Wind Synth Fingering Options

Matt Traum: 0:02

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

Alistair Parnell: 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 Traum: 0:18

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

Alistair Parnell: 0:26

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

Matt Traum: 0:32

and patchmanmusic. com.

Alistair Parnell: 0:36

Welcome everybody to podcast number three, and the main course of discussion in this one is going to be fingering options. We've got a lot of other things to discuss as well, and well, we've got used to this talking about new stuff. We've been up to Matt in this last week. Have you anything been happening new for you in the wind synth world?

Matt Traum: 1:07

Yeah, I have a little bit of news. Patchman Music is now going to be a dealer for the Yamaha YDS series, which is kind of cool. So there's some folks that have been asking about it over the years and I've been trying, but it's considered one of their band instruments. We had to jump through some hoops and Patchman Music will be carrying the YDS 150 and YDS 120 Yamaha instruments, which are very interesting, built in sounds, nice key mechanism. I think you said you played one recently or you tried it?

Alistair Parnell: 1:38

I picked one up. I was in the London store, sax. co. uk, just a week ago and, yeah, it was the first time I've actually picked one up. I didn't play it, but I did like the feel of it. One thing that really stuck out to me I really like the shape of their little like a joystick type thing, isn't it? Oh, the joystick piece. Yes, that was nice. That was a nice shape, you know, and I've been impressed with some of the demos online. Actually, some of the saxophone sounds I thought were pretty good. It's like all of these wind synths, you know, there's lots of options for people to look at what's going to suit their particular needs, right?

Matt Traum: 2:18

Yeah, I think so, but it's really nice for practicing, I guess because they tried. I think the idea behind it is to make it feel like a saxophone, at least under the fingers, and the mouthpiece has a read or a synthetic read, but it doesn't function. It's just a breath sensor in there. There's no bite sensor on these two instruments, but as far as the keys go, I'm not a sax player, I'm a trumpet player, but they feel pretty authentic to me, sure, and there's several, quite a few sounds in there, mostly geared towards saxophone type sounds. There's a harmonica and a couple other things, but mostly that type of instrument for practicing.

Alistair Parnell: 2:53

I think that's the idea, and you have those in already, or are they coming in, or what's happening?

Matt Traum: 2:57

This week they should be here. So I'll be updating the website and then all the details and prices and everything will be up there. So, yeah, anybody who's looking that's in the US, I'd be happy to get you set up with one of those if that's what you're looking for. Yeah, great, great.

Alistair Parnell: 3:10

And what's new with you, Alistair? Well, my latest acquisition is a nice new pair of in-ear monitors. Oh, you know, these are the things that you have to actually go to a place and have your ears like filled with this gunk to get them like measured out properly and the properly kind of shaped ear implant kind of thing. And so the company I went with was Ultimate Ears, which I think are pretty well known. They're actually made in the US and so, yeah, I went over to Birmingham a couple of weeks ago, had them kind of had my ears filled with this stuff and then they send them molds off and it was a two week turnaround. And, yeah, I'm liking them actually because, you know, obviously they're not like a big headphone that goes over your ears, but so they're pretty kind of neat. They're not kind of incredibly visible, but they sound good and they stay in the right place and I've actually been enjoying playing the Aerophone with them as well.

Alistair Parnell: 4:15

It's got a pretty nice kind of you know range in the in the audio range. It goes down pretty low and the high range is good as well. So it's great. And one thing about these I don't know if you've ever tried them, but you actually don't need the volume up very loud because they're sort of sealed, as it were. You can actually have the volume pretty low. So I've been turning down the volume on all the kind of mixes and settings and stuff that I use, because I just don't need them up that loud. So I think that's got to be a good thing for longevity of hearing, right?

Matt Traum: 4:49

I think so. Yeah, and then you can get some feedback from the like. If you're playing out live, what would you use then to hear the band around you? Would it be a little microphone, or does it bleed through enough? Yeah.

Alistair Parnell: 5:02

Or ideally, you'd have everybody going through the same desk. But yes, you can set up like a stage mic. That is one thing. You can feel a little bit, Isolated, isolated from an audience sound, but they're pretty easy just to pop out between numbers and things if you, if you want to say something live, as it were.

Matt Traum: 5:20

So but yeah, well, the fact that they're molded those are custom molded to your ears yeah, means means they're going to be comfortable. Yeah, I had some your custom, your, ear plugs made, you know, for when I was playing out alive with louder bands, and it was very useful and and they just fit so well, you don't, you forget, they're there, yeah yeah. But yeah, the biggest I guess he biggest issue with that type of thing is feeling isolated, you know, from you feel like you're not.

Alistair Parnell: 5:46

It certainly takes a little while to get used to them on a gig. I've used some other type on on a gig and, yeah, at first it can feel pretty weird but you do get used to it. And I use them on a little gig for Valentine's night actually and it is kind of nice. You feel that you can play perhaps a little bit more intimately, you don't feel like you need to push so hard and you know, as long as you've set up the the front of house PA properly to begin with, you do. Yeah, it's, it's kind of nice. So I'm enjoying it so far, but I'm still testing them out.

Matt Traum: 6:23

Yeah, yeah, the details really come through on those, so you're hearing every little it, which helps and always helped me a lot when I had a good monitor by me and I could hear myself. Definitely, you know, if you can barely hear yourself when you're playing a wind controller, you're going to overblow and and it's not going to be any fun. So it really makes a big difference when you hear all the nuances that you're doing.

Alistair Parnell: 6:42

Yeah. So, matt, the we mentioned in the last podcast, while I said about doing some of those demos on the on the AE- 10 and someone was asking me about that as well you know, and I mentioned that I use some of your sound bank, the ES2. Now of course, that has a very kind of analog type sound to it, doesn't it, that sound bank? I mean, can you, can you tell us a little bit more about that sound bank? I know you did it a little while ago, but it's, it's a great bank of sounds.

Matt Traum: 7:13

Oh, thanks. The ES2 is a soft synth that comes with Apple's Logic package and also Apple's MainS tage package, and so I thought well, geez, you know you can buy MainS tage. I think it's $29. And it's a It's like a no brainer, you know, for anybody who has a Mac, it's only Mac, it's not PC, unfortunately. But you can get Main stage through Apple for $29. You download it, install it. They give you all their soft synths.

Matt Traum: 7:41

In addition to the MainS tage package, which is a basically a building block, is a set of tools that you can set up your custom screen on your like for, maybe for live performance. In other words, I built one for myself that I use for gigs and I and I have my, my synths in there, and then you can build layers and you can save those layers and call them a different name. You can have a meter on the screen showing the breath level and your pitch bend level so you can check your make sure your wind controllers sending data to the computer properly and you're getting proper levels. You can even have audio plugins for compressors and EQs. If you're in a room and you need to add a little reverb or or eq, everything can be done within main stage.

Alistair Parnell: 8:23

It's exactly what I use as well.

Matt Traum: 8:25

Yeah, yeah, it's really powerful and it's a host also it's a, it's a plugin host and it not only hosts all the Apple plugins, but you know SWAM instruments or you know the Korg soft sense that we talked about. Any any, you know, standardized plugins will work with it and you can layer those. You can have an ES2 layered with a Korg M1 sound. That's sample based and the ES2 is analog based emulation so you can layer those two and then save that as a patch Anyway.

Matt Traum: 8:55

So I had a lot of people asking you know I really love your EWI 4000 sounds, those real fat analog sounds that come out of it. Have you done anything for a soft synth like that? And I found that the Apple ES2 synth was pretty close in quality and very nice, smooth sound, really fat, and they're all analog emulations, very expressive. They're designed to respond to breath, so breath controller players can use them as well, with the keyboard or when controller players, of course, and they kind of are along the lines of a and AKAI EWI 4000 like those just fuzzy, fat analog type sounds. I'll just play a little short clip of it here so people can hear what I'm talking about. Great, so you can hear. They're very fat and expressive and have a full dynamic range.

Alistair Parnell: 10:32

So I'd like to kind of feature that bank this this month and this podcast, and let people know about it a little bit Absolutely and you know there's quite a lot of contrast in there. I mean, everyone has their favorite sounds, right. But you know there's a tremendous variation in those sounds and they all are really really responsive over the whole dynamic range and a lot of variation in the attack and the way that you use the dynamic range. And of course, all that vibrato stuff if you want to use your, your, your lip for the vibrato control, all the pitch bend stuff. That all works natively right out the box. You haven't got to do anything extra to set that all up, it just works.

Matt Traum: 11:12

And the other cool thing you have to remember with plugins is you can you can layer multiple instances of that plugin. So you have six ES2 banks sounds up there with six different sounds all panned left to right. There's processors built into MainS tage and Logic where you can send one note in and have a MIDI, a set of MIDI notes, come out that's in a chord, in a certain key. You know intelligent harmony, like it's built into the similar notes built into the Aerophone AE- 20 and AE- 30. So yeah, it's just pretty powerful, fantastic.

Alistair Parnell: 12:22

So, we are talking about fingering options, of which there are many. Right, I mean, we are kind of concentrating mostly on the Aerophone, but I think pretty much every wind controller on the market has got some kind of options for for fingerings, and there's an awful lot to go into here. Now you, you actually said about the, the YDS. I mean that certainly has some fingering options, does it? It's got an app, yeah it's.

Matt Traum: 12:56

It's basically saxophone fingering. There's no other option to choose right, but there's a built in editor app that you can use on your iPhone or your mobile device and the editor app allows you to. I guess pretty much every note can be any fingering, so you can. You can have a custom fingering also in there. So if you don't want to use the saxophone, or if you want to modify the saxophone fingering and have your custom altissimo fingerings or what I did as a trumpet player, I actually went in and mapped every chromatic note into the, the EVI fingering that I'm familiar with. So I'm sitting there playing a YDS 150 and like a trumpet player is really strange, but it does work. So it's completely configurable as far as that goes. If you really want to dig into it. Yeah, so that's, it's really fun and, like you say, most most modern day wind controllers have at least two or more fingering options to choose from. The earlier ones only had just the bass. Yeah, so I actually worked on a chart today and it took longer than I thought a couple hours.

Matt Traum: 14:04

I went through most of the major models over the years and kind of mapped out what were available on them in terms of fingering systems. And it's pretty interesting If you start with the old, let's AKAI EWI 1000 or EVI 1000, those were AKAI's first models. Those just had the EWI fingering on the one and the EVI one was the brass and there was no option. And also for the EWI 3020 and EWI 3000, those were just EWI just yes. And then when you get into the 4000 model I think was the next one, yeah, 4000 s. Then they started with the alternate, because that was a digital instrument, uh huh. So you know the previous ones were analog and they were hardwired. The circuitry inside the controller was a key, was literally wired to an IC input pin and you couldn't change that unless you went in and made jumper. You know wires and things. So those were analog. But as soon as you get into digital, then, like with EWI 4000 s, anything goes. Yeah.

Matt Traum: 15:06

And so they have stock EWI fingering, and then there's a sax fingering, there's a flute fingering, oboe, and then the two brass type fingerings. There's one that has the standard roller direction, emulating the way an EVI worked, and then there's another one where it has the rollers in reverse, so that as you go up, you know it, the pitch goes down as you go up through the rollers.

Alistair Parnell: 15:30

Which one did you use of those? Which one is the standard?

Matt Traum: 15:34

one. Oh, I use the.. At first I was using the reversed one because technically that's actually mimicking the, the direction at your thumb moves on an EVI instrument, the one with the canister, Right, but after a while I went to the other one and I've been on the just a plain old EVI fingering version now for many, many years and I just it works great. Yeah.

Matt Traum: 15:56

Makes it a little easier too. When I was when I was jumping back and forth between EWI and EVI Maybe I was testing an instrument that I was working on or setting it up, before I shipped it out to a customer, having that roller flipped, you know, the direction of the rollers really was messing me up. So I decided just to settle on the standard way, and that's what I'm using.

Alistair Parnell: 16:16

And so I mean basically from that point onward, certainly with the AKAIs, and I think I'm right in saying that the majority of instruments now will include a saxophone fingering. That seems to be pretty standard, right, Looks like it. So the 4000, 5000 certainly had saxophone fingering.

Matt Traum: 16:45

And that's in contrast the EWI the fingering, which is kind of like a saxophone, but it's not quite. Yeah, so they're very similar, but there's distinct differences and you can certainly address that better than I can.

Alistair Parnell: 16:57

Yeah.

Matt Traum: 16:58

We were talking about that a little bit this week when we were preparing to show the differences between EWI fingering and saxophone fingering. Do you want to go into that a little bit?

Alistair Parnell: 17:07

Yeah. So I mean, obviously all saxophone players are familiar with the saxophone fingering and with a few exceptions you should find that most wind controllers, certainly the Aerophone, will be pretty standard saxophone fingerings. Occasionally I have had a few people say oh well, you know it doesn't do this way of fingering. What often happens on a saxophone is you can actually take a few shortcuts and sometimes sort of leave a finger or fingers down as you move from one note to the next note, and some people get used to that. As a rule and of course this is purely subjective, me coming from a more classical background we tend to do that a little unless we are trying to really fine tune a certain note. So sort of leaving a little finger down or whatever is something that we'd probably be careful of because it can affect the tuning. But you know, for a lot of players that are playing quickly or playing jazz stuff, they would rather have the convenience of leaving fingering down. So you can find occasionally a few little glitches.

Alistair Parnell: 18:22

Now the thing about the EWI fingering is it's I kind of use a hybrid myself, but we could perhaps describe it as a kind of additive fingering. So there are, there are fingering keys in the EWI system, particularly say the little finger keys, where, for instance, you could finger a D major scale and then you could finger a D major scale again but leave the E flat little finger down, which basically raises everything by a semitone. So technically you could place a D major scale but you could leave the little finger down, the E flat key, and it would turn it into an E flat major scale.

Matt Traum: 19:05

It's almost like a transpose button, in a way.

Alistair Parnell: 19:07

Kind of yeah, so there are several keys that will do that in the EWI fingering, some of them half a tone, some of them a whole tone and they are accumulative. So you could actually have one little finger down to take it up a semitone and another little finger down to take it up another semitone. So effectively, for instance, you could play I don't know F major scale and it would come out sounding like G major scale because you're kind of transposing up two semitones. So it's a very, very clever system and if you know how to use it and if you get your head around it, it can really save you a lot of headaches and it can make your technique, you know, much smoother. So it's very, very clever. Personally I kind of use a little bit of both on my Aerophone, because you know the Aerophone has well, it has two things actually. It has 36, so we're talking about the AE-20, AE-30. It has 36 user fingerings. So you can do a fingering combination, go in the menu and kind of say, right, this is the fingering combination I wanna use, and when I press these keys I want this note to come out so you can set that. And the other thing it does is a kind of key function and this might be a good time if we have a listen. I do, on my course, the Advanced Aerophone Course that I use at iSax Academy. I do a section on setting up some of these user fingerings and this little clip that you're about to hear now is a clip from one of my lessons on that and of course it's a video lesson, but I think this one makes sense as audio as well and I'll just. This just talks you through how you might use the key function on an Aerophone. Great, let's listen.

Alistair Parnell: 21:08

Now the second set of options, if you like, that we've got is what we call key function. Now, this allows us to use actually any key on the Aerophone and tell it that we'd like it to change any note we're playing by a semitone up or a tone up or a semitone down or a tone down. Now, that might seem a bit foreign to you at first as a regular saxophone player. Why would we want to do that? But as the EWI players found out 30, 40 years ago, it opens up tremendous possibilities with your fingerings. We were just on user fingering a moment ago and if I click one further to the right, I'm on key function.

Alistair Parnell: 21:53

What we do next is we press the key that we'd like to use for our change of note. If you like, now I'm going to suggest that you try using side key B flat, the lowest side key on the right hand side. And if I press just that key then in the display I can see it says key function and it says in brackets TA. That's the side key B flat. We're going to press menu. Next, using the arrow keys, I'm going to select semitone up and we'll press menu again to save that setting.

Alistair Parnell: 22:39

So what does that enable us to do? Well, not only can I play A to B flat in the normal way, but I can play a semitone up from any note. So, for instance, isn't it tricky to play G to G sharp quickly? Well, that's using a little finger. Well, I can just use my side key B flat now. So from any note that I play, I know my side key B flat is always going to take me up a semitone.

Alistair Parnell: 23:13

It's worth checking out the E wind fingerings on the parameter guide for some more ideas. For instance, one of the ones that's very often used is that the E flat key, the little finger key, also gets set as a semitone up key. Again, it can be a bit strange at first, but when you get used to it it can make certain passages really fly by much more easily. When you've got that option to transpose briefly either a semitone up or a semitone down, give it a try, be patient with it. You need to practice to get used to it, but it can work really well when you've got it cracked. Yeah, so that's taken from the iSax Academy Advanced Aerophone course. Now, Matt, we were talking about this a little earlier as well and you were talking about those differences between the kind of saxophone key work and the EWI key work as well. Do you want to explain that?

Matt Traum: 24:18

Yes, I mean you touched a little bit on it when you were saying additive, when you.

Matt Traum: 24:22

The EWI system is generally considered an additive type system where each key has a value, where it might subtract two half steps or a half step or add a whole step or whatever, and then the value of all those keys, those numbers just are added together and it outputs that midi note, whatever the sum is of those numbers. Whereas with a sax fingering system, the way I would understand it is, sax fingering is more logical, where it's actually emulating the physical linkages that are in a key mechanism on an actual saxophone. Whereas that is, if you have your left hand down on certain keys, then the right hand, it just won't affect certain things and you can do anything you want with the right hand. So it's more of a I call it a logical type fingering system where there's more if, then If this is that and this is that, then do this, whereas EWI, for the most part, is almost completely additive. So there's a little more intelligence to the sax fingering system, not that it's better or worse, it's just there's more ifs and thens about it, so to speak.

Alistair Parnell: 25:34

But for anybody listening, if you're thinking about all those alternatives, like, say, on a saxophone, we have probably four different ways of playing a B flat note. They are all on the Aerophone and I think you'll find them all present on the other wind synthesizers as well. So all the regular fingerings are there. If you have certain fingerings for altissimo notes on the saxophone, again, the Aerophone does know quite a lot of those, but you can always choose your fingering and save it as a kind of user fingering Anyway. So there's a lot of flexibility. And, Matt, I'm just looking further through your document here. I mean they've all been very busy, haven't they, with trying to emulate the various fingerings. Did you try any of the others? I mean, flute is one that I'm not that familiar with.

Matt Traum: 26:36

The flute fingering on various wind controllers has really befuddled me. I've tried it, I had it selected and I think we can go. We'll sort of skim over the different models that are out there so people can kind of know what's available. But I think when I had a flute fingering selected on a Yamaha WX5, that's one of the options and it's just really odd and I don't know flute fingering at all but the octave keys don't work the way you think they would and you have to have your pinky down. Is that correct On the right hand?

Alistair Parnell: 27:09

it has to be down all the time. That's right. The right hand pinky is pretty much down all the time, except for a D note, I think.

Matt Traum: 27:16

Right. So if you don't have that pinky down, it's almost like the keys aren't working. It doesn't work. It seems like it's broken but it isn't so. It's just a lack of my understanding of it. Maybe we could just let's just finish off the Akai models. There's only a couple more. So the next one, I think, was EWI USB model. That was the one that just plugs into a USB port on a computer. That one had EWI fingering, saxophone fingering, flute, oboe, and then the two EVI fingerings, also with the reverse rollers and the regular direction rollers. Then they came to the EWI 5000, looks like it's exactly the same, isn't it? Yeah? And then the EWI solo. Yeah, those are the same. So that pretty much clears up all the Akai models up to this point.

Matt Traum: 28:06

And maybe we can go to the Yamaha, because they don't have a whole lot as far as that goes. The original Yamaha EW-20 was also called the Windjammer. It was a sort of a student model that had two fingerings available. There was saxophone and recorder, and I guess would you say recorder is more. Well, it's a fairly simple fingering system, right? Just write down the body of the instrument.

Alistair Parnell: 28:30

Yeah, it's weird. I never actually played the recorder at school, so I'm not that familiar with recorder fingering.

Matt Traum: 28:37

but yeah, it's a good one to have. It's pretty simple. And then the WX7 came out. That just has the WX fingering, which is more or less based on saxophone. WX11 was pretty much the same as well. Then the WX5 was their latest official wind controller model. That had four fingering systems.

Matt Traum: 28:58

There was saxophone A, B and C versions and then flute that we had just mentioned. Saxophone A basically the same as saxophone fingering, except that the fingering remains the same in all octaves. It says here, and it's pretty easy to learn because of that. Saxophone B is similar to saxophone A but with the additional trill key functions to facilitate rapid passages. It says it's ideal for players who are more experienced with the WX11, which came earlier. And then saxophone C is kind of interesting. This is the only one I know of in any model that does this.

Matt Traum: 29:36

There were certain combinations that you would, if you had saxophone C, selected certain combinations of keys where it might be like an alternate way to finger a high F or something, and if you hit that alternate version of the fingering it would send out a couple MIDI messages with that alternate fingering.

Matt Traum: 29:56

One would be a pitch bend and then the other one was a MIDI CC number 74, which is called brightness in the MIDI spec and so a combination of those two. If you were playing a sampler, let's say, with that wind controller, maybe you have a sample of a high saxophone on a high F what it did was it would, I think it sent a different MIDI note also. So if you're fingering an F, it might send an F sharp, but pitch bend it down a half step. Yes, I'm not sure exactly the spec on it, I have to review it again. So it would pitch it down a half step and then add a little bit of this or subtract some of this brightness controller, and so it would give you the same note but it would be a different timbre, even though you're playing an electronic instrument. I thought that was very clever.

Alistair Parnell: 30:40

So this is something that an acoustic saxophone actually does, Matt. I mean I can show you. I hope I don't kind of override the volume here. Let me just get my sax.

Alistair Parnell: 30:52

So here on my alto sax. If I play, in this case, an A, and then if I put all my right hand fingers down, so I'm actually missing out a key because I haven't got my ring finger down on the left hand. But what you'll hear is it's kind of the same note, but slightly. It's actually slightly sharper, which is weird because I'm putting fingers down, but it actually brightens the pitch slightly and changes the timbre very slightly. So this is the effect that the Yamaha system was trying to kind of imitate. You hear that Mm-hmm, so it's got that kind of slight change in pitch. And on the alto well, on any saxophone there are many fingerings where you can do that. Sometimes we call it like double density on a saxophone.

Matt Traum: 31:44

but I've even heard players do three notes Ba-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, you know, almost like a, and it's really a cool effect with a real soulful, expressive sound exactly. Can you do that? Give us an example of three notes, maybe in the same pitch?

Alistair Parnell: 31:58

Yeah, yeah, so be like.

Matt Traum: 32:10

And that's just fingering changes. You're not changing your lips or breath or anything, no, that's right, that's all fingering.

Matt Traum: 32:15

Yeah, that's a real clever thing. That would be a cool thing that maybe I'm sure the Aerophone could do it with maybe some tweaks to the firmware. But Great thing. Yeah, like an alternate fingering type of button or something. I even thought that it would be cool to just have one. You could almost have one button assigned. What is the key? That on your left hand on the Aerophone that's up by the index finger knuckle, is that the high F, the one on front, the rectangular shape.

Alistair Parnell: 32:45

Yeah, we call that front F on the saxophone.

Matt Traum: 32:49

Front F key. Okay, yeah, so if you could assign that, maybe, or something. So you just hit that and you get those timbre changes without changing, because it's really hard as a brass player we often do alternate fingerings to kind of reiterate the same note, like on an E on the top space of a staff. You'll play an open E, then you can play it with the third valve, or you can play it with the first and second valve, or you can play it with all three valves, so there's four ways to play that note. Sure, sure, and you can just reiterate it, and it's a really cool effect. But to be able to reiterate a note on a wind controller is pretty hard to do without this thing. That we're talking about this technique, yeah, but that would be great yeah.

Matt Traum: 33:32

Well then we can maybe mention the YDS 120 and the YDS 150. Those have the saxophone fingering, and then there's a full set of custom notes that you can apply as well. So that pretty much covers Yamaha and Akai. Do you want to go to some of the others first before we get to Roland, or do you want to?

Alistair Parnell: 33:55

Yeah, let's do that. So the Soft wind was saxophone fingering. That's a Synthophone. Yeah, yeah, a Synthophone. Yeah, a Synthophone. And that had, you know, programmable personal altissimo fingerings as well. But you had to have some kind of chip update, by the looks of it.

Matt Traum: 34:11

Yeah, so Martin Hurni, the inventor, you know, he wrote the code and he burns the chips and everything that goes inside the instrument. And if you had a set of altissimo that you would like, you would write them down on a little chart and send it to him and he would custom program the chip, send you the chip back from Switzerland and then you'd have your own personal fingering system inside the Synthophone. That's amazing, very cool, very cool. And that was an early, I would almost say. Maybe that may have been the first wind controller to offer Right.

Alistair Parnell: 34:42

Personal fingerings. It often gets overlooked. You know, doesn't it the Synthophone? Because I mean that has been out a long time.

Matt Traum: 34:49

Yeah, I think we mentioned it last episode. You know, I really need to look it up. When he started it? I'm sure it was before MIDI even came out, so early 80s, maybe sooner, older than that even. But yeah, that's possibly the first wind controller that ever had customizable fingering that I can think of.

Matt Traum: 35:10

Short of actually tweaking a circuit like a Nyle Steiner you know, with some of his early Steiner phones and things you could run a jumper cable between a couple keys and you could actually trick an EWI to finger like an EVI. It was pretty cool. He had a little article that he wrote for the little monthly newsletter that went out back in the late 1980s when the original EWI 1000, EVI 1000. After that there were no EVI options. So Nyle figured out a way to take the newest, the newer model EWI, which was the EWI 3020 controller, which was a woodwind type controller and with two wires, maybe three. Even from the outside of the instrument you could actually literally just attach wires. You could turn it into an EVI that a brass player could play that knew the EVI fingering. It was very, very clever of Nyle.

Alistair Parnell: 36:10

So then, EMEO the EMEO instrument, of course, is is. It really looks very similar to a Synthophone, but it's it's. It's more of a kind of like a soprano type length or a straight instrument, very much geared towards saxophone fingering, and that's, I think, the only saxophone fingering, that's the only one it does right.

Matt Traum: 36:34

I think so. Yeah, and again, that's. That's another one of those things. It's kind of like the Yamaha YDS series. There's no bite sensor in the mouthpiece, just a breath sensor. So it's more. I think it's more of a practice instrument, but of course it could be used to control USB soft synths if you, if you wanted to get into that.

Alistair Parnell: 36:52

And I think we've both independently seen a little bit of a reference that EMEO might at some point produce a digital clarinet, but it seems to have surfaced as far back as 2021. I saw a very, very small clip of it at the NAMM show on one of the NAMM show videos from from this year, so I don't know whether that's something that's been bubbling in the background, but it would certainly be interesting to see what the digital clarinet does, if and when that appears.

Matt Traum: 37:26

Yeah, the video I saw was on YouTube from 2021 and it said coming soon. So I don't know what. I don't know what the definition of a soon is. I guess more than three years possibly, but I hope it. You know, it'd be nice to see what what they can do with the clarinet type wind controller. So what I saw on YouTube was pretty darn impressive.

Alistair Parnell: 37:49

And then Rob Koo. Is that the right pronunciation? I don't actually, believe so.

Matt Traum: 37:52

Rob Koo yeah, this is a Chinese company that's. Now they're onto their second model. They had the original R1, which came out several years ago Not terribly common here in the in the US I think but I think it can be gotten through various websites. That model had saxophone fingering and it had some unusual. Well, it had saxophone and then it had an EVI type fingering based off of the Steiner system. It had a whistle like a I guess tin whistle is what they're referring to, perhaps Like a penny whistle type thing. Yeah, and Halusi, h-u-l-u-s-i. Halusi, do you know what that is? Yeah, I.

Alistair Parnell: 38:33

I don't know what that is.

Matt Traum: 38:34

No, I guess it's some oriental type wind instrument but yeah, yeah, Chinese and DIZI, D-I-Z-I, so I guess those are some sort of traditional I don't know traditional type acoustic wind instrument. Sure, and I think their second model, which they just released recently called Clari Mini, has pretty much the same fingerings also, and both of those instruments I guess you can do your custom fingerings also through their Jam Koo app that you can download. And then we can.

Matt Traum: 39:12

we can move on the Aodyo Sylphyo. I hope I pronounced that right. It's a French company. Yes, and I actually helped them a little bit with some of the development of their firmware way back when they were starting, and one of the things I helped with was a fingering system for EVI. So the Sylphyo. You know I forgot to look up exactly what they're offering. I know they have like EWI slash sax fingering, you know, as a default, but they also have a brass fingering.

Alistair Parnell: 39:38

Yeah, it doesn't have a kind of little finger and side keys. Does it the Sylphyo?

Matt Traum: 39:43

Yeah. Yeah, it's really limited. I think there's maybe maybe the three fingers on each hand and then maybe one. Is that correct? One pinky key something like that.

Alistair Parnell: 39:54

I mean it's, it's, I've seen people play that and make a really, really good job of it. It has a motion sensor, I think.

Matt Traum: 40:03

Yeah, see, that was the only thing they don't. Again, they don't have a bite sensor on that, unless they've updated it. But the one I have doesn't have a bite sensor. So we were working with them with a, with their their motion sensor. That's built into it. So we were using the. You kind of move the instrument physically, just move it back and forth, and you can get a vibrato, kind of like a, an EWI vibrato, where it auto centers into the middle, and so it's a very pretty vibrato. And then there is a, there's a, a strip under the right hand thumb that you can use to for position sensing. You can do bending that way. It's an interesting instrument and they have their own sound modules too that they've developed with some physical modeling. So that, yeah, that's, that's an option.

Alistair Parnell: 40:54

Now. So, Berglund, now, I mean, the, these look amazing instruments. I've never actually played one. I think you have. Oh yeah.

Matt Traum: 41:01

Yeah, I have. I actually am a US dealer for them too, so I I get them in slowly but sort of steadily and I have quite a few people waiting to get there, get their their units. But they have the new NuRAD, which is the it's spelled N-U-R-A-D, which is the woodwind type instrument that has keys that are side by side, so your left hand and your right hand are the same distance from your, from your mouth, as you play it. And then they have the NuEVI, n-u-e-v-i, which is the brass type wind controller. The NuRAD has the EWI fingering. It has an EWI X fingering, which means extended. I guess that's a way to extend without having to change octaves so much, right, and you can kind of extend the range of within one octave position. It has sax emulation fingering.

Matt Traum: 41:52

The NuRAD actually has an EVI fingering and the EVI reverse roller fingering also. So even though it kind of looks like a woodwind, it can be played like the brass. That's interesting. And then the NuEVI is the one that's more like a, has the canister in the left hand, like the traditional EVI that Nyle Steiner invented.

Matt Traum: 42:10

That has the EVI fingering, the reverse roller EVI fingering, a mode called trumpet fingering and a mode called horn fingering, and I guess with those you're using the, the octave rollers, as a mode selector. Kind of like a bugle you play a, just play a, a valve-less bugle. You can play multiple notes on it, just based on your, your lip tension, and you can jump through the overtone series. And so with those with those modes, I think it's experimental, but the idea is that you would move the octaves and they wouldn't actually be octaves, and there would be maybe a. It would be an octave for the first octave, then the next roller would be a fifth, and then the next one would be a fourth, up to the next C, and then then it would be a major third, then a minor third, then a minor third, then a minor third, then a minor third, then a minor second.

Matt Traum: 42:57

So you'd get the maybe two octaves of a, like a bugle would have, Sure Sure. So that can be interesting to try if you're a brass player. Yeah, Can be a little interesting to learn, but I suppose it's just as just as interesting as learning the EVI fingering with rollers. So it's, it's. It's interesting to see these things happening with digital instruments. Since they're digital, you can experiment.

Alistair Parnell: 43:20

Well, it's just a yeah. It's an incredible, incredibly versatile platform, isn't it? Because you haven't got to bother with the laws of acoustics? There's all sorts of combinations that you can do, and, and you know, I mean we've got one more left, haven't we? The Artin oise Re. corder.

Matt Traum: 43:46

Artinoise Re. corder. Yeah, it's basically a recorder and it's actually an acoustic recorder that'll actually make sound on its own if you don't plug it into anything. That's it, which is cool, you know. It has the air column in there and the holes in the keys and you could play it like a recorder with the with what do you call that when you blow over it at the venturi, and so it has that. But then you can go into electronic mode also and it'll sense the keys that you're pressing and the breath pressure.

Matt Traum: 44:16

And I think there's also a motion sensor in that instrument and that's it's an interesting they have. It's like a Baroque recorder slash, German hybrid fingering they call it. There's also a custom mode where you can set your you know, like you can with some of the other ones where you set how you want to finger an E flat or an F sharp. You can completely configure it that way. And there's also an interesting mode where this is the only wind controller I know of that does this. Where it's a, it's like a keyboard, so it's using the, the keys on the top of the instrument as almost, almost like a keyboard player where you can press down three notes at once and play a chord, yeah, or play a drum sound on. You know the B key might be a. You know your snare drum and your your C. You know your first finger, index finger, might be the drum for the kick drum. Whatever it's, it's using it as a polyphonic sensor as well. So that's. That's very interesting.

Alistair Parnell: 45:09

It is really interesting how people are kind of coming up with all these ideas, not only emulating things like the recorder and the saxophone, but you know, obviously there's there's a tremendous amount you can do with with some imagination. About the extra fingerings and I mean you know that EWI fingering the EWI fingering, going back to that, I mean that's been like 40, 50 years right.

Matt Traum: 45:33

Oh yeah, about 50 years, I think. The EWI fingerings it's, it's fascinating, it's all like I say, it's all additive in that system when Nyle designed those instruments. You have one metal sensor there, that's, there's a wire going to it and it goes into a chip and that chip converts it to a on or off and it goes into a summer inside and just figures out the, the number, the note number, and yeah, if you want to modify that, you physically have to go in and rewire it, Whereas with digital it's just numbers and you just change the code and you can experiment and develop new fingering systems pretty easily.

Alistair Parnell: 46:18

So the Roland, the Roland offerings, you know, starting at the AE-01, I mean that that kind of comes across perhaps more of a recorder type instrument. So it makes sense, of course. That has a recorder fingering and it has a trumpet fingering and you can store like 10 different alternative fingerings of your own. You have to do that via the app. Then onto the 05. We have got saxophone fingering on that because we've got the side keys, the palm keys, front F key and so on. So does a recorder fingering, e-wind and trumpet fingering.

Alistair Parnell: 46:59

And the thing that's perhaps unique about the Roland instruments because the 05, the 10, the 20 and the 30, also have this thing where you can play a whole chromatic series of notes with just left hand or right hand. And I think the idea was with this, you know, if there was perhaps some reason, maybe somebody had a disability or something in one hand, that would not stop you playing the entire range of the instrument, you know, with just one hand. I've tried it out. It's certainly not easy for me to do it, but it does have the ability to just be played with either the left hand or just the right hand.

Matt Traum: 47:49

I think that's a beautiful thing.

Alistair Parnell: 47:51

Absolutely.

Matt Traum: 47:52

Why not? You know, if it's possible, why not do it? And there's probably even more you could do along those lines. To make it easier, maybe you could have your octave selected by the height of the motion sensor in the Roland the 30. The 30 has that. So instead of having to use the left hand for octaves, that could be something that could be explored as well. But being able to play with one arm and one hand, that's just a beautiful thing, absolutely yeah, I don't know.

Alistair Parnell: 48:20

Do any other wind controllers have that? Well, not that I know of the AE-10 that had, well, two different types of sax fingerings. That was kind of emulating like on a baritone sax. So some of the Aerophones do this, where they give you some options with the octave range and the different saxophone fingerings, where, if you want to have it just have one octave key working like a regular saxophone, you can just play it with one octave key. If you want to emulate like on a baritone sax, your thumb can drop down effectively to a lower octave key. But that's just for the low A on a baritone sax. That's how that works. Or you can then go further and go into the wider octave ranges of you know, four, five, six different octaves using the full octave range. So that's something again that I think is unique to the Roland instruments and the Roland instrument. The AE-20 and the 30 have also got flute and clarinet fingering.

Alistair Parnell: 49:29

I have tried the clarinet fingering. If anybody's listening that kind of is familiar with clarinet fingering. The way that works is that the first octave key on the 20 and the 30, well, that is like your thumb hole on the clarinet. So at the back of the clarinet you have an open hole and then you have what the clarinetists call a register key rather than an octave key, because the clarinet moves up by a 12th rather than an octave. So the way they have it working is you have to play in the lower register.

Alistair Parnell: 50:06

In the clarinet fingering you have to press the first octave key down for that to work. That will take you up to F, which is the F written in the lowest space, and then to get G you have to release that first octave key and then they've kind of made the awkward ones, what we call the throat notes on the clarinet. That's the G sharp, the A and the B flat. They work in a very similar way to a regular clarinet and then you have to press effectively two octave keys to get up into the upper register. That is like pressing the thumb hole on the back and pressing that register key.

Alistair Parnell: 50:44

So it's a bit convoluted but it does work and I have tried it and it's weird. I have a kind of funny thing with clarinet fingering because if I'm playing clarinet piece on a wind synth, still to this day, I kind of default back to clarinet fingering, which is really strange. So it actually helps me if I'm going to play something, a clarinet piece of music. Particularly on a clarinet sound, I actually prefer to use the clarinet fingering. Even on a wind synth, it just puts me back into that mode of clarinet playing. It's pretty useful to have those options, that's interesting.

Matt Traum: 51:28

Yeah. Yeah, I know there were a lot of clarinet players that were asking for clarinet fingering, so it's nice that Roland listened and developed something there. Yeah, that's really impressive. I think the AE-20 and AE-30 have the most. I'm just looking through our chart here that we made. They have eight fingering systems that you can choose from. In addition to all the, you know your custom one that you can put in too. So yeah, I would say that has the most options. Just to give Roland fair time here, we could go through and say kind of list what each one has.

Matt Traum: 52:01

So the AE1 was the smallest, least expensive model that has recorder fingering and then trumpet brass, evi fingering, which I helped develop based on Steiner's brass fingering system, and then you can store 10 of your own alternative setups for notes. So 10 notes basically, it's not 10 full systems, it's 10, 10,. Think of it as alternate fingerings, okay. And then the AE-05 has sax fingering, recorder fingering, e-wind, which is like an EWI, trumpet, which is like the EVI, the left hand only fingering, the right hand only fingering, and the 10 additional alternative fingerings set. The AE-10 has two sax fingerings. I'll ask you about that in a second. I'm curious what the two differences are on those. So two sax fingerings recorder fingering E-Wind trumpet, and then left and right, so that one has one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. That's pretty impressive for the AE10. And then the AE20 and 30 have sax recorder E-Wind, which is EWI brass trumpet, left-hand only, right-hand only flute, clarinet and then 36 fingering alternative fingering settings that you can record into the instrument as a global.

Alistair Parnell: 53:21

And that key function thing that we talked about from the iSax Academy that we explained earlier. Yeah, the thing about the sax one and the sax two on the AE10, they gave the option there that I can't remember which way around it was. I think the sax two fingering had a pretty extensive library of fingerings, what we call harmonic fingerings or altissimo fingerings on a saxophone. So that gets pretty weird because there's some very strange combinations that we use to assist us getting those high notes on a saxophone. I think pretty much anyone will tell you on a saxophone getting those altissimo fingerings it's kind of like 90% the way you play it and 10% the fingering that you use. But they actually had quite an extensive library of altissimo fingerings built into that. So anybody playing a saxophone that was used to coming up with those altissimo fingerings they were kind of wired into their brains. They could use that and those altissimo fingerings would produce the high notes that they were used to. And the sax one was just standard kind of alto sax or many saxophone fingering.

Matt Traum: 54:46

I'd like to also maybe mention some of the options for brass players, if I could, as a brass player. We mentioned the Akai EVI 1000 which came out in 1987. That was the first midi wind controller, commercial wind controller, although before that, in 1980, Nyle Steiner worked with a company in Italy called Crumar, pretty well known, and he licensed I guess he licensed his EVI design to them and they made the Crumar EVI, which was a 100% analog wind controller. It had a little we called it a shoebox synth in there and then the horn would go inside the box and it was a one oscillator. Beautiful sounding, just absolutely beautiful, fat sounding analog synth with a beautiful filter, still one of my favorite EVIs to play of all time. Yes, yes, and so that had the canister, but in that case the canister was actually like a TV tuner switch with little clicks. You know you turn the canister, it would click, click, click, click. I think I remember seeing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. It had six positions for your six octaves. And then on the canister there was a switch on there for the index finger which lowered the pitch of fourth to give you that the full range. It split the octave in half, basically, yeah, so if you're fingering a C and you hit that switch on the left hand, it'll go down to a G, yes, and you finger down from either one of those notes then from there. So anyway, we had that. So Akai came out with EVI 1000.

Matt Traum: 56:16

Yamaha had a really interesting instrument called the EZ-TP. EZ-TP yeah, I've never heard of that. Yeah, it's kind of unusual. I think it was only released in Japan. I have a couple of them here. It's fascinating. It kind of looks like a trumpet. It's really cool, black. It has three moving valves with little lights on the valve. So it has a guide system. It'll play a couple built-in songs that you can play along with and it shows you which valve to push. When it's time to push it, you push it down.

Matt Traum: 56:47

If you're learning how to play trumpet. They had some really cool MIDI tracks that you could play and then you could load in your own MIDI files if you wanted. Built-in general MIDI synth in it and then a set of sounds. And the interesting thing about it was there was a speaker on the bell pretty nice speaker, maybe four inches. It sounded pretty good.

Matt Traum: 57:06

And in the mouthpiece there was a little microphone and you actually hummed into the mouthpiece to select the mode that you would be playing in, unlike the EVI where you'd select it with your hand, yes, shifting octaves and half octaves.

Matt Traum: 57:21

You actually would hum almost like a bugle player again, where your fingering is C but you can play a series of 10 notes with the same fingering, based on the overtone series or the harmonics of a trumpet. The advantage of that is that the fingerings were exactly like a trumpet. So if you were singing, let's say, an E the same E I was telling you about that had four alternate fingerings the space, the upper space on the staff you could actually play any of those four fingerings. You open one and two, just three, or one and two and three, and all of those would play the E. So you can do alternate fingerings on the EZ-TP Fascinating, and it was exactly like a trumpet. So it wasn't like an EVI where every octave is the same. The EZ-TP actually emulated an actual trumpet fingering, which is very interesting, very clever, but on the downside of it it was a little difficult to play and most people can't sing more than maybe two octaves. Very well.

Alistair Parnell: 58:24

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Traum: 58:26

You know. And so the other problem was you'd have bleed in if you were performing in a group. You'd have sound coming into the microphone there Interfering with what you're trying to tell it to do and that could mess up the note that came out right.

Matt Traum: 58:40

Yeah, and it's also hard to hear yourself singing when there's music around you, sure, sure. So there was a lot of negatives to it. But there were some modes on there where you could have the trumpet fingering, another one where you could have it just track chromatically your voice without any fingering, so it was just kind of like running your finger up and down the scale of a keyboard. There was another one where it wouldn't even separate the notes, it would be just a long glissando like a theremin. Right, you know, there's the glide, fascinating. Yeah. Yeah, another instrument they had that I helped develop with a guy named Steve Marshall, over in Sydney, Australia, with this artist over there, James Morrison, who's a phenomenal musician, plays almost every instrument. It's called the MDT, the Morrison Digital Trumpet.

Matt Traum: 59:27

I have heard of that, yes, and it's really a great instrument as well and it has moving valves. It's not no longer in production. Actually, none of these EVIs are no longer in production. They've been out for many years, so you'd have to find a used one somewhere. But that was. It almost looked like a flattened trumpet, like a. You know, you ran over it with the steamroller but I had a display on it and moving valves and sensors for the bending and it actually used the trumpet mouthpiece just to sense the breath level.

Matt Traum: 59:54

Yeah, but a great instrument. And there's a currently one instrument that's available for trumpet players on the market, other than the Bergland instrument called the Tilt, and it's a brass style instrument where you blow into it and I believe you tilt the instrument left or right to select the octaves. Okay, and there's a fourth valve on it, similar to an EVI. I believe that's how it's working. I don't haven't actually had one yet, but it's similar to an EVI, but the octaves are selected through tilting the instrument side to side, almost rotating it in your mouth. So those are some of the options for brass, in addition to just selecting the octaves and then selecting a brass fingering on one of the commercial units that are out there.

Alistair Parnell: 1:00:40

It's incredible, isn't it Just how much time and effort has gone into this world of wind controllers and all of those options. I mean, when we talk about that, we've gone through so many options there. It's a fascinating world of controllers and all of these different types of fingerings. It really is fascinating that people have spent so long developing all of these different systems and you can see a lot of advantages in a lot of different fingering systems and there's so much choice. Right, it's amazing.

Matt Traum: 1:01:19

You know, I guess you could almost think of it as when they were developing instruments 200 years ago when they were, they would try everything. You know, they had these odd-looking trumpets and when the saxophone came out they were trying all kinds of different shapes and keys and key mechanisms, and it's almost like, you know, everybody's trying and eventually maybe the one that is best is going to win out, you know, or the top few that are best. So maybe we're in a period now where things are just being experimented and kind of things are being worked out in some ways.

Alistair Parnell: 1:01:52

Fascinating, fascinating. So I think we've I think we covered all the fingering stuff. I mean there's a lot in there, but it is quite fascinating, right?

Matt Traum: 1:02:00

It really is. We'll see what the future holds and maybe one of our episodes. We can do something. We can ask people for what they would like to see in their dream wind controller and we can talk about.

Alistair Parnell: 1:02:11

Yeah, yeah, we did say that. Okay. So let's go on to our question that we've had. This comes from Ron Kinders and he says firstly, thanks for your great podcast. Thank you, Ron, for listening and joining in. Ron is asking about now, of course, us Brits, we call it the lever. I know you say lever Matt, don't you? So he's talking about the lip bend, the little sensor that's under the reed on the Aerophone, and he says you know, it's pretty similar to the Yamaha models. And he's sort of saying you know, did. Did Yamaha and Roland do the same thing? Where did that originate from? You know, Matt, you're probably a better person to answer that. Do you know anything about the history of that lever?

Matt Traum: 1:03:15

Well, I don't know the the inside scoop and the legal terms and all that stuff or if there were any, but all I can say is from what I see and the original Lyricon had a very similar setup with the lever lever that came out of the instrument and rode the surface of the reed, inside the mouthpiece, to detect bend, the lip pressure, bite pressure. So really the Lyricon was the first, as far as I can see. Right, there may have been some other experimentations. It's very interesting to go back and you can do patent searches for for anything and you can. You can read all about these things.

Matt Traum: 1:03:52

Oh, million things have been tried that never come to market. So who knows who was really the first? But I would say the Lyricon, in my opinion, may, may have been the first as far as that type of reed sensing. And then the Yamaha you know came after that and I'm sure they were aware, you know, of other models that were out there and whatever you know. They developed their own system, which is a similar thing. And then of course Roland has their the Aerophone, which is similar also.

Alistair Parnell: 1:04:20

Yeah, and Ron also mentions about the fact that the two latest offerings from Yamaha don't have that lever, which is interesting.

Matt Traum: 1:04:30

They don't have anything, it's just a hole that you blow into. So yes, it's interesting.

Alistair Parnell: 1:04:34

They've they've dropped. That would be nice if they bought that back at some point.

Matt Traum: 1:04:39

Yeah, yeah, I'd like to see that too. I until that happens. You know that's. It's really kind of limiting as far as expression, although they do have the joystick that we had mentioned about, yes, previously, under the right hand thumb and it's, it works very well. You can introduce vibrato and bending that way. Yeah. So it's it's functional so that's good.

Alistair Parnell: 1:04:59

So, Ron, I hope that answers your question. So before we finish this one, we like to do a recommendation for something the listeners can go away and listen to what's yours.

Matt Traum: 1:05:22

This time, Matt, I was watching this old classic video of Nyle Steiner performing with an orchestra, out front with Maurice Jarre. Yeah, he's, he's conducting it. Right, he's conducting it. He wrote it. Yeah, his piece is called Concerto for EVI from 1997. It's the title is Nyle Steiner and Maurice Jarre Concerto for EVI 1997. And you can check it out.

Matt Traum: 1:05:50

And Nyle's up there talk about guts, gutsy. You know, he's got his rig up there, a lot of its hand wired by himself and he's playing EVI and he goes through I don't know, maybe 20 or 30 sounds in the course of this piece and he's playing. There's some parts where he has pre programmed sequences where he's moving just his first finger. If you look closely you'll see up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, you know, and those are, those are the quarter notes or the half notes Really cool or yeah, or the eighth notes of the sequence and that's he's syncing that to the performance. There's other parts where he's playing percussion instruments and then he gives a little demonstration to before the piece starts. And of course Maurice Jarre is a world famous movie composer that Nile worked with on multiple movie soundtracks. So that's going to be my pick for the month and I think anybody's going to be impressed by that. So would you come up with this this month?

Alistair Parnell: 1:06:44

So you know it's. It's kind of slowly dawning on me, some of the things and I know we've talked about this before with some of the film music that's around you know, sometimes you, you know a track or you know something really well and maybe you didn't realize that there was a, a Wind synth involved. You know, I have to admit, going back a few years now, so we're like 1988, I was into kind of Christopher Cross, right, oh yeah, great stuff and loved his stuff. You know that Sailing track and all of that. So he did another album called Back of My Mind, and I remember hearing what I thought had to be some kind of Wind synth in there. But it's fairly early on, 88, right, and I had to do a little bit of digging. But I found out and this guy is on a tremendous amount of tracks Tom Scott is playing the Lyricon on a track called Alibi.

Alistair Parnell: 1:07:45

It's a lovely track. The solo is pretty simple but it is absolutely recognizable as a Wind synth when you, when you realize it, you just think, yeah, that could not have been played on a keyboard and it's just a track that I've returned to many, many times. So that's Christopher Cross, Alibi. The album is called Back of my Mind Again with with both of these. We'll leave a link below. Something else actually, Matt, you put me onto this because Tom Scott has his own podcast, right?

Matt Traum: 1:08:21

Yes, it's a great podcast. It's not so much about wind controllers In fact it really isn't but it's musicians and even actors and producers and things, composers that he talks to, because he knows everybody. I would say you know, it's been said that Tom Scott is the most recorded saxophone player ever. With all the studio work that he's done, it's unbelievable and Blues.

Alistair Parnell: 1:08:43

Brothers and its endless amount of stuff. And do you know? I mean he even played on Billie Jean, Michael Jackson.

Matt Traum: 1:08:51

Yep, that one lick, that goes. You know that part and there's another part in there too. But the entire world knows that piece and they've heard a lyric on it. They just don't know it.

Alistair Parnell: 1:09:00

Absolutely that's. That's the kind of bit from the Billie Jean. It's something like that right.

Matt Traum: 1:09:17

That's great. Yeah, Tom actually has an Instagram. It's like a little 30 second clip that he posted I believe it was on Instagram and he's, he's, he plays that lick and at the end he says that's right, it really was me you know, or something like that.

Alistair Parnell: 1:09:30

Yeah, that's it, that's it Incredible.

Matt Traum: 1:09:33

But yeah, I mean, you know, billions of people have heard that lick, absolutely yeah. I have to say one more thing too. Maybe you don't know this. You know the Captain and Tennille song. "Do it to me one more time.

Alistair Parnell: 1:09:44

Oh yeah, nice.

Matt Traum: 1:09:45

Pretty ballad. Yeah, that little root. There's a solo in the middle and that's Tom Scott playing Lyricon. Also Check it out, it's beautiful.

Alistair Parnell: 1:09:55

Great. So once again, Matt, thank you for your time. This is really fun to do. It's been great. Yeah, just to mention our next podcast, we're going to be talking about emulating instrumental sounds, so if anyone has any questions on that they'd like us to answer, we've got the Speak- pipe in the link below and you can email us, because we have our own email link as well in the description below. So please get in touch with us with any questions. We'll be doing our best to explain how you can best do emulations of acoustic instruments and we'll look into all those Swam instruments and some of Matt's sounds that he's done for the Roland Aerophone as well. So there's a tremendous amount there to dig into. But for now we will sign off and we'll say goodbye. See you in the next one, thanks, for listening everybody, bye, bye.