designed to be used, so. But they are really useful if you're just kind of warming up or something, or maybe you're in a rehearsal room or you know, backstage or something.

Matt: 31:02

Oh, I agree, it's, it's. It is just nice to turn the switch on and play and not have to find an amp to plug into and a cable and then plug the amp in and so, yeah, I definitely agree with you, though None of the speakers in any of the Aerophones are really high fidelity by any means, but they're great. They're useful for practicing and checking things and stuff like that. Yeah Boy, the sound coming out of the audio lineouts is phenomenal. Big, big, huge difference. So I always encourage people to not judge the instruments by the speakers, because Absolutely Even the, even the headphone jack sounds tremendous.

Alistair: 31:40

The other thing about the O5 with the application. I think a lot of people don't realize that you can actually dig into some quite in depth settings on the application. You know, there's like a there's quite an in depth midi settings page on that application so you can go in and you can change some of the cc messages and things and it's got sort of different breath settings and things. You can do a small amount of that from the instrument itself but within the application there's actually quite a bit you can do and, as you said, Matt, i.

Matt: 32:18

It's actually makes a really good little portable, you know, a controller certainly if you want to plug it into something like an iPhone or an iPad or into your computer or something it's, it's really useful absolutely it's easier to go into a, a laptop or a desktop, but to get into it's a little more tricky and I I know you've covered you know details on how to do that as far as cabling and powering and there's a couple little things you kind of have to be aware of. But it can be done and it works very well. And I just mentioned also on the Aerophone Go, Aerophone the GO 5, AE-0 5 there a was also e AE-05 c model which came out in 2022 wa I guess. It was targeted at the Asian and Asian Chinese market. It had a pearl white body. It had more sounds in it too. Apparently I've never actually had one of those, so I don't know the details. I know it had some a second bank of 12 sounds that had some Asian instruments oh, okay did you know that?

Alistair: 33:22

I wasn't aware of that no, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt: 33:25

So, other than that, the color, the body color, and some additional sounds, but that isn't really, uh, generally available in the, I guess, the western world, as far as I know so next out was the mini right mini came out in 2019, so let's see, I think that is correct. That would be the next model, yep a AE-01, also known as and this was really okay.

Alistair: 33:52

So it's the smallest Ae rophone . Of course it has a breath controller but it does not have a bite controller and key wise i it's a little bit cut down key wise. There aren't any of the little finger keys or the palm keys on the like there are on the other Aerophones. . There is a little um little finger combination on the left hand side where you can either be a semitone up or semitone down from any note, um. But basically it's aimed as a well, obviously a very, very portable instrument and it's kind of more of a kind of electronic recorder, almost, would you agree yes, I do, I agree with that.

Matt: 34:38

Yeah, and it has six on board sounds which are saxophone, flute, clarinet, trumpet, violin and saw lead, which is kind of a synthy buzzy lead, and it has a mini, an app for ios iOS android Android, which allows some more sounds that you can control coming off of your, your mobile device, and again, you can use it as a controller, absolutely.

Alistair: 35:04

You can plug it into a laptop or anything if you want to. I have actually taken that thing away on holiday with me I did a a quick video um YouTube.

Matt: 35:13

If you search out my name, Matt Traum,, Roland brass fingering. I I did a demo of how the brass fingering works and all of the Aero phone models. Every one of them has a brass fingering option. We can talk about some of the other fingerings too, maybe today. Um, yeah, but they have a brass fingering option. It's based on the EVI fingering that, uh, Nyle u invented back back decades. Um, and I'm U nd of basically showing how that fingering works and it's on the most basic model and it can be done, applied to any of the other models as well so get this Matt.

Alistair: 35:46

I actually did a demo for Roland on the Mini in where else but Abbey Road Studios? Wow, can you believe it? I'm envious, wow, well, I don't know if I was envious. I mean, you know, there's one of these big kind of things where they were demonstrating I think the Fantom keyboard had just come out and stuff and I I was there, you know quite a big stage, and I was just on my little mini. I'd done this little demo track and it was a little bit tricky because I had to try and demonstrate. I think I did demonstrate all six sounds in one track and being able to change the sounds quickly wasn't so easy. But no, there I was. You know the Beatles and then Alistar Parnell on the Aero phone Mini.

Matt: 36:35

This is a special thing and you can't just walk into the studio you have to have a reason to be there, and that's awesome exactly.

Alistair: 36:41

Oh, it's a fantastic place. I'd never. I'd never been inside before. It's amazing, such history there.

Matt: 36:46

It's unbelievable absolutely not only the Beatles, but a lot of recordings that we all know oh, huge recording projects for orchestras and all sorts, absolutely yes so the the mini came out in 2019 and that had an initial price of around 300 dollars in the us here, and I think it's a little different now, maybe a little higher, but it was very basic and good for a beginner that maybe wants to explore what a wind controller is. Like you said, it has a. There's no bite sensor in the mouthpiece, although it does have a read. Well, let me take that back now. I think are they shipping with the conical mouthpiece now? Originally, I think they had a read mouthpiece and, yeah, it's more of a.

Alistair: 37:25

It's almost like a cone that you just kind of blow into, and I think that's what it's shipping with now the only thing I found difficult, coming from a saxophone player's point of view, those things like the side key b, flat side key c, you know, for me some of the chromatic fingering. I always had to kind of think twice about what I was doing on that because I just needed those few keys there and I know that lots of people can play without those side keys. But I particularly found that a little bit limiting. But it is great as a little very portable. You know you can stick that in a rucksack or something, go off and play. It's battery powered so you can play any anywhere anytime. Yeah, it's kind of nice to have that option, and indeed it does now.

Matt: 38:09

Nowadays it ships with the conical mouthpiece oh, okay, but because they used to ship it with the read and they literally didn't do anything. The read was there to for feel, yes, but it had no function yeah so yeah.

Matt: 38:21

Then the next model was the Aero phone Pro. The AE-30 came out in 2020, it was announced in December of 2020 and shipped in January of 2021, and this is the flagship pro model. This was a big step up right, completely new design. As far as synth engine, it basically has the top of the line Roland synthesizer the flagship synthesizer somewhat scaled back, but essentially this that synth is inside this instrument and it runs on six batteries it's amazing that they were able to do this and very powerful as far as programmability and and MIDI features and so, now we're on to what they call Zen ore.

Alistair: 39:04

Yes, this is this amazing synth engine that can pretty much replicate you know quite quite a lot of not only you know current sounds, but they can actually replicate quite a lot of vintage Roland sounds as well with the technology that they have, and then they also have the supernatural sounds in there as well. So I believe you know what are they, what are they looking at? There's something like is there something like 600 different sounds in there, or something? I mean, it's an unbelievable amount of sounds.

Matt: 39:40

Yes, it's over 300 factory sounds that it comes with and those are in permanent memory locations. But then there's room for 600 more of your own sounds or edits to the factory sounds that you can move into your User area so that, yeah, there's what is that? 12 times 50?

Alistair: 39:58

There's 12 banks of 50 that you can fill with your own edits and new sounds, and load in stuff like from Roland cloud, like we were just talking about earlier, those AEZ Tone packs . You can load those in, but you know there's also of course extensive effects in their Multi-effects and we're talking studio quality effects.

Matt: 40:23

These are not, yeah you know, ringing reverbs and things that sound horrible. These are really good sounding and there's multiple, multiple layers of effects to. It's not just one effects engine. It's pretty remarkable.

Alistair: 40:37

It has legacy MIDI out, so it's proper five pin MIDI out that you can plug into. You know anything with MIDI as well as having USB-C out which can take MIDI, but it can also do audio. If you're plugging it into a computer. You can't do audio out on the USB-C into something like an iPad, but you can do it into a computer.

Matt: 41:05

Yeah, where do we start so that the flagship a AE-30? It has all the like, like you say, the multiple synth engines in there, which can go anywhere from realistic layered sounds, solo sounds, to completely out Analog modeling, so you can do those EWI 4000 type sounds also out of it, as well as the realistic violin, trumpet, trombone, whatever you're looking to do, nice, a nice OLED to screen on there that you can see parameters, multiple fingering systems. There was something else I wanted to mention.

Alistair: 41:41

We've got the extra controllers, of course, because we've got the, the thumb pad, which is a sort of rubberized pad, a sort of pressure sensitive. Also the, thumb lever, and something that none of us knew about early on when the instrument first came out, it's got a motion sensor.

Matt: 41:59

Yep, and the motion sensor. I think we mentioned in the last podcast that you could it'll it'll sense the height of the instrument as you lift the instrument up and down, or if you rock the instrument to the left or to the right. Those motions can be assigned to various things, like panning the sound. I think I I use that technique a little bit in some of the Section sounds that I did for the rolling cloud Whereas if you, if you tilt the horn to the right, it'll, it'll pan a little bit to the right, if you have a pair of headphones on, you can hear the effect.

Matt: 42:28

It's really kind of neat, it's it's subtle, but it's almost like you're moving the instrument in the room. You know as you're playing it and you say, like you say, the pressure sensor for the right-hand thumb is, it's pressure sensitive, so the harder you push, you can send more of a maybe a growl sound or Whatever, whatever you want to assign to that. And then there's the lever on the right-hand thumb also, which is a pitch bend wheel up and down, similar to the Yamaha WX 5, and WX 7 had that as well and in in terms of the synth power I mean it.

Alistair: 43:04

It takes a little bit of understanding, but Roland call each of their sounds on the Aerophone a Scene. Now, a Scene is actually a kind of container, if you like, for other smaller parts of the sound. So, as far as I'm you correct me if I'm wrong with this, Matt, I'll try and explain it as quickly and easily as I can a scene can actually have up to four parts inside it, and you can. You can layer, you know, for up to four different sounds if you want to. Now, within each of those tones that are in there, each tone can be made up of up to four partials. I believe I'm using the right terminology. So the way that goes is effectively, you could play a sound that would have 16 different sounds happening. That gives you an idea of how powerful the synth engine is on t S the A AE-30 and the 20.

Matt: 44:17

Yeah, they have very similar synth engines. We'll get into the AE-20 a minute but it's incredibly sophisticated a lot to get your head around. You don't have to do that if you don't want to. There's a whole lot of there's over 300 factory sounds in there. You just turn a dial and call up the sound and you can see the name right there on a nice display. So you're not guessing, you're not seeing a two-digit number and wondering is that my trumpet that my? You know when you're, when gig, you're out playing a Gig, gig the last thing you want to do chart have charttry refer to a Chart is s chart try to figure out what sounds gonna be next. Yeah, and you know. Imagine performing, for people are watching in concert you're in a Broadway type. You know theater production or something, and exactly need to know Exactly what exactly you're doing. So that display is every and everyhaving me it's worth Every penny every having that and the other thing, of course, which the 30 has.

Alistair: 45:10

This was a more recent update on a firmware update. It's it's got the ability basically to load samples into Its memory space as well. It's a little bit awkward because at the moment the procedure really requires you to have a Fantom Keyboard or know somebody that does have a phantom keyboard. I'm lucky enough to have a Fantom keyboard as well and you know you can even do something like load an audio loop into one of your Scenes. So I've got I've got sounds on my Aerophone where I can trigger an audio loop, which can be absolutely anything that I want. It could be human voice, a whole backing track, it could be whatever you like, and still you could have another sound at the same time, so that if you wanted to play something over the top of that audio sample, well yeah, you could do that as well. It's, it's really phenomenal.

Matt: 46:09

Yeah, that's in AE-30 only. The AE -20 is a little scaled back from that, and that's so. That's one of the things that the 20 does not have is some supernatural models I believe, not in the 20.

Alistair: 46:25

Yes, that's right. So the 20. When did the 20 come out, Matt?

Matt: 46:28

Do you know?

Alistair: 46:30

2022 January so yeah, and you know I did a video on online, on on YouTube, on this and I I actually think that for quite a lot of people the 20 is a really nice sweet spot because it does, it's got the same sound engine. It can't do the sampling, but it more or less can do pretty much everything else. I think it lacks the thumb pad and it doesn't have the , MIDI the legacy midi, five pin midi in and out. It doesn't have that and the motion sensor also is not in there. And the motion sensor, but the most important, you know, the sound engine, the controls, the fingering. It's a slightly lighter, slightly smaller instrument with the same bite sensor and breath sensor. I mean I think that offers really good value for money?

Matt: 47:24

Oh, absolutely. And you can still control external synths through USB, either into a laptop or desktop or an iPhone. There's ways to do that through USB even though you don't have , the five pin legacy .

Alistair: 47:39

It still has USB-C out so you know you can connect to your computer or your iPad or whatever you want to do. And yeah, like you said earlier, it's just got slightly fewer Supernatural sounds Again. I think for the majority of people there's still going to be a huge amount of choice in there and you can still load in those Roland Cloud soundpacks .

Matt: 48:04

At the moment. The AE-20 is the latest model from Roland and it's also $550 less than the flagship.

Alistair: 48:13

AE-30. Yeah, so you've got to think quite carefully. Are you going to want that extra for the AE-30? I mean, some people always want the flagship right, and so I can understand. Some people would really like the five out If they want to plug straight into a synthesizer or something that really does save a few headaches.

Matt: 48:34

That's right. If you wanted to use the AE-20 with the synthesizer, it can be done. What you need is a USB host device. It's a little box that converts USB into a and has the five pin output and that actually acts. That little host device acts like a computer, essentially, and it sort of tricks the Aerophone into thinking it's connected to a computer and then on the other end of that box has your five pin midi . And there you go. You're able to hook up to your old synth modules, just like you would with older wind controllers that had the midi output .

Alistair: 49:11

So I think I'm right in saying that, in terms of a company offering a wide range of choice, I don't think at the moment any of the companies offering that choice that Roland are doing. Am I right, that's?

Matt: 49:28

right, Akai has the EWI series and they EWI Solo as current and the EWI5000 actually those are the only two models from Akai at moment. I believe they discontinued

Alistair: 49:44

So absolutely, it's a great set of instruments, but you do need to do your homework. If you're thinking about getting into an Aerophone, there's plenty of stuff online. You can find plenty of information on Matt's website as well, because Matt can supply those. I think you can supply any of those to people in the US, is that right?

Matt: 50:04

Oh, absolutely any model to any US customer here, yep.

Alistair: 50:07

And I don't want to give you extra work, Matt, but I'm pretty sure that you're quite open to a conversation if people want to have a little bit of advice which one they should choose or which one might suit them. I think you're open to that is that right.

Matt: 50:19

Of course I want somebody to get what they really want and be happy. So I'm happy to find out what your needs are and try to get you the right instrument. And of course, I set them up and upgrade the firmware and test everything so you can be assured that everything's going to work out of the box and you'll have a good experience from day one.

Alistair: 50:39

So we said earlier that we now have this thing called a Speak Pipe and in fact, interestingly, our very first Speak Pipe is a question about drums and particularly about how we used the drums in our theme tune that you hear at the beginning and end of all of our podcasts. So let's hear what the question is here.

Speaker 3: 51:07

Hi guys, my name is Jake from Seattle, Washington, and first of all I just wanted to congratulate you guys on the new podcast. I really like your work. My question was about maybe going in a little more in depth about the composition of the theme. Specifically, I was wondering about the drums and percussion on the theme, and I know that it was all recorded and played using the Aerophone, and I just wondered if you guys had a system for how to memorize the fingerings for each of the drums, since you know percussion's not really a lot of percussion's not within the 12 tone western system. So I just kind of wondered how or if you have a system for learning to work with percussion using a wind controller, and also about how you guys maybe recorded the track, what kind of software you used and how you guys collaborated together. I'd be interested to learn. So thank you Great questions.

Alistair: 52:25

This is exactly why we wanted to do the podcast right, because we want people to ask us questions and hopefully we'll do our best to answer. So you actually recorded the drums. Do you want to go first on that and then I'll add whatever afterwards?

Matt: 52:41

Yeah. So I got some tracks from you and I just dragged them into Logic, apple Logic, as of audio files. And then as far as the drums, they basically I believe they sort of follow the general MIDI drum format which has been around for since the early 1980s, I think, or mid-80s. Actually Roland, I think, started that whole drum format with the Sound Canvas. That sort of became the de facto standard for where drums are on a keyboard. So anyway, when I was doing the percussion I think I laid down I did them sort of part by part.

Matt: 53:20

I didn't do the whole drum track at once. The first thing I did was a ride cymbal and he just kind of played that as a drummer would play with his hand all the way through the track. Ride cymbal, just kind of get the feel. And then I added a side kick or not a side kick, a side stick snare drum, kind of on the beat, and that was a separate track. And then a third track I did a kick drum, just kind of following where the bass was and adding some punches there. And then the congas there was a conga part on there.

Matt: 53:54

You kind of like I say I just do them separately, I don't try to do the whole drum track at once. I think that would be impossible to try to do so. Then on the drum, on the conga track, I figured out where the where was the mute conga here and the open high conga here and the low conga here, and just I had I think maybe four conga sounds in my head and I knew the fingerings was whatever C, sharp, d, e and I just kind of played between those four chromatic notes on the wind controller and all these tracks. I was tonguing and all the drums respond to velocity. So the harder you tongued, the harder the hit is on the drum. So I think about four tracks of drums on that.

Alistair: 54:37

And so, Jake, maybe to answer your question about how we might learn where those sounds are. So just to put you in the picture, there are something like well, there are roughly kind of 90 different percussion sounds on each one of the percussion scenes on the AE-20 or AE-30 the thing I would suggest you do if you go on the Roland website, you can download the the tone list there which goes through all of the different sounds. But then there's also a drum kit key assign list and I started off with this many years ago, as Matt says, because I had a Roland Sound Canvas. And I suggest what you could do. If you do have a MIDI keyboard, it might be better for you to to play around on the MIDI keyboard and find out which notes trigger which instrument.

Alistair: 55:41

I don't think there's any way you can edit the position of those individual sounds, but, for instance, pretty much all of the kits will start in the same way that I always take a reference of C, one which varies between keyboard a little bit sometimes, but on my standard 88 note keyboard that is not the lowest C on my keyboard, it's the next one up actually, and that's what starts to get me a bass drum and then from there it's pretty much laid out in each kit in the same way. You, you've got a bass drum on the C. Make sure you're not transposed it's the bass drum is on a C, then you'll usually have a couple more semi tones where you've got either a variation of the kick drum and then you've got a snare usually on like the D or E note. You can sometimes have a cross stick on there as well. Then the next notes, F, g, a and B are usually tomtoms and the, the black notes there, the, where the F sharp, g sharp, a sharp would be there, usually your hi hats.

Alistair: 56:54

Now, that's a very kind of general setup to begin with. That's where most things start off in in the general MIDI. After that there's lots and lots of different instruments and you know I think most of us will probably do this we end up kind of playing a chromatic scale until we find the one we want and then we use it. Is that the way you do it, Matt?

Matt: 57:15

That's right. Like I say with the congas, I had to find out where those notes are. It's a D, a, d sharp and an E, and all I do is think about those three notes and then I record that conga track and move my fingers and try to do something that sounds like a conga somebody playing congas might sound. And then I'll move on to the next one. Here's my ride cymbals and there might be a couple ride cymbals. There's a little variations. There's one on D sharp and I think there's one on F above it, and you could play those two together, varying between the two as you're playing the track, and you'll get a little variation in there.

Matt: 57:49

It sounds more realistic but it helps to narrow it down and just separate it. Sometimes you can do the kick and the snare together, because they generally don't play on the same time, so you can go back and forth and get a nice feel with that. And then oftentimes if you're playing a hi-hat, you get the F sharp. Like you say, f sharp, g sharp, a sharp. Those three notes give you the closed, the middle and then the open hi-hat sounds, and you just work on those three notes and don't do anything else. And if you fiddle with that for a while, you can get a nice sounding hi-hat track.

Alistair: 58:24

So, Jake, I don't think anybody remembers where all of those instruments are. We just start off with the basic few. So for me it's C, f sharp is the closed hi-hat and D is the snare. So you could actually play C F sharp, d, f sharp C, f sharp, d, f sharp C, and you'll get a basic kind of rock rhythm going there. That might be a good place to start and then you can start getting some funky sounds out of your drum kit. But it's fun to do, but it takes practice.

Matt: 58:56

It's fun and it's a whole other type of playing. You're not playing a scale or anything like that, so it's another way of playing a wind controller. You're actually just triggering single sounds on a note. So yeah, you're not thinking scales at that point.

Alistair: 59:10

Great. Well, I think we can probably wrap this one up, Matt. It's been another interesting episode. And again, everybody, if you could make sure you follow us, you subscribe to the podcast. Please spread the word if you can, If you want to spread it with your friends online or Facebook, or whatever you do, that would be very much appreciated. Now, before we go, we like to give you something to go away and listen to Matt. Do you want to go on yours first?

Matt: 59:41

Sure, another one I like is my buddy, Judd Miller, j-u-d-d Miller, and he's a great guy, one of the top EVI players in Hollywood. He did a whole bunch of soundtrack work and album work back in the day and still doing some work out there, and he's an EVI player, so he's a brass musician and the track I like of his it's a live recording that was done outside at a high school luncheon I believe, and he was just playing with the trio and it's not. I think it's recorded on a little mobile phone, not a great recording or some distortion in it, but the musicality of it is phenomenal and it's Jud Miller is playing Jimmy Webb's Wichita Lineman, the little classic song, beautiful song, and if you want to find it on YouTube, you can search out Jud Miller playing the EVI Agoura High School. That's A-G-O-U-R-A High School Munch Madness, m-u-n-c-h Madness, and we'll have a link up on the podcast website as well so you can just click it, but that's a beautiful piece.

Alistair: 1:00:59

It really is. It inspired me to do my own version. I did a version of that on my YouTube channel, probably eight or ten years ago now, playing the Akai EVI, but it's just such an inspiration to hear that track.

Matt: 1:01:11

For sure. Check out Alistair's version too, because he's equally as beautiful on that. Great job on that.

Alistair: 1:01:22

So for me, I'm going with a Yellow Jackets recording. I think you mentioned this. Actually not long ago we were having a chat. They did this album with the WDR Big Band. Now I'm going to embarrass myself. The West-Deutsche Rundfunk, I think that's something like I'm not even going to try.

Alistair: 1:01:46

The WDR Big Band. If you type in Yellow Jackets and WDR Big Band either to Spotify or on YouTube, you'll find it there. There's lots of great tracks on there. But check out the Red Sea If any of you follow the Yellow Jackets. Of course it's the great Bob Mintzer playing the Akai EWI on that, and there is a version that the Yellow Jackets did of the Red Sea. But this is a particular arrangement that I believe Bob did himself. That includes the Big Band as well. It's fantastic. Anything of Bob Mintzer is going to be great, of course.

Matt: 1:02:27

Is that on his EWI 4000s? Yes, because I just want to put a little plug in here. If you're hearing Bob Mintzer playing an EWI 4000s, you are hearing the sound bank that I created f or the EWI4000 . That's available to anybody. It's volume one for the EWI 4000, all the top players are playing it, using it. Bob's been using it the entire time. Anything you hear of him playing EWI 4000 in the last I don't know 20 years maybe would be that sound, those sounds that I created. Again, they're available to anyone. So you can sound exactly like Bob Mintzer. Brilliant. If you get the sound bank and load it in. And that's just for the EWI 4000. It doesn't load into any other wind controller- and that's available through Patchman Music.

Alistair: 1:03:10

Fantastic. Well, thanks again for your time, Matt and everybody listening. We've got plenty of great stuff coming up, so please stay tuned and we'll see you in the next one.

Matt: 1:03:21

More to come. Thanks again for listening everybody. Bye-bye.