Professional Woodwind Emulation Tips

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. academy?

Matt Traum: 0:32

and patchmanmusic. com.

Alistair Parnell: 0:36

Welcome everybody to episode 4 of our podcast, and we're excited about this one. We've got a lot to get through. Today we are talking about Woodwind emulations, Matt.

Matt Traum: 0:53

Yes, I'm doubly chuffed, as they say over there. I'm looking forward to this. I think this is going to be a fun episode because we have lots of audio clips that we can play, so it should be fairly entertaining. And of course, we're not only going to do Woodwind's future episode. Lots of audio clips that we can play, so it should be fairly entertaining. And of course, we're not only going to do woodwinds A future episode. We're going to have some brass emulation tips and then probably a third episode on miscellaneous instruments like keyboards and you know, other things that are not in brass or woodwind categories.

Alistair Parnell: 1:26

Now, primarily, we're just going to look at three platforms here. We want to make it clear that there are lots of other opportunities out there, lots of different platforms to use other sound modules, other sample libraries. It would take us like 10 podcasts to combine all of those into this. So we're going to concentrate on three main areas here the internal sounds of the Aerophone. We're going to look at the SWAM instruments, because this is something we both are familiar with and we use quite a bit. And, Matt, we're also going to talk about the VL70 and you do this amazing like TURBO chip, yeah, yeah yeah.

Matt Traum: 2:04

So we'll talk a little bit about the turbo vl upgrade chip that I developed many years ago for the Yamaha VL70-m sound module, and the reason we're including that is because it's just so popular. I would say by far it's the most popular hardware sound module to use for with wind controllers. So, um, hopefully, with those three things, a lot of this information will also carry over to other soft synths and hardware synths and methods of emulation.

Alistair Parnell: 2:38

Yeah, so you know we've got a few things to discuss, but let's get right into it, because I guess our first question is why would we want to emulate in this case, a woodwind sound? And I mean, I think you know there's lots of reasons. I do find that in my iSax Academy, I think there are more people actually that would like to emulate instrument sounds rather than play synthesizer sounds. For me personally, I think I tend to use more synthesizer sounds than emulating instruments, but there's an awful lot of people out there that want to emulate instruments, and so you know that was one of the main reasons for doing this podcast, right?

Matt Traum: 3:24

Yeah, this is a very touchy subject. Some people, some musicians, ask you know, why do you want to emulate an acoustic instrument when you have the acoustic instrument or you can just hire somebody? But yeah, I can understand that argument. But there's also reasons to want to emulate just because you might want to, you just might like the sound. Like me, I'm a trumpet player and of course all trumpet players want to sound like Charlie Parker or Stan Getz or Michael Brecker on saxophone. So we want to have a nice sax sound to use if you're particularly playing in maybe a jazz group or something a little combo, Sure, Just to change it up a little bit and offer a little more timbral variety to what you're doing. And of course, saxophone players, they all want to sound like Miles Davis with the harmon mute trumpet.

Matt Traum: 4:12

I can guarantee you most that's one of the first things they want to do with the wind controller. But not everybody does. Some people stay away from that and just do non-emulative type sounds, synthetic sounds, layered sounds, otherworldly type sounds, and it's all valid. It's whatever you like.

Alistair Parnell: 4:31

But it's hard. Right, it's hard because we have this huge expectation of this is how a saxophone should sound. This is how a trumpet should sound. This is how a flute should sound. A saxophone should sound. This is how a trumpet should sound. This is how a flute should sound.

Alistair Parnell: 4:51

Now, I'm pretty sure that for any instrumentalist you know, if you're a saxophone player and you hear a synthesized saxophone, I would imagine most people are going to say I don't care for that synthesized sound. But there are plenty of people who are playing those synthesized sounds and they get a lot of joy out of them. They can be perfectly acceptable for many situations and of course, it's an incredibly subjective thing. And even on just the saxophone sound, I mean, you know I come from a classical background. On the saxophone I play with a kind of classical mouthpiece with a fairly hard reed. I aim for this very warm, homogenous sound that is way, way different from like David Sanborn and where he's playing a really bright sound and attacking the sound hard.

Alistair Parnell: 5:38

So the saxophone, right there, has got this huge amount of variations in the sound, and so which one is the right one? Well, the right one is the one that you prefer and you want to use at that point, right? So there are just so many combinations and possibilities. No one sound is going to suit everybody. Yeah, that's correct. And I guess the same on a trumpet, right? I mean you can get quite a lot of variations, well, with the mutes and things. But I mean, even from player to player you're going to have a lot of differences in the sound. So we have to accept straight away that when you emulate you're never going to please everybody, right, that's right.

Matt Traum: 6:17

I like to think of it as in painting terms. If you were to paint, say, a famous actor, robert redford, or somebody who everybody kind of knows the face of, everybody knows that face. And if you're trying to emulate, um, him in a painting, there's pretty much only one way to do it. If you're going for a true emulation, you know because you have that one thing as a model, whereas if you're playing a synthetic type sound, there is no real model to emulate. So it's acceptable, acceptable, and it's less stressful too, not having to try to emulate a good clarinet or flute or trumpet for an audience. If you're trying to do that sound, I guess you have to try to do it the best you can, and so you have that added stress of having a good sound to start with and then playing it correctly in the proper phrasing and things like that proper range. Sure. So if you think of it that way, as maybe compared to an abstract painting which could be a triangle and a circle and different colors on it, it could be anything.

Matt Traum: 7:21

And so these next few episodes will be interesting. We're going to talk about finding a good sound to start with, not so much about programming, the specifics of programming, but just starting with something that's good and we can recommend some things. We will. We're going to play some audio clips and you can hear some different ways of doing it with different types of synths and soft synths, and you can choose what you like and we'll also talk about how to play these instruments in a proper way, using proper phrasing and range and tonguing and vibrato and bending yeah, so that they do sound more realistic, because there's ways that you can take a beautiful, perfect sound and just play it incorrectly and it just won't sound like a saxophone or a flute if you play it wrong. So, yeah, it'll be interesting.

Alistair Parnell: 8:12

And of course, any sound. It's not just the sound that the machine or the software is making. Of course it's to do with the way the player you know, the articulation, the phrasing, the dynamics, how we ghost notes, how we make little kind of ornamentations on a sound, even to do with the way a person times a phrase. And you know there are so many complex combinations that go on that give someone an individual fingerprint of their sound. And just like any other instrument, you know the very best place to start is by listening to the instrument you are trying to emulate, because if you don't know what you're trying to emulate, you're never going to get there. So you've definitely got to start by listening, and that takes a lot of work because you know we've got a lot of instruments that we're trying to emulate. So each one is a little target of study that you have to do individually to get the very best from it. And it's hard work but can be absolutely great fun. And so you know, for me, matt I don't know about you I use emulations sometimes.

Alistair Parnell: 9:27

For instance, if I'm on a gig and you know you play a saxophone a lot, maybe you want to do just one number on a flute or something, or sometimes for me, occasionally, if I'm playing a gig and I've got sort of soprano and alto saxophone you know I don't play tenor sax that much so to take a tenor saxophone just for a couple of numbers, you know, sometimes then I'll pick up the aerophone and just do a little bit of tenor sax on the aerophone. So that's my main use. I mean, I have used it for doing things like recordings as well, and we've talked about kind of studying different players' sounds. But do you use that in a similar way, just occasional numbers when you're doing a gig, to add some variations?

Matt Traum: 10:13

I generally don't play trumpet anymore. I'm a trumpet player but I kind of gave that up many years ago. It's just because you know, trumpet is such a physical instrument. It's like running a marathon you have to practice for it all the time to have your muscles ready and your body. And I, just as I got older, I didn't have a lot of time to practice and I just wanted to play music. So that's probably the main reason why I play a wind controller, other than I'm fascinated by it, but the main reason being just I want to enjoy playing music.

Matt Traum: 10:42

I don't want to have to think about how hard it is to play a trumpet and play up high. It can be painful for me sometimes playing up in the upper range. I would say I probably did mostly emulations, maybe the opposite of what you do trio, quite a bit of saxophone type sounds, flute, harmonica, some jazz, guitar, tenor, sax, clarinet and then a few saw type leads like the you know, the standard classic, just beautiful saw with a nice filter on it. Lots of that because it's a beautiful sound. So I'm probably maybe on the opposite side.

Alistair Parnell: 11:21

It's mostly emulations, with maybe a third of them being non-emulations, let's say, and you know one thing that we both perhaps are aware of, at least this kind of, you know, pushback from other musicians or, I guess, questions that people might have if they see something online and you know know they don't particularly like the emulation or they don't think we should be doing emulations. Do you have you dealt with much of that?

Matt Traum: 11:50

I've played in a few groups where we would have a couple other horn players and um. They've been pretty kind to me. I, I, I haven't had any trouble with that um and then the other. Most of the playing I did was just my own. I was the only horn player, it was just a small trio or quartet. So of course you know there was no problem there. As far as the audience, I would say almost everyone likes what I was doing. I never. I don't think I ever got any negatives as far as why don't you just play trumpet? Never, you know.

Matt Traum: 12:20

The audience seems to love these things. They're fascinated by just somebody up there playing different sounds coming out of the same instrument. And I most often, and probably every other wind controller player, has this where you're playing a gig and people come up and say what is that instrument you're playing and you have to explain to it. They don't. Actually, you know it's like did you like the music? Did you like? Because I'm up there just playing music, I'm not thinking about the novelty of it, sure? So hopefully they like the music too, and I think they did.

Alistair Parnell: 12:48

Absolutely the same. For me, I mean, it's always the question is what is that thing you're playing? You know what is that instrument and the thing I enjoy most. You know, if you're doing a little kind of I don't know cocktail set or something, and you know, sometimes you're in a restaurant or something and people can't necessarily see you, and you know, I've had it on a few occasions You've maybe come up and say, oh, I knew you played saxophone, but I, you know, I didn't know you played like trumpet or where's your flute or whatever, and they just didn't see that I was playing that on a wind synthesizer and it fooled them, you know, they just didn't question it because they didn't see it. And this is one of the things that always strikes me about emulations it messes with our brain, right? If you're playing like this weird looking wind controller and it sounds like a beautiful flute sound or a bass, clarinet or something, our eyes are going to be a conflict with that because we're not looking at the right thing. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Matt Traum: 13:47

Yeah, as you say, sometimes it's best if people cannot see you and they just listen to the music. You just close your eyes and listen and enjoy. Yeah, maybe we should talk about this idea you brought up a few minutes ago about the sound qualities, the sound that you're starting with, you know, is there a better ones? There are ones that are weaker and I thought a nice I had a nice example that I looked at, with it's Niall Steiner playing a what's considered now to be a fairly archaic synthesizer, the Roland.

Speaker 4: 14:24

JV-1010. So.

Matt Traum: 15:07

So most people would say, oh, that's an old synth, I don't want to use that. But he's just using a very basic oboe sound on that JV-1010. And he set it up to respond to breath. But if you listen to him play, he plays it legato, he's smoothly, his breath is controlled, he does the proper phrases and uh it. To me it sounds great. Um, so that's just a great example. That was a live tv performance from 2010 that he did with Richard Souther yeah, four to 14 years ago, right yep, it sure was.

Matt Traum: 15:39

Yeah, and that's up on youtube if you want to check it out, the video that's up there, along with several other pieces from that time frame. Now, why don't we go to some other oboe sounds that we have? I think we have one or two others. Maybe we could play those and give you an example of some maybe better reproductions of them played by other players. I think one's played by me. Did you do one also?

Alistair Parnell: 16:00

I did. I did one. How about we listen to TURBO Oboe?

Matt Traum: 16:06

Maybe we could play this one. It's the Oboe from my Turbo VL upgrade chip that goes inside the Yamaha VL70-m, which is a very popular sound module for wind controller players, and the beauty of that module is that you get this TURBO chip in there and there's 256 sounds. They're all loaded and ready to go chip in there and there's 256 sounds, they're all loaded in, ready to go. You don't have to do any loading of samples or any fancy stuff, it's just ready to go. You call it up and play. Um, so these are physical models that are in there and that's a different way of producing an oboe sound. So maybe let's hear the turbo oboe.

Alistair Parnell: 16:49

Yeah, that VL70. That's a pretty old piece of kit now, but it has survived the passing time incredibly well, yeah, it has.

Matt Traum: 17:00

It's just a lot of bang for the buck. I sell them all the time here. I refurbish them and always have them available. The Turbo chip's still available to ship anywhere in the world and very popular because it's small. It's designed specifically for wind controller players. WX players like it because it has a WX input on the front which also feeds power to the horn, so they don't have to use batteries and additional power cables and it just sounds good. It might not be quite as good as other methods, but overall it's a really powerful unit to use.

Alistair Parnell: 17:35

Absolutely so. I recorded a little bit of oboe on the swam sound Great on the swam sound Great. A few years ago I did a performance using a sonata by a composer called Zalenka. This is originally two oboes and continuo. We actually did it with two soprano saxophones, baritone sax and me playing harpsichord on a on a on a keyboard. Anyway, this is a short extract from that. This is um Zalenka © transcript Emily Beynon and I'm also using the Swam cello there.

Alistair Parnell: 19:25

So all played on the Aerophone, except, of course, the harpsichord. I'm playing on a keyboard. But you know one thing I just wanted to mention about the sounds in general. I think for me, if I really enjoy playing the sound, then hopefully it's going to sound really good. And whatever sound you use on whatever you know turbo chip or swam sound or internal Aerophone sound hopefully you're going to get a sound that you're just going to feel comfortable enough so you don't have to be thinking too much about the sound you're playing. Eventually. you just want to feel it's an expressive instrument and, yeah, it might not sound like you know, some professional recording of an oboe, but if you really enjoy the sound then I think you're going to get a long way towards making a nice piece of music right.

Matt Traum: 20:19

Oh, absolutely I. Having a great sound to begin with is inspiring and it makes you feel good and it makes you play better. I fully agree with that.

Alistair Parnell: 20:33

So we've already there covered. You know, three different, if you like, instrument platforms the turbo chip, swam and demos. And we're not saying that there's plenty of other options out there, and we will also be looking at some internal sound examples along the way as well. And of course, you know we've got specifically sampled libraries as well. You've got to remember that you're going to use one of those. They've got to be properly programmed to work with a wind synthesizer. Sometimes I have people say well, you know, I've got this sample library for I don't know native instruments or something. It sounds great on the website but it doesn't work with my wind synthesizer, and so you know that's something that people get confused with. Matt, do you want to just do a brief explanation of why that's probably not going to work out of the box?

Matt Traum: 21:29

Yeah, I mean there's sample libraries out there for $1,000 or you know ridiculous amounts of money, but they do sound good. But they've been designed to be played on a keyboard with maybe a mod wheel or key switching on the left hand. As you're playing, you have to select staccato, legato, bend, you know, slur, whatever. But they're not set up for wind controller and after all, that's why we're here.

Matt Traum: 21:56

The wind controller is the key. It gives you the control over the sound, and if a sound is designed for keyboard players, it's not going to have all the hooks built into the sound for a wind controller player to get that control and vice versa. If you were to play wind controller sound on a keyboard without a wind controller player to get that control, and vice versa. If you were to play a wind controller sound on a keyboard without a breath controller, it's not going to make any sound at all, or just very, very faint. You're playing it on a keyboard and you hear nothing. So you can't just mix and match a sound. It has to really be designed properly to work with a wind controller. So, yeah, even though the sound might be great to begin with, if the expressivity isn't there, then you're going to have trouble.

Alistair Parnell: 22:36

And I think maybe it's important to be clear here, because we're talking about taking some of these sounds from some different platforms, and if anybody is fairly new to wind synthesizers, the first thing I think you're going to have to think about is what do you want to achieve and what do you want to spend your money on? Because obviously, if you buy something like an Aerophone, you've got a ton of sounds in there and lots of really good examples. You'll hear some of those demos in the podcast today, but then you might want to look a little bit deeper, maybe think about something like the VL70M module or another module or something like Swam Instruments. Now you've got to remember then you're going to start to be paying out a little bit more money. If you feel that that's the way you want to go. You're going to have a little bit more setting up to do some kind of connection between your wind synthesizer and the module, and so there's a little bit more involved in that. Plenty of people do that and do it very successfully. They integrate internal sounds with their favourite swam sounds or something on the VL70M, so it becomes a more of a kind of little ecosystem that you can build, but just like all these other things, you've got to do your homework and really carefully investigate what the options are.

Alistair Parnell: 24:03

For me, it's very often the case if I hear a really good demonstration of a sound and I think, wow, that's great. That's usually enough for me to go down that track and investigate that and invest a little bit of money in whatever platform that I hear that sound on. So it's something you're going to have to think about carefully and do your homework on. So let's have a listen to a few more sounds, shall we? Matt? What instrument do you want to choose next?

Matt Traum: 24:36

Well, maybe the next logical one is I have an English horn demo that I did also on the Turbo VL70. Do you want to?

Alistair Parnell: 24:44

pull that one up. Let's have a listen to the English horn. English horn, just in case not everybody knows. You know it's like a slightly deeper oboe sound. There are some very famous solos played on the English horn, or you know, we don't call it English horn, of course, we call it cor anglais over here. But there we are and it's a very useful one to have in your library. I think that's the only one we've got of cor anglais, is that right?

Matt Traum: 25:29

I think so yeah, maybe let's see. I'm just kind of going, maybe we could do the…. Can we do bassoons? This bassoon example is a sound that I actually programmed for Roland. It's available through the Roland Cloud. It's for the Roland AE-20 and AE-30. And you can get those through the Roland Cloud. It's contained in the AE-20 and AE-30 and you can get those through the Roland cloud. It's contained in the AE-03 bank and there's a woodwind I think it's called woodwind layers, but so this might be two bassoons that you're hearing actually in this at the same time as you play.

Alistair Parnell: 26:23

Yeah, so you know we've sort of covered double reeds there. Now it might work well, I think, for us at this point to say if we have any thoughts on the way we play, uh, those sounds for the double reed family, if you like any. Anything you want to um say about the way you think about playing those sounds, matt.

Matt Traum: 26:50

I think the vibrato on those is mostly pitch. That's what I feel, yeah, as compared to like a pan flute or a flute where there's a lot of breath in there, the breath undulates, so it's kind of a straight ahead vibrato. On these double reed instruments you just want to play it, usually legato. I'm not sure what else to say about those. Do you have any comments?

Alistair Parnell: 27:14

Yeah, so for me, I spent 12 years conducting a wind orchestra and a couple of things I noticed about the oboes. I mean, firstly, they're always messing around with their reed. Right, there's always a problem with the reed. On the oboe or the bassoon it's always a problem with the reed, but we don't have that problem on the aerophone. So, yeah, what I notice is, like you said, they do enjoy long legato lines. It's almost like sometimes they don't want to breathe, they just continue with this line and of course the sound is such a focused, narrow aperture that they blow through. They don't actually get rid of air that quickly, so they can go for a long, long time playing these lovely long lines.

Alistair Parnell: 28:02

Very often if I'm playing something more legato, I'm thinking about perhaps starting the sound a little bit quieter and then making a crescendo as you kind of move into the middle of the phrase. And then, you know, very often they make this very nice short, spiky, staccato sound, like we heard on that bassoon sound, just there, and that is actually something that is probably a little bit easier to do, or more common to do, I would say, on a double reed and possibly the flute. Clarinets and saxophones generally don't manage to make such a spiky, short sound. I'm generalising, but that's the way I hear it. So yeah, oboes, very long expressive lines. You definitely want to play around with the dynamic shape of those lines and then, when it comes to the articulation, it's got to be really, really short and precise, staccato, particularly if you're doing something like that kind of Baroque style. And they're beautiful instruments and you know so many lovely lines that we hear played in the orchestral and wind band repertoire. So lots to go and listen to on YouTube and Spotify. You'll get thousands of examples.

Matt Traum: 29:15

And I think also the reverb is very important on those types of sounds because you normally hear those in a concert hall. So you want to find a nice reverb, either in your module or as a plug-in that you're, whatever you're using something nice and smooth that has a nice sound to it and doesn't sound artificial.

Alistair Parnell: 29:33

Just just one tip on reverb, Matt. I don't, we weren't expecting to go into this, but I but I think it might be relevant just at this point. Very often I think about if I'm recording something or reverberation. I'm actually visualizing it as a kind of depth thing how near or how far away is that instrument? And exactly what you were just saying. Generally speaking, in an orchestra, you've got the strings in front of the conductor and then after the strings you've got the wind section. So they are just by the way we lay an orchestra out. They're going to be a little bit further away and so you're absolutely right, we do tend to hear them coming, if you like, perceptively from a little bit further away, and I think that is absolutely something to think about when you're thinking about the emulation.

Matt Traum: 30:26

Great. Do you want to go to maybe a bass clarinet at this point, or clarinet?

Alistair Parnell: 30:32

or yeah, well, no, we've got lots of good bass clarinets. Which one would you like?

Matt Traum: 30:38

Let's do the one that you played on. It's the bass clarinet in again. It's in the SoundCloud, a Roland Cloud library that's available to eight for AE-20 and AE-30 owners. It's from AE-Z03 Soundbank.

Alistair Parnell: 31:09

And here's Alistair playing the bass clarinet. I just think, personally, I think that's an amazing sound coming out of an internal sound. I'm absolutely convinced that that could sit within you know, an ensemble or you know even a wind band or something, and it would make a great job of imitating a bass clarinet. It's got that really kind of fruity, low resonant sound and a nice kind of singing upper sound as well. I think that's great. I really enjoyed playing that bass clarinet on the internal sound that you programmed.

Matt Traum: 31:54

Oh, thanks so much. Yeah, I like that sound too. I think it came out great. If you're playing it with other musicians in a concert, you might want to pull the reverb out and let the concert hall that you're in produce the reverb like it does for the acoustic instruments. That would be one tip to emulating it well, aside from playing it so skillfully like you did.

Alistair Parnell: 32:16

So I'll also play you, Matt, I did a little version. Actually it's a little bit of Gershwin's Summertime, inspired by a YouTube video that I watched, actually, and what I've done on this one. This is a swam bass clarinet. As a comparison, there is some of that nice low, rich sound, but I've actually gone up a little bit higher. The bass clarinet has this incredible range and, um, I think you know this little clip demonstrates the fact that you know you can be up in the kind of almost kind of alto soprano type range, as well as right down in that, down in that low, resonant bass clarinet sound.

Matt Traum: 33:44

That's beautiful.

Alistair Parnell: 33:44

Great job on that so that's more of a kind of jazzy bass clarinet sort of approach and, like I say, it's got that lovely sort of high sound. I'm certainly using vibrato. And another little thing I wanted to say about perhaps something a little bit unique about, well, bass clarinet and clarinet, is that you know different instruments. Of course they have their own range and we need to be aware of playing them in the right range. But also there's some pretty major differences that maybe not everyone's aware of between, say, something like flute and clarinets, and that is, you know, because a clarinet is a cylindrical bore. It's actually very easy on a clarinet or a bass clarinet to play in the very lowest register, either super quietly or pretty loud. Now if you take something like a flute, flute players generally speaking aren't going to make a tremendous amount of volume in that very lowest part of their instrument. It can sound beautiful but it's not something that the flute projects particularly well.

Alistair Parnell: 35:03

I know flute players are probably going to shoot me down, but generally speaking, a clarinet and bass clarinet, they find it pretty easy to either whisper quiet down the bottom end or give it that nice resonant sound. Of course, on a clarinet we have what we call the throat notes. That's kind of in on the staff. It's written around kind of the G G sharp A B flat area, of the G G sharp A B flat area. Generally speaking, those few semitones are a little bit weaker on a clarinet. So being aware of those little differences, because one of the problems we have is in some of these imitations in a way the sound is too perfect, right, because it just is too consistent and you know real instruments aren't as consistent. So we have to be able to be aware of some of those little differences if we really want to move towards a good emulation.

Matt Traum: 36:06

Yeah. So oftentimes when I'm programming sounds, wind controller sounds I will apply some response to pitch from the breath sensor. So as you blow harder the pitch might go up a little bit, just microtonally. Trying to emulate sort of how an acoustic instrument works. Properly set up you should be able to make fine adjustments, either with a slight embouchure change if it's a read type bite sensor or maybe in your thumb if there's a bend sensor. It's just these little things, these imperfections actually make emulations sound more perfect to me. So if the pitch is perfect it can actually sound less perfect when you're emulating an acoustic instrument. So it's always good to have a little bit of imperfections in there and maybe even some randomness. Some synthesizers in their parameter list have random parameters or random LFOs that you can assign to maybe change the pitch very slightly, very slightly you barely even notice it. Or maybe a timbre, the filter cut off resonance things like that Little, tiny, little things makes a big difference.

Alistair Parnell: 37:16

Absolutely right. And with things I guess with all woodwind instruments there are always going to be imperfections in the pitch. I mean, as a saxophone player, I'm very much aware of the fact that all saxophones have got some pitch deviations and we just get used to that sound and we expect it. So if saxophone emulation is too much in tune, we instantly know. We might not be able to put our finger on it and say, oh, it's because the pitch is too secure no-transcript, stable and not moving at all, sounds very artificial.

Matt Traum: 38:20

Actually, If you listen to just a waveform you know, with no pitch change at all, it sounds very synthetic and technically it's impossible to hold the pitch exactly the same If you're holding the pitch with your reed, trying to maintain a breath level and holding the horn. If you look at it very closely, it's always changing. It's impossible for a human being to lock their muscles and not move. I mean, you'd have to use a clamp with a screw on it to actually hold that reed steady. So your jaw is always moving a little bit, your breath is always changing a little bit, and so that's that's actually what you want. You want imperfections to some degree.

Alistair Parnell: 39:01

Yeah, something interesting, Matt, that I'd like to just interject here. I, I had, I had a guy who had an Aerophone and he was obviously, you know, quite a kind of technical guy. He sent me an email to say you know, I'm finding that I'm running the Aerophone sound into a door and you know, when I'm looking at the breath output it's not stable, it's moving right. But anyway, I kind of wanted to investigate this a little bit more and I did the same thing. I recorded and I tried to hold a steady note, as steady as I could, and see what the kind of reading came out on the door Can't be done, and so no, it can't be done. But here's the thing that I was just kind of blown away with there was a consistent variation in the breath output.

Alistair Parnell: 40:09

Right, I noticed that oh yeah, it's got up just a couple of clicks. Now it's gone down again and it was moving in a kind of quite methodical way. As I was looking at it and trying to look at these numbers, I was like, oh my God, I was realizing that it was matching my heartbeat.

Matt Traum: 40:30

Wow, that's great. That's great. If a sensor is that sensitive, that's a wonderful thing. That's what you want.

Alistair Parnell: 40:36

And this was something that blew me away and I spoke to a couple of people and they said well, yeah, do you not know that people do kind of like marksman shooting and things? They learn to shoot at a certain point in the cycle of their breathing for that reason that you do have these slight variations to do with your heart rate that affects the breath. I was absolutely blown away. But you can see that when you put your breath output into a door. I thought that was amazing.

Matt Traum: 41:07

That's fascinating. So, yeah, if you're holding a steady breath of what you think is steady, and look at it, it matches your heart rate. That's pretty interesting. I can add something here on the EWI series and the EVI that I play that has the right hand thumb bend sensors, the up and down right next to your thumb sensors. Those actual sensor pads are adjustable on most of these instruments and I like to have them right up against my thumb. I mean, I, I've even modified some of my evis to come closer to my thumb, yes, and so I.

Matt Traum: 41:41

It's touching both sides of my thumb, so every little movement is being tracked and and I want that, I, I don't want the pitch ever to be stuck anywhere. It should always be moving, because it's impossible. Again, if you're playing a trumpet or a sax, you cannot hold a pitch perfectly steady, and some people they're like, oh no, I don't want to touch that. Well then you're making it worse. You're actually making it less realistic, sure, so it's funny. It's actually touching both sides of my thumb and it's a sum of pitch up and pitch down, so it's not doing any harm or anything. It's simply tracking, kind of the position of my thumb, so to speak.

Alistair Parnell: 42:26

Yeah, so we have one more clarinet example. This is now of a regular B-flat clarinet. It's a swam instrument I'm using. This is actually taken from the last lesson in my Aerophone Basics course at the ISAX Academy. We go through several tunes there. You learn your notes step by step as you go and I've written many tunes myself. But I have used some other well-known tunes as well, and this kind of comes in the last lesson. This is the Rhapsody in Blue Gershwin and of course it also you know we also use that wonderful glissando at the beginning of this extract

Alistair Parnell: 44:02

You see, when I play a sound like that, I really feel like I'm playing the sound. You know what I mean. Feel like I'm playing the sound, you know what I mean. I I really enjoy being musically expressive through through those sounds and, and that's, that's the most important thing.

Matt Traum: 44:19

You enjoy it because you're not fighting the sound. It's already a good sound to start with, yeah, so if you have a sound that's just not working and you're trying to make it work, that's a lot. That's a lot of work to try to do that. So it helps to have something that's a beautiful sound and that's a testament to the legato and you did the trills there and the glissando is the portamento. That's some really special stuff. That's pretty hard to do with any acoustic sound really, and get it believable like that.

Alistair Parnell: 44:49

Absolutely. Yeah Well, I'm not saying it didn't take me a few goes to get it how I wanted to, but it's certainly possible to make a pretty decent job. So now, then, we're coming on to a slightly sticky one for me, Matt, because it's I think it's saxophones next.

Matt Traum: 45:08

Many people will say that's the hardest instrument to emulate. Would you agree with that?

Alistair Parnell: 45:11

Yeah, I think there are just so many. Everybody has their own impression of what a saxophone sounds like. There are so many sounds we have, you know, even within, say, the classical or the jazz world, or sometimes you can very easily tell who the player is simply because of his or her own sound. So it's a very, very subjective thing.

Alistair Parnell: 45:37

Yeah, what a great instrument to be that versatile and, you know, to have that many timbres out of one instrument, and all depending on how the player is playing it and, of course, the mouthpiece and the reed mostly the player, I would say yeah, and you know, when I hear I'm sure it's the same for people you know you get a feel for your own instrument if, if you were transcribing a solo, say for the trumpet, there are certain notes that you can just tell is that note because of the sound of it? You just know from the feel of it. Do you know what I mean?

Matt Traum: 46:11

Absolutely. There's certain notes on a sax where you can tell that's the low C with all the fingers down or that's a high F and it's kind of out of tune and it's kind of going all over. Same way with the trumpet. When you hear a C sharp oftentimes on an acoustic trumpet, well it's sharp just by the physics of the trumpet. If you have all three valves down, the horn is sharp and it you have to pull the slides out a little bit to get it back down into pitch so you can actually hear that sometimes with a player and certain notes that you trill, there's certain notes you can trill easily and some that are very hard to trill.

Matt Traum: 46:44

Yes, on certain instruments, for example, I know this is a woodwinds but uh, regarding the Turbo VL70 sounds that I did on the trumpets, um, on some of them I actually did make the C sharp, the low, uh, three valve down, C sharp a little bit sharp just to kind of give it that little uh, you know extra boost of realism. Of course you can. You can bend it down a little bit with your bend sensors and it's really not that bad because, as we said, no instrument really plays completely in tune. They're always all over the place to some degree of pitch. So in fact I think we've both is a little solo that Jim Bruno asked me to record for him on a song called With a Song in my Heart for a CD that he did in the last few years. He's a great singer.

Speaker 4: 47:58

Thank you with the song in my heart.

Matt Traum: 48:43

I just wanted to say Jim's an amazing musician. He he plays just about every instrument in the world. He sings out. You just heard a little portion of that at the end there. But he's a great singer. He teaches, he plays EVI. He was one of the early pioneers of the Lyricon. He plays the Chapman Stick, you name it. We should probably get him on this podcast. He'd be a really interesting guy to talk to. Great guy.

Alistair Parnell: 49:06

Yeah, yeah, great solo, Matt, love it. I, you know you. Yeah, I'm very envious of your, of your licks. You're playing and this is something that we spoke about when we were preparing this podcast of course, when you're dealing with things like saxophone, particularly on the kind of jazz side, the way that you play those lines and those licks, that is such a massive part of the sound and you know that's what can really really sell it. So, any slight shortcomings in the sound, if you can produce some lines like that, it's going to sound great and you're just going to enjoy it.

Matt Traum: 49:42

Well, thanks so much, I appreciate it. That is a great sound. The Swam tenor sax is fantastic. I like their instruments. I did a little that. You know that double tonguing thing. That's like a Charlie Parker thing. So we were just talking about. You hear that sax players do that a lot, that little bluesy lick. That's kind of the idea of when you're playing licks. You kind of want to know what a sax lick is and throw it in there and it makes it sound more like a saxophone. And then I was just kind of playing kind of open. You know, real laid back, I wasn't trying to play super high or super low or anything like that. Sure, so thanks so much. What did you have prepared for this? For tenor?

Alistair Parnell: 50:22

Well, you know, one of my favorite kind of ballads is the Nearness Of You, and so I've just kind of recorded once through a kind of chorus of a solo. And a lot of people often enjoy that kind of breathy tenor, particularly lower down in the register. And again, this is something maybe to be aware of if you're not a saxophone player that type of sound is pretty hard to do the breathy tenor.

Matt Traum: 50:49

it's hard to get it to play low and have a nice legato transition between notes because it's just such a slow attack and I know the swam instruments do that very well.

Alistair Parnell: 50:59

And in terms of getting the breathy sound, you know on an acoustic instrument you're going to get it more obviously in that lower range.

Alistair Parnell: 51:08

You won't tend to hear it quite so much in the upper range. So again, it's just something to be aware of the way the acoustic saxophone works, where certain sounds are going to be best to explore Just before we listen to this. In a previous podcast, Matt, we've talked about that thing of doing like an alternative fingering and interestingly, when I was recording this little demo earlier, I found that Swam have a kind of trigger to do an alternative fingering. So you'll hear it in the start of this solo, almost like the third or fourth note in I do it and I use it somewhere else later on. So you'll hear it in the start of this solo, almost like the third or fourth note in I do it and I use it somewhere else later on. So I'm using the Aerophone, I just hook that up to my thumb button and so whenever I want to do the alternative fingering, I made the Swam instrument learn what that control should be and it works really well.

Matt Traum: 52:08

So you did this on the right-hand thumb on an Aerophone, the pressure pad. This on the right-hand thumb on an Aerophone, the pressure pad. Yeah, right-hand thumb on an AE-30, yes, and is it a switch type signal that you're sending, or is it?

Alistair Parnell: 52:18

continuous. It's just a switch. Yeah, and it's in there. It's even in the mobile versions of Swam, because the mobile versions of Swam don't have all the controls in it, but it does have this one. So you'll find it, I think, under Timbre setting. It's under there somewhere and, yeah, you can set it up to work as an alternative fingering. I only used it a few times in this, just a little bit, but I think you'll probably be able to tell where it is.

Matt Traum: 55:03

Yeah, very pretty, yeah Very nice.

Alistair Parnell: 55:05

And you know the other thing that I use a little bit, because I do that on the saxophone it's what some people call a kind of fall off or a cry down. So of course we can scoop up to a note on a saxophone, but very often we use that kind of falling in pitch between intervals. Of course there's vibrato in there as well.

Matt Traum: 55:28

Regarding that, there's a little technique that I've always admired on sax player. It's mostly sax, maybe trumpet players do it, but uh, it's. It's kind of a like what you're saying it's, but it's more of a. It's almost like two little undulations of vibrato on the end of a note, like, uh you, yeah you know it comes right at the.

Matt Traum: 55:50

You know they just do it right on the end of the note a little pitch, blip up and down, and if you can master that, it's kind of hard to do on a wind controller. You really have to have your bite sensor really tracking your bite. Yes, but that's a real telltale saxophone characteristic, at least in jazz.

Alistair Parnell: 56:08

And you know I find also that on that swam sound some of the kind of altissimo register I think actually sounds great in that little solo there it actually goes up to a G which is, you know, just one step above the normal range of the saxophone. But it works very well, I feel, on a. Certainly a lot easier a on a SWAM sax than it is on a real saxophone, to be accurate, to hit that note.

Matt Traum: 56:32

But um, but you did it right. You kind of there was a little pause, it's like you know, you kind of you're working on that note and that was exactly right. That's, that's how you do a good emulation. Yeah, great job.

Alistair Parnell: 56:44

Yeah, so lovely, lovely, lovely stuff.

Matt Traum: 56:47

So maybe we should ahead. Now to the flutes. There's a whole series of flute-type sounds that we can go into, from orchestral-type flutes to even recorders and flutophones and jazzy vox flutes and tin whistles and a pan flute even.

Alistair Parnell: 57:03

Okay, so how about we start with an internal Aerophone sound? This is another one of Matt's AEZ03 um pack that you get there and, um, I believe this might be called something like is this the five flutes or something Matt? Which one is it?

Matt Traum: 57:21

I, I think this is more of a solo instrument oh, this is a solo it might be two flutes layered. I can't remember because the uh concept with that bank was woodwind layers. So you may be hearing two flutes, but to me it sounds almost like a solo, and this is Alistair playing this demo.

Alistair Parnell: 57:55

Kind of hornpipe inspired, I think.

Matt Traum: 57:58

Yeah, maybe there are more than two flutes, Maybe that's the five flutes. The idea if it was the five flutes I had five different flute sounds kind of spread across the stereo spectrum, Kind of a really nice mellow sound. Good for pads if you're backing up a singer.

Alistair Parnell: 58:11

Yeah, all of that bank work really, really well and I think is that one of the ones that's actually free for people if they've got an AE-20 or AE-30? I think the first three are free. If it's the first three, then it would be free. Okay, so I've got a Swam Alto flute this is.

Alistair Parnell: 58:35

I guess a bit kind of film music-y or something, and I love that alto flute sound, again fairly low down. I like the way that this emulates the vibrato and within the vibrato and within the vibrato you can hear as the vibrato cycle happens. There's a kind of breathiness that happens in and out with the vibrato. If you understand what I mean, you can hear the breathy sound a little more with the vibrato and I'm also using a setting on the sound. It's just slightly onto what they call their jazz sound. So there's a little bit of that kind of harmonic split sound that goes on just a little bit in this version. Again, really, really enjoyable to play this sound yeah.

Matt Traum: 1:00:13

I love how it's just on the verge of that overtone, kind of tweaking in a little bit as you do the vibrato.

Alistair Parnell: 1:00:21

How were you doing the vibrato on that? Was that breath so well? All of you know all of my vibratos tend to be. I usually play on the sax byte, setting on the Aerophone, so it's actually embouchure. It's byte sensor vibrato that I'm doing. It comes across more as a breath vibrato, doesn't it? Because of the way that breath. I have very little pitch movement on that, but it still picks it up with that kind of breathiness that's mixed into the vibrato. It's a lovely sound. That's a beautiful sound.

Matt Traum: 1:00:50

Yeah, that's a hard one to do. The vibrato. I just it's a lovely sound. That's a beautiful sound. Yeah, that's a hard one to do. The alto flute it's hard to play legato again with that because of the low range of the flute and to make it sound legato. It's an accomplishment by the audio modeling people.

Alistair Parnell: 1:01:04

Yeah. So if anyone wants to hear some really lovely versions of an alto flute, one of the things that sticks out to me is the music from the March of the Penguins. I believe it's Alex Wurman. Just some lovely, lovely, deep alto flute sounds there. Pretty sparse texture from the other instruments. His music is wonderful because it kind of blends orchestral instruments with synthesized instruments as well. I just love that stuff.

Matt Traum: 1:01:34

Yeah, that's a great movie. I watched that that's. It's funny. We like to go to thrifting stores here I don't know what you call them on that side of the pond, but you know you go in and you can get a DVD for a dollar and March of the Penguins is everywhere. There's just a million copies of that everywhere in the world. But yeah, great music, great movie too. Um, so maybe along the same lines as this idea where you're talking about jumping overtones with breath and vibrato. I have a series of some of the turbo vl 70 sounds that I did that some of them incorporate that where you, without changing any of your fingering on your wind controller, if you just blow it, you'll actually hear it jump an octave, like if you're blowing into a penny whistle or a tin whistle. It just does it because it's a physical model of the actual instrument. So why don't we play some of those together? I think there's four or five of those demos and just listen for that you can hear that sort of.

Alistair Parnell: 1:02:23

I don't know slightly more edgy, breathy sound as well, but the way that harmonic thing works is fantastic in that sound.

Matt Traum: 1:02:49

Yeah, physical modeling is very special. It just does things that no other synthesis can do, like that where you're jumping octaves or when we get to the brass emulations podcast, we can talk about some of the. You can actually do lip shakes, like on a trumpet, where it jumps through the modes of a trumpet and you can do actual sounding, good sounding lip shakes. It's really amazing. You can't do that with anything else unless you actually sample that effect, but then that's not controllable yeah, a little bit of titanic going on in.

Matt Traum: 1:03:29

Yeah, you can hear at the end there where I was overblowing and you can kind of hear the octave coming in. It's all built into the patch.

Alistair Parnell: 1:03:44

I'm not sure if I actually know. I mean, is there such an instrument as?

Matt Traum: 1:03:48

flutophone yeah, it's called that over here. It's one of those school type instruments. It's made of plastic. It's kind of like a recorder. I don't know if it has a different bore. Maybe it's a conical bore or something Slightly different than a recorder.

Alistair Parnell: 1:04:01

Yeah, because you can actually kind of hear the holes closing on that. You know what I mean. It sounds like you can hear the actual snap of the pitch change a little bit more.

Matt Traum: 1:04:10

Yes, yeah, so that's the Vox Flute sound from the VL70 Turbo, one of my favorite sounds, I think in the entire turbo chip it's just really super expressive at every level of uh, breath. Yeah, and I have to. Also, I have to mention that the the VL70 is not you're not hearing any samples. That's a physical model, that's a 100 synthesized sounds. All these sounds from the VL70 Turbo. So there's no samples involved at all, even though it hopefully sounds like quality samples, sure, and so that that was Flute, one of my favorites. Here's a little piece that I did again for Jim Bruno on a song called this Christmas for one of his recent CDs. Yeah, that's cool, kind of that jazzy jazz flute you can almost call that.

Alistair Parnell: 1:05:26

It's kind of a lot of, but again, all that variation in the attack and the articulation, it just really brings that to life, doesn't it Absolutely? There's a lot of response to all that variation in the attack and the articulation. It just really brings that to life absolutely.

Matt Traum: 1:05:32

There's a lot of response to breath on that, on that sound. So here's a, here's a pan flute uh sound. It's actually one of the presets in the AE- 20 slash AE- 30. These are one of the factory sounds, so it's it's in the horn already kind of very nice breathy, breathy sound. I think it's pretty realistic. Hey, the quivering vibrato that you're hearing is actually me using my breath in a fast kind of a tremolo to get that effect. That's not a pitch thing, it's more of a tremolo vibrato.

Alistair Parnell: 1:06:48

Fantastic sound and, you know, built into the instrument Incredible Great quality stuff, and we've got one more. We thought we would include just a little harmonica in this one, in this podcast, as well. Matt, shall we listen to?

Matt Traum: 1:07:01

that Absolutely. Yeah, this is another factory sound from the AE-20, AE-30. It's just a nice harmonica sound, works well with a like a jazz setting here.

Alistair Parnell: 1:07:41

Now, Matt, you've got to spill the beans on this one, but you're doing something. I can't do. You're doing that thing where you get the same sound as when they kind of go across the tone holes because you know you've got the blow and the draw thing. How are you doing that?

Matt Traum: 1:07:57

Yeah, no trick, it's just. I'm just playing a quick arpeggio, I'm fingering that. So, yeah, it's just, if you do it right and you kind of play in the chord and play an arpeggio quickly without reattacking it with your tongue, it sounds like you're sliding across the harp on a harmonica okay, so we've just got to practice arpeggios more, right?

Alistair Parnell: 1:08:14

yeah, you just just practice those arpeggios.

Matt Traum: 1:08:16

Yeah, I wanted to point that out. That's kind of a telltale. Classic harmonica lick that. If you can learn to do that a little bit, even if it's a, not a trill. But uh, do, do, do you know, like a three note? Uh, if you're in a G chord and you play from B to D to B, da-da-da, you know, something like that will kind of make it sound, give it a sense of realism.

Alistair Parnell: 1:08:38

I have to go practice that. That sounded great.

Matt Traum: 1:08:41

Brilliant clip that, um, this is an older thing that uh, I recorded, uh, it's uh for a guy named David Lynch here in Ohio. He did a cd many years ago for a Christmas album what child is this? And I'm using a VL1-m, but I think I, on this particular clip here, I was overdubbing uh, maybe three or four instruments. On the VL1 there's a trombone and a bari sax and I can't remember the other ones, maybe flute or a muted trumpet, and we're just kind of playing it. But the trick is here that I was, I overdubbed it. I didn't play all four notes, uh, at the same time in a layer. I actually played it on four tracks, four different performances, and so they're all going to have a little bit different timing. On the attack, a little bit of a slope to the attack, and the pitch and the vibrato will be different. That's really what makes it sound real. So here's a little section demonstration.

Matt Traum: 1:09:35

Thank you Kind of a Miles Davis-y kind of thing.

Alistair Parnell: 1:10:21

And so if you just mix these sounds properly and I can hear it's in the stereo image as well it's just very convincing.

Matt Traum: 1:10:28

It works great and it's a lot of fun to do. It's really fun to experiment and try different layers and be able to build a section on your own. Really it's a blast. I highly recommend it to people. But again, the trick is to record the parts all individually.

Alistair Parnell: 1:10:50

So obviously, when we're talking about emulations, I guess really one of the starting places is it would be a good idea to know and understand the correct range for instruments. I mean, of course, if you want to do something a bit wacky and different, you can use any sound in any range, but if you're specifically wanting to emulate a sound, it would be a good idea to check what the range of that sound is right.

Matt Traum: 1:11:15

Not only the range but the comfortable range. You know a trumpet can go up to, you know triple high C, but nobody plays up there for very long. So you can play up there and it's going to sound horrible and it's not going to sound realistic. So's a. There's a comfortable range and a one that maybe plays in tune and is easier to play for every instrument, every acoustic instrument. So maybe you understand that and you don't. You certainly don't want to go out of the range if you're trying to make a good emulation. Now, the swam instruments actually do cut off. If you go below a certain note, it just stops, although they do have a parameter that they added that adds a few more pedal pedal tones. I think they call it um. Is it only downwards or does it go up as well? I?

Alistair Parnell: 1:11:55

I don't recall um, I mean on the sax sounds it goes up fairly high because they I guess they thought they you know we've got that kind of altissimo range, uh. But yeah, I think it cuts off pretty much at the bottom of the the general sax ranges and clarinets, I think.

Matt Traum: 1:12:10

And it could be only a brass thing too. But I do know that they added a parameter. If you click it it'll give you a few more notes downwards on their brass instruments. So that's a good thing to kind of know where the general average range is of an instrument. Also, the standard licks I think we talked a little bit about that is, learn some of the licks. You know you could study transcriptions and find things that you hear repeatedly by different sax players or play more staccato. Usually there's certain ways you don't want to play. You wouldn't want to play tongue to every note on maybe a jazz saxophone solo. It just wouldn't sound. Nobody would play like that. You know playing an acoustic sax.

Alistair Parnell: 1:13:02

Well, certainly not separated. I mean, sometimes, yeah, we'll hear people play, you know, and they are kind of they're using their tongue but they're not actually separating the sound. But you're absolutely right, you know, in terms of investigating the possibilities of any sound, you've got to try the different dynamic ranges, You've got to try how it responds with just a breath start or a tongue start or what's legato like, what's a real staccato like. There are so many variations. You really do need to dig into those sounds and then spend a lot of time listening to just see how do I best start to recreate the sound that I'm hearing on a recording?

Alistair Parnell: 1:13:47

We touched on vibrato slightly before. You mentioned about the little kind of quiver at the end of a note sometimes, but I think you've said also with vibrato on a lot of the flute instruments or certainly things like pan pipes and things that tends to be a more diaphragmatic kind of breath vibrato. People do use that vibrato sometimes on saxophone. I tend to use more of a lip vibrato on saxophone, but I do know people say that they like a breath vibrato on saxophone. So some things are not so much rules, it's just a case of trying to be aware of those sounds, and how do we best use our wind synthesizer to recreate the sound that we're listening to? But for sure it's those details that can make or break your emulation.

Matt Traum: 1:14:40

And vibrato. It's not only a matter of is it breath vibrato or pitch vibrato, but the speed of the vibrato when do you start it? Is it the entire length of the note or is it only at the end of the note or halfway through a held note? And the depth of the vibrato is it a whole half step each way, or is it 10 cents, a tenth of a half step? So there's, yeah, that's vibrato's. That'll give it away too if you do that incorrectly. So that's something to study as well. And and that varies from player to player, and that's part of the players sound. You think of a Stan Getz vibrato. Or you think of a saxophone from the 1930s big bands they used this huge guy, lombardo vibrato, yes, but you know Michael Brecker would never do that. Absolutely modern style, you know, yeah, or Charlie Parker. So they all have their types of vibrato. So a lot of studying involved in learning how to emulate properly.

Alistair Parnell: 1:15:38

Yeah, but we learn so much by studying and listening so carefully and critically to a recording. That's how we really get to understand the playing techniques and make a great emulation.

Matt Traum: 1:15:52

And it's a good idea to record yourself and listen back. You know, and listen to yourself For sure, when you're not playing and critique it and be honest.

Alistair Parnell: 1:16:00

So hopefully we have given you all some material to go away and think about it. I know I'm going to go away and practice my harmonica arpeggios, thanks to you, Matt.

Matt Traum: 1:16:11

That's great and I'll be working on my sax licks. I wanted to mention the Swam instruments are available from Patchman Music worldwide. I can give you a great price. Just you can email me at matt at patchmanmusic. com and just let me know that you heard the podcast and I'll get you a great price. I can usually beat any price that's out there.

Matt Traum: 1:16:35

Now that's just for the PC and Mac versions. If you have an iOS, like an iPad or those are only available through the Mac Apple store, the app store. But for Mac and PC I can certainly get you set up with a great price on those and I'm happy to help you out. And as far as the Turbo VL70, we talked about that the upgrade chip itself, the Turbo VL upgrade chip from Patchman Music, is available to be shipped anywhere in the world. I can ship that because it's a small software item. But as far as the sound modules itself that have been upgraded with the Turbo chip, I always have those in stock pretty much all the time, refurbished, upgraded and checked and ready to go within the US and that's. You can get info on that on the patchmanmusic. com website under the used gear section. I'd be happy to help you with that if you're interested in purchasing one of those.

Alistair Parnell: 1:17:24

And if you're looking for a great online course for your Aerophone, please visit www. isax. academy. There are courses there for all the Aerophones and they go from complete beginner to the most advanced techniques for the AE-20 and AE-30. And don't forget, you can find lots of tutorial videos on my YouTube channel, which is also iSax Academy. Well, an enjoyable podcast. Thanks everybody for listening. Again, Please, if you have the opportunity to share the podcast with any of your friends, anybody you think might be interested, that would be great. If you can also leave us a five-star review on any of your podcast platforms, that would also be very much appreciated. Matt, thank you for your time. I'll see you in the next one.

Matt Traum: 1:18:22

Thanks so much. Bye-bye everybody.