Welcome to the Aerophone Academy Podcast

Matt 0:02

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

Alistair 0:06

And I'm Alistair Parnell . Join us each month as we discuss

Our Podcast Theme Tune

Alistair 0:10

the wonderful world of wind controllers and you get the very best information and answers to your questions .

Matt 0:18

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

Alistair 0:26

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

Matt 0:32

and patchmanmusic . com .

Alistair 0:36

Hey , here we are , Matt hello .

Matt 0:39

Hello to you , welcome to the first episode .

Alistair 0:43

Yeah , this is fun , right . We've kind of been talking about this for maybe a month or so , but it's great to actually get going . I'm excited .

Matt 0:52

I am , too , very excited . This is going to be a lot of fun . We'll go into all kinds of things , both beginner level and expert level , hopefully , and something for everybody .

Alistair 1:03

We've got so much to talk about , right . The only thing is we need to make sure we don't talk too much . So we'll split it into reasonable chunks , maybe about 45 minutes to an hour or so , and hey . But firstly we should maybe talk about the theme tune , right ? Because that was all a little bit kind of like on the spur of the moment .

Matt 1:22

Absolutely All these things have to come together , and the artwork and all these various pieces and how to distribute the podcast . It's a little bit more complicated than I thought , but yeah , so all of a sudden we had this idea oh , we need to have a theme , we need to have a graphic , yeah , and we kind of started off sort of thinking , maybe we'll do , maybe like a Bach kind of invention or something like a duet . The two-part . Yeah , real simple . Yeah , that was the idea .

Alistair 1:50

And then the night after we spoke about that , I just had this tune going around in my head and it's one of those things I just needed to get up in the morning and just kind of play on the piano and just make sure I'd kind of worked it out right in my head and then I recorded like a real kind of basic , just two-part version and sent it over to you . Now you kind of said , yeah , this is going to work , and so I did a few more tracks . But then you did your magic . I mean , what did you add ? So I did like a couple of synth tracks and I did a little bit of a harmony part in there as well . So all of these sounds came from the AE-30 , right , was that where you were on the 30 ?

Matt 2:35

Yes , absolutely AE-30 . Of course , any of these sounds could be on the AE-20 as well , with no difference . But yeah , I wanted to make a point to use the AE-30 only for this . So , as you listen to it , there's lots of different types of sounds . There's acoustic sounds , there's very synthetic sounds , Even the drums and bass . There's a little bit of a kind of a take six bass in there . If you listen in headphones you can hear it . It's kind of hard to hear on the phone . So it goes from full synthetic to very acoustic , I think . And yeah , we wanted to kind of make a point that that's all wind controller and we didn't use any keyboards or any plugins or anything like that . It was all recorded live as well and I don't think I did too much as far as quantizing either . It's kind of a live thing , live feel .

Alistair 3:20

Exactly , yeah , hey , so maybe we should just kind of listen to that again now . And so now everyone knows what happened with that recording , let's just play it again so they can hear it without the voiceover or thing . And they can , they can hear the track .

Matt 4:10

So , yeah , it sounds quite a bit different with just the music .

Alistair 4:16

You know it does it's . I just really liked what you did with it , Matt . It was kind of fun , you know , when you just played it and the funny thing you said was it kind of you said it kind of had a kind of Pat Metheny kind of vibe to it . And you know , in my head that's kind of where I started off with that tune idea . It kind of is a little bit reminiscent of James right , which I know is one of your favorite tracks as well .

Matt 4:38

Absolutely I love that piece . So I was working with it and , like you say , the original idea was maybe a simple two-part Bach duet type thing with you know left and right channel . And then I said , well , let me try this , let me try this , let me try this . We started adding things and I like it and about halfway through when I was doing it , I said I just kind of sounds like Pat Metheny a little bit . Yeah yeah .

Matt 5:02

I put a couple of Pat Metheny type sounds in there . There's a Pat Metheny guitar which is , I believe , one of the presets . But I think you did that one , Alistair .

Alistair 5:09

I think I might have done . Well , I certainly did one of them . I'm not sure you might have done an electric kind of guitar thing as well . There's quite a lot of patches right for the Aerophones now . It's so difficult to keep track of them .

Matt 5:19

Little bit of Lyle Mays sound in there . The drums actually are part of the AE 20 and AE 30 factory sounds also , so you can go in . There's a full drum kit in there and they sound fantastic , so that's playable . Of course , the bass and you , I believe on one of the tracks was a harmony that you're using the intelligent harmony feature now .

Alistair 5:41

Exactly right . It was the intelligent harmony just in D major . I just set it to a sixth and I kind of just worked out the way through it to just keep it within that same sixth range for each chord change , and it came out great . I'm really , really pleased with it . I like it too .

Matt 5:57

I hope folks like it . So that was fun and that was a yeah . You did it one night and I think I finished it off the next day or thereabouts One of those things that just fell into place really nicely .

Alistair 6:10

It was great Good yeah .

Matt 6:13

Great job on the composition . By the way , it's very nice little piece .

Alistair 6:16

Well , thank you . Thank you , you did a great job on the mixing .

Matt 6:19

I say , I was very impressed that you did that so quickly .

Alistair 6:22

It just came to mind and I couldn't sleep and I just wrote it down and that was that you know , yeah , you sent me a complete two-part scored out piece PDF and made it very easy .

Alistair 6:35

So I was thinking , you know this first episode . Obviously you know there's a long way to go . I'm sure we're going to cover a huge amount of stuff in these at the moment once monthly podcasts , and might be a good idea . To begin with , we thought to just give the listeners a little bit of a background of how we both got into music and how we got into to wind synths Might just be nice for people to know where we started . So shall I start ? I'll start , okay .

Musical Backgrounds and Instrumental Journey

Alistair 7:10

So my background is you know I came from a musical family . My parents were both accordion teachers and so there was music in our house literally 24 , seven , I mean it was just there was so many pupils in and out that door . It was a busy place , but we I was just totally absorbed in music , basically literally from from birth , because I was born in that house and yeah . So my parents both taught accordion and some piano . My dad started me off on the piano . That was my first instrument . I was about five , I think , yeah , and you know we didn't really have any kind of sit down lessons very much . He used to give me a little piece of music every now and then . I was hearing these pieces all the time . I knew how they should sound , and he'd keep a track on my fingering and stuff . And after a while , what would I be about ? Nine ? They got me a clarinet .

Alistair 8:15

Now I started the clarinet and it didn't last very long before I got a little bit bored with it . In fact , I tell you , I tell you a little funny story . I'd been playing maybe for 18 months or two years and I was going to this teacher . I really wasn't enjoying it , and it was this one kind of cold winter night and it was . It was dark and my mom and I were walking home from this clarinet lesson and I was like you know , I just don't want to do this anymore . I hate this , you know . And she was like , no , you should keep going . I was getting really stroppy . Believe this . I actually threw my clarinet , in its case , over a garden wall , right .

Matt 8:56

Oh boy , you were definitely finished with that .

Alistair 9:00

So then my mom has to go to the door of this house and sort of say do you mind if we look in your back garden , because my son's throwing his clarinet over the wall .

Matt 9:11

Amongst the carrots and the tomatoes ?

Alistair 9:13

We had to go digging around in this bush , you know , at the back and , oh dear , very embarrassing . So you know , I was bad with that , I didn't get on well . And they got me a saxophone , probably a couple of years later and you know , basically I didn't really do very well at school in very much else . I played the piano , I could play the saxophone , but most of the other subjects I wasn't great at and so it kind of came . You know , look , what am I going to do ? Well , okay , I do a bit of music . That's the best choice , right ? So I just went with it and stuck with it . Of course , I'm really glad I did because , you know , I'm sure you feel the same way to be kind of involved in something you feel is such a joy to do and it's , you know , it doesn't feel like a job and mom and pop were insistent on trying again with you .

Matt 10:08

Right , was it their choice to bring that saxophone home , or did you say , hey , I want to try that ?

Alistair 10:13

Yeah , absolutely no , it was their choice . But you know they never pushed . I can never remember them pushing me . But by the time I got to about 14 , I had pretty much decided I'm going to go for this and I got pretty into it . Then I was staying at home , practicing when my mates were out , kind of doing whatever sometimes .

Matt 10:35

Well , what influenced you ? Why did you want to play ? Was it the music you were listening to ?

Alistair 10:40

Yeah , I think you know , with all that music going on in my house , I didn't really listen to much of the music at that stage , but there was so much music going along in the house .

Alistair 10:51

My family had a family band and they would go out and do gigs and it would be kind of like different themed evenings they would do like a French evening or a Spanish evening or a German evening and my dad would write out all this music to be appropriate for each theme and after a while I saw the opportunity that I could actually join the family band and play in the band and that was the start of my performing really right , probably from about kind of 16 , 17 . You know , I'm sure we'll hear from you as well about this . But you know I also was very fortunate to go to an excellent in the UK . We would call it sixth form college it's when you're like 17 , 18 , right , and we had some great teachers there . I don't know about you , but sometimes you look back and you just realize you didn't quite appreciate just how good they were until maybe some years later . But we had great teachers . I was very fortunate there .

Matt 12:00

Wow , it makes all the difference in the world , doesn't it ?

Alistair 12:03

Absolutely . And then I was very lucky , I got into classical saxophone playing big time , went into the Royal College of Music in London . That's kind of right opposite the Royal Albert Hall . Most people will have seen the Royal Albert Hall in London , the big round concert hall . I was right opposite there and what a place to go to for three years to study music , where some of the great composers have been to that place , and that was an amazing opportunity to go study there . And so basically fast forward and what I do now is mostly teaching . I do a fair amount of gigs playing anything from one to one to .

Alistair 12:48

I've played with some of the top orchestras in this country doing classical saxophone solos , like Pictures at an Exhibition and that kind of thing , Bolero , Bizet those things , you know that feature saxophone . And then I run my own . It's actually a nine piece saxophone group and yeah , they're called Equinox . You can see them on YouTube . There's a bit of Equinox on YouTube and stuff and that's a nice bunch of people and we do anything from Bach to jazz arrangements and yeah , it's brilliant . And then I'm teaching at home and , as you know , I've got into my kind of content creation quite a lot in the last couple of years , particularly so that keeps me busy . Anyway , enough about me . What about you , Matt ? Tell us your kind of brief history .

Matt 13:41

Well , I started , trumpet was my first instrument and there was no second option there . I wanted to be Herb Alpert and Al Hirt . We talked about it a little bit and when you interviewed me you know my background but that was a big inspiration just hearing the sound of the Tijuana Brass and Al Hirt playing Java and those pop hits . They were actual pop hits that were on the radio at the time . Should we date ourselves Early '60s ? But that was sort of , I would say , towards the end of any kind of instrumental music that made the charts . There were a few odd ones , like Mangione with Feels So Good and Herb Alpert with Rise , maybe a couple Kenny G things later in the later decades . But yeah , I mean that was more common back in the earlier days . So I guess I'm glad I caught the tail end of that and was able to hear that my parents used to play a lot of good music at the house and I guess I suppose they played Herb Alpert and that was it . But I had to wait until fifth grade .

Matt 14:44

Here in the US that's usually when the band instruments start . So that would be what , maybe 12 years old , Right , Something like that Fifth grade . So they start . Sometimes the stringed instruments start a year earlier in fourth grade , Right . But for us , the brass , I knew exactly what I wanted to play . I had some friends who were a year older than me they both played trumpet , and I just couldn't wait to start . So that was that , and then I ended up going to well , I had a great high school . I talked a little bit about James Warrick in high school . He was a great teacher and went on to do great things at a place called New Trier High School up by Chicago .

Alistair 15:24

And you did some trombone , didn't you ? Did you do some trombone , yeah ?

Matt 15:28

In high school we needed trombone in the marching band and I had a friend . I'll mention his name , Blake Schlabach . But anyway he was a big inspiration in high school . He also played trumpet . He was in the drum corps and a very advanced player . He was well into college level , even in high school . So I played trombone for a couple of years in the middle , there in secondary instrument . I still played the trumpet all the way through , but I kind of taught myself that instrument and played a little in one of the jazz bands on that as well as trumpet . And we had a couple of jazz bands in high school . Believe it or not , there was actually two full big bands in our high school . Our poor director , Jim Warrick , was there Monday night and Wednesday night for one band , Tuesday and Thursday for the other band , and then , oh you know , I mean Fridays were , sometimes it was marching band and the games . And oh my god , I don't know how these teachers do this . They just give their lives to us .

Alistair 16:24

But you know , I sometimes wonder . I sometimes wonder these guys , you know , I just hope they realize how much and how many people they've influenced , right ? Because I mean , look at the amount of people that they've influenced by giving us those opportunities when we were that age . It's just incredible .

Matt 16:43

You know , and it multiplies out too . You know you've influenced geometric numbers of people .

Alistair 16:49

Yes .

Matt 16:49

So it's just one person made a massive difference in the world . It's really amazing , yeah it is .

Matt 16:55

So then I went to college and studied music . At first I was in music education and I kind of decided I didn't really want to go that direction , decided I wanted to get into audio recording . So I changed schools , ended up at Ohio State University here a huge school here in the States , and the audio recording program was a little bit too much math for me . So I got changed again and I ended up with a degree in jazz studies . Wow , so just I was happy to get something and move on . And then out of college I worked in a recording studio doing some editing and dubbing of tapes for radio , mostly radio stations . They went out all over the country .

Matt 17:38

And during that time I was playing in all occasion bands , weddings , dances , country clubs , whatever . What have you - Similar to what I was doing ? Right , yeah , yeah , and doing that and eventually kind of led my own group . That was like that for many years , playing bass , guitar , playing trumpet , singing a little bit of keyboards , just kind of doing a lot of things , sure , arranging . And during that time in 1985 , I started Patchman Music , which I still am doing now , this many years later .

Alistair 18:13

Yes , which is the first time I knew of you through Patchman .

Matt 18:17

Yes , so that started out as a sound design company just doing patches for keyboards like the old Casio CZ-101 and the Korg P Poly -800 . Those were my first two that I believe I worked on and then later on the DX7 and things . But eventually I got into wind controllers in the late '80s , around 1989 . And kind of specialized in that , even though I still do the keyboard type things as well , Still doing that and developing sounds , and both of us are helping consult with some big companies on commercial wind controllers and yes , yeah .

Alistair 18:55

Trying to help the cause , I suppose . Yeah , absolutely . Well , having a lot of fun on the way right , it's been great . Oh , yeah , oh yeah , it's enjoyable .

Matt 19:03

I really love the instruments and maybe we could talk a little bit about why would somebody want to play a wind controller . I guess that's an important thing . Might be a good place to start

What is a Wind Controller?

Matt 19:14

. Well , even before that , what is a wind controller ? Right , right , what is a wind controller ? Yeah , I would say it's an electronic instrument , generally electronic , I guess it's always electronic that is fingered like an acoustic instrument such as a saxophone or trumpet , and it's basically electronic and it would be either controlling an external synthesizer through a MIDI connection or a USB connection , or wireless , and that could be on a MIDI synthesizer , a MIDI module , or even a soft synth that runs on a computer , or all the way down to an iPhone or an Android these days .

Alistair 19:53

Yes , yes .

Matt 19:54

And some wind controllers , of course , have built-in sounds , built-in synthesizer inside the instrument . Those are the later instruments . Have these now .

Alistair 20:01

Yeah , yeah , and I mean I know your history of all of this is probably way more in depth than mine , but I'm right in saying , aren't I that ? So it was Nyle Steiner that first experimented with , basically , the breath control .

Matt 20:19

And , interestingly enough , even though woodwind type wind controllers are seemingly the most popular and abundant these days , the first wind controller that he made was a brass type wind controller called the EVI , which is an electronic valve instrument , and it was only several years later that woodwind players wanted him to make a version for them , which he later called the EWI , or electronic wind instrument or woodwind instrument , electronic woodwind instrument .

Alistair 20:47

Yes .

Matt 20:48

And of course , on the other camp there was a , if you're looking at maybe the first commercial wind controllers , the other camp would be Bill Bernardi's Lyricon , which actually possibly came out even a little earlier than the Nyle Steiner EVI . I don't know the exact year , maybe I can see it here . I would say maybe '73 , '74 . Does that sound about right ?

Alistair 21:14

Right , yep , the Lyricon one sounds right yeah , but you know , as we've discussed before , not a lot of people knew about them back then . Right , it was a pretty small community , so it's been quite a time . Then what until so I first heard I first got into a Yamaha WX7 , I believe in about 1985 .

Matt 21:43

So just to back you up , the WX7 would have probably been '87 or so .

Alistair 21:48

Okay , cool , right , that's when it came out .

Matt 21:49

I believe late '87 , maybe '88 . Yep .

Alistair 21:52

But I can remember knowing of the early Akai models then , but I don't think they were easily available here in the UK At least I never saw any . So my first experience of the wind controller was actually a WX7 . That was my first experience .

Matt 22:11

Yeah , that's probably not surprising . Yamaha is a huge company and has a big reach worldwide , maybe a lot more than Akai did at that time . So , yeah , I remember going to stores here about that time maybe 1988 or so when the EWI 1000 and EVI 1000 came out . Yeah , same time as the WX7 . Basically , they all came out about the same year 1987 was the year , right , but I remember going to a store and I remember seeing one time I saw somebody . One of the stores had an EVI 1000 . I think that's probably my only connection to any wind controller .

Matt 22:46

Like you say , even over here it wasn't very widely distributed . No , of course there was no internet , that's right . The only way you could know about it would be through Keyboard Magazine or Electronic Musician Magazine or the Sax magazines . Yeah , so yeah . And then you go to a store and you look at this thing nobody knows what it is . Chances of finding a salesman there , that , or saleswoman that could play it , or almost zero , exactly . And then who's going to want to put it in their mouth , right , yeah , exactly , so yeah , a really hard sell without YouTube , I mean sadly in terms of the possibility of finding someone in a store .

Alistair 23:28

Even now it's still pretty unlikely you'll find anybody that knows very much about it or would be able to .

Matt 23:35

Yeah , it's kind of funny . Even now , it's pretty much the same deal . It's guitar players and keyboard players . So thank God for YouTube , yes , and some of the internet groups , because , yeah , that's probably how most people learn about it , unless they go out and see a group that has somebody playing one .

Alistair 23:51

Yeah , and so you know , fast forward . Now , what are we ? So we've got maybe what six or seven different er phones , if you include the kind of Japanese or Chinese colored versions .

Matt 24:04

Colored versions yeah yeah , that sounds about right . Yeah , it's quite a few , kind of amazing We've got , of course .

Alistair 24:12

We've got the EWI 4000 , 5000 and the Solo . Oh , there's the T and h , , , , , yeah . And then we've got other things , like the Sylphyo , which has been pretty successful I know a lot of people have done that and then the Berglund Instruments , of course , has been taken very seriously by players as well . Absolutely . That seems to be very well received and we probably missed out one . You know that Synthophone right , the soft Synthophone , yes , synthophone yeah .

Matt 24:50

Martin Hurni in Switzerland , Bern , Switzerland . Yeah , he's been developing the Synthophone since , I would say , since MIDI came out and he was one of the early pioneers in this field . Really great guy . I've gotten to know him pretty well over the years and , yeah , the Synthophone he wrote his own code and it's basically an actual alto saxophone that he puts electronics inside of and he puts a hole sensor , magnetic type sensors in the switches and the keys to control the MIDI , and then it just puts a MIDI signal out and then you connect it to a synth or a soft synth . Yeah , and he's one of the pioneers as well .

Matt 25:29

We should give him credit , for sure . But it's funny , you know , if you look at the companies , it's mostly it was mostly a ai and Yamaha for decades and then Roland really came in big time with their Aerophone and they went from nothing to having , I would say , maybe the kind of the lead in the field right now . So those three and then the rest of the field is more it's like homebrew type projects like Berglund and Martin Hurni's Synthophone . Yes , Martin Hurni's Synthophone , Softwind Synthophone .

Alistair 26:00

But it almost seemed to me that when Roland got going with the Aerophones , it kind of it seemed to kind of bring things to the fore again and we started to see more , as you say , smaller companies coming out with their wind instruments as well .

Alistair 26:15

So in what the last kind of six years or seven years or so , there seems to have been quite an explosion right .

Alistair 26:22

There's been a lot of activity and it's been really nice to see , and I think the communities work very well . There's a lot of enthusiasm out there , and I know that one of the reasons for us to do this podcast is that , along with more people getting into the wind synthesizers , it can be difficult for people to find the right information , correct information Sometimes people in Facebook pages and things . They can get really excited and they've maybe found something that might just work for them or something , but to get really good information . That's partly why we decided to do this podcast , isn't it ? So hopefully , we can make things clear for people and we're going to encourage the listeners to send us questions as well . We'll leave some details where you can get in touch with us and part of the podcast will be that you'll be able to ask us questions and we'll do our best to answer them as accurately and as fully as we can and hopefully no , let's say slightly confusing comments that you sometimes can get on the internet pages .

Matt 27:39

Yeah , that's sort of our idea . When we first talked about it , we were looking at the forums and we see a lot of misinformation or old information or incorrect information and we wanted to have a place to go where somebody not to toot our horn too much , but we kind of know what they're talking about we could actually hopefully answer the questions with an accurate answer , yeah , and kind of dispel some of the some of the rumors and the false you know , absolutely false stories that are out there . So , yeah , we're hoping that this will be a place that people can come and get some real , real good advice and information and hopefully be a very enjoyable experience , and we hope to do this . We plan to do this every month , sure .

Alistair 28:24

Yeah .

Matt 28:25

And it'll be great .

Matt 28:26

Yeah , I wanted to go back a little bit to what you were saying about the companies and I have noticed , like you say , in the last let's say maybe three years , there's been an explosion of more or less Chinese type wind controllers .

Matt 28:40

Have you noticed that there's I can , I can name I don't know six , seven , eight companies now that are making wind , wind controllers to various levels of quality ? Let's say yes , yeah , and I'm doing some very critical things that you know , which we can talk about at some point , because I , you know , I think that that can be a big problem if somebody says , oh , I want to buy that wind controller , it's only $180 . Yeah , brand new , you know , and they get it and it's just , it sounds horrible and there's no expression and the , the keys don't have a like a , you know , a fingering e de glitch glitch algorithm in it , so you're getting all these bad notes in between your scale and there's no bite sensor , so you can't do vibrato and you know it's almost better . Well , it's usually better to spend a little more money and get something that's properly designed .

Alistair 29:30

You've certainly got to do your research carefully , right ? So it's

Exploring Wind Synthesizers and Their Benefits

Alistair 29:34

, it's . It's some digging on the internet . There's a fair bit on YouTube and and again , you know , hopefully this will be a place where people can glean some information if they're thinking about going into a wind synthesizer or , you know , if they already play . Hopefully we're going to be talking about things that will interest the kind of seasoned player as well .

Matt 29:55

Yeah , and hopefully we can point out some of the things that I mean . We don't want a bad mouth , we're not here to bad mouth any companies or any products or anything but there are things that are kind of important and and we can at least point out and say you know , ok , you can buy this and get it and it's , you know , you can learn a little bit and maybe move on to something more . Sure , you can save your pennies and spend $50 more and get something that's going to last you maybe another five years over this original device . That's just , you know , really super basic , sure . So that's something we can , really we can , talk about , you know , and why maybe something like the Aerophone 20 , AE-20 or AE-30 , or why they're such a good choice . They're just so powerful .

Alistair 30:37

Yeah , because they're so expandable , right . I mean there's , there's all those tone packs and I mean there's a whole heap of sounds in there . To begin with , you can get into the editor and yeah , it's . It's just like you're never going to run out of stuff you can do on something like an Aerophone , yeah .

Matt 30:54

Yeah , and hopefully we can point out why that , what that is , that's important and why they look . Of course you know they cost a little bit more money than these show bottom line ones , but there's a reason for that and in the long run it's it's well worth it , in my opinion . I always tell people when they're hey , what should I buy ? And I say , well , what's your budget ? And I say , well , come back to me in six months , save your pennies , can come back when you have a little bit more and you'll be happier . Sure , because if you get the , if you get something that's just unsatisfying to play , that could turn you off permanently Of course Instruments .

Matt 31:27

They did Well , these things are horrible and I don't want to play with these . They sound bad , they don't respond , and then , and that's it . You know , whereas you could have , with proper guidance and the proper instrument , you could end up with something that's very satisfying and you could play for the rest of your life . Sure , so that's my goal is to help people understand that , and Absolutely .

Alistair 31:49

And that that leads us nicely on to you know why would somebody want to play a Windsynth in the first place ? I mean , you know , I mean there's the obvious , you know it's it looks kind of interesting to people . But you know , there's a lot of possibilities in terms of . I mean , for me it was very much it . It actually crossed my interest .

Alistair 32:16

So something like a WX7 , when I first started playing it it kind of had a saxophone like layout for the keys , but it also , you know it had all the kind of internal kind of synth sound . No , it wasn't internal on a WX7 . You had a , you had a module right . But you know it had the possibility to make those cool synth sounds which as a saxophone player , you know we , we , we didn't have kind of access to that , like maybe a keyboard player could do . But of course it the the main thing about it .

Alistair 32:50

It had that extra control , the , the breath controller , which you know we're going to talk about that in a little while why that's so important . But it just makes things so much more expressive and that's sometimes , you know , where some of those cheaper Win synths don't do so well . They don't have the bite and breath control right , but so primarily for me it was about accessing more sounds . You know , it was cool that I could , you know , play a violin or an organ , or you know , one of the first demos I remember hearing it was WX7 . And it was Sal Gallina , right ? Have I got the name right ?

Matt 33:29

Yes , was actually the consultant to Yamaha that designed the WX7. , so that's why that instrument is so good and it still holds up today . Yeah , many years later . It's a what ? 13 plus 24 , 37 years later . Yeah , that that instrument is still viable and no problem with it If you can find one that works properly . Yeah , but it was designed by somebody who played saxophone and understood electronics , and so you have a great instrument .

Alistair 33:59

Yeah , and his demo . I remember him doing a demo with like an electric guitarist and they were kind of trading phrases . It just blew me away . I mean , I was just , I couldn't sit still watching this thing . It was some kind of trade show that they were doing in London , I think , and I managed to get there to see it and wow , that was it . I was absolutely sold from that moment .

Matt 34:23

Oh , that'll inspire anybody .

Alistair 34:25

So you actually saw live live ? ? did , I did and it was just blew me away .

Matt 34:30

It was great , I say I've heard you know all kinds of great things about him . I actually made a tribute page to him . If you just search out , it's spelled S-A-L and then I believe it's G-A-L-L-I-N-A , galena , and then Sal Galena tribute Galena patchman music . It'll come Patchman Music Google and you can see the page and I actually have those audio demos on that page so you can read about him and hear those demos that you're talking about . That he did on some of the old Yamaha TX sound modules . I think he was using the TX81Z at the time .

Alistair 35:05

That's the one I started with . You know , we had to load sounds in from a cassette , didn't we ? Yep .

Matt 35:12

That was one way to do it . You could do it cassette . You could do a MIDI , dump into it too , oh gosh . Or type them in by hand if you want to .

Alistair 35:19

Really do it the hard way , useful with the days . So what about other reasons why you would play a wind ?

Matt 35:26

synth . Yeah , so that's a great question . That's one of the top questions on my . I should mention anybody that's interested in learning about wind controllers . I have a really nice wind controller FAQ page . Again , just search out wind controller FAQ . It'll probably show up at the top of the Google . You could put Patchman in there if you want to .

Alistair 35:48

Yeah , there's a load of material on there . There might be some others . It's great .

Matt 35:52

But this is a huge document . But one of the top questions is why play a wind controller ? And I get asked this a lot when I talk to potential customers and there's a list there , one of , like you mentioned . I think the top reason was to just have alternative sounds . Yep , you know a sax player standing there playing with a dance band . There's not a saxophone in every song , so what's he or she to do ? Play tambourine , I guess . Or you can get a wind controller and you could play a clarinet part , or you can play a little brass section in the background , a chord maybe , or even take over for the bass and let the bass player sing , or whatever .

Alistair 36:30

Or a string line .

Matt 36:31

Yeah , yeah , nice string line . It's a little tricky to do section type sounds . People always ask , oh , I want to be a four horn section and it's like , well , you can do that in unison or octaves , but to do it with chords is a little tricky . It's fun , but you have to kind of , you have to really dig in to be able to do that type of thing .

Matt 36:53

But if you're just thinking like a unison type horns or octaves works great with the proper sounds . I have a list of several here . We could maybe just touch on it . But , folks , if you want to check the FAQ , we go into detail on that . Another one was just to provide alternatives to prospective employers . So say , you have a little jazz quartet , like I did , I had a jazz trio , jazz quartet , even a jazz duo , and you could say , hey , we can play for your wedding , we can play for the dinner before the main band comes in , and I can do flute , I can do a trumpet and a little acoustic guitar sound and keyboard player will play the keyboards . So we have this wide range of product that we can offer . So that makes you more marketable and you can make a better living .

Alistair 37:44

And musical theater is another one right , because very often now musical theater bands , you know they're maybe trying to go to smaller number of players and they tend to have more keyboard players . Well , you know , if you're going to have to go down that route , you know to occasionally play an odd oboe line , or you know a tiny bit of piccolo , or sometimes you know you can actually put that in pretty successfully as long as you get the balance and settings right .

Matt 38:10

There's some tricks to that that we can . We can get that's right .

Alistair 38:13

You can make a good job of it . You know , and I've had people sitting in wind bands and things where they've been filling in like a kind of you know contrabassoon part or something , and you know those things they can be pretty successful .

Matt 38:27

Well , that kind of goes back to the maybe the original reason for at least for Nile Steiner to develop his EVI and EWI . He was using them his own invention , these instruments in studios , in Hollywood studios , for soundtracks of movies . And again , if you I did a tribute page to Nyle Steiner . If you type out Nyle and Nyle Steiner S-T-E-I-N-E-R homepage , let's say you'll see his page and I have lists of these , just unbelievable list of movies that he played on and Apocalypse Now , Fatal Attraction , huge films huge films and also television shows and recordings , albums and CDs .

Matt 39:15

So that's just so . He was able to provide these instruments being one musician to a composer in the studio and say , you know , okay , yeah , I can play the flute flute sound or a synthetic sound or , if you want to , you know , an Indian flute kind of thing or something , and he was able to provide that it with one musician . So that was .

Alistair 39:37

That was one of the original reasons is to provide more alternatives to prospective employers , as I had mentioned a lot of people , a lot of people take up a win since Um , because they can practice quietly right or silently absolutely

Playing a Wind Controller

Alistair 39:52

.

Matt 39:52

Yep , that's a big , big reason , I know , and in Japan it's a kind of a bigger deal because I know they , their quarters , are a little bit closer there than maybe .

Alistair 40:01

Yeah , people are more people in apartments and things , I guess yeah .

Matt 40:04

Yeah , so a lot of they there are . The wind controllers are quite popular in Japan , I think mainly for that reason is that they can play music quietly and not disturb other people .

Alistair 40:13

Yeah , I mean I even you know , here I've done a lot of my wind synth practicing at night when everybody else is in bed . I've just put my headphones on and you know I can easily play for two hours just quietly to myself and yeah , two o'clock in the morning , I'll think maybe I should get into bed , right , yeah , but one of the main reasons I play wind controller that I enjoy now so much , is Just being able to physically play it .

Matt 40:40

You know , to physically play a trumpet is it's a , it's a , it's a workout . It's more demanding on the embouchure , yeah yeah , it's very muscular and you really have to practice a lot to keep those muscles going . And I just don't have the time for that . I did when I was in college , but I'm more and more . I just I just want to play music . So now that I've learned how to play the instrument I can , I can just concentrate on the music and not so much the physical side of it . Of course I'm still controlling the instrument . I , you know you still have to be a musician to play it . It doesn't play itself .

Alistair 41:09

Sure , and we can play , as we said about it , playing any other instrument , the the instrument sound , the we can also play from any music , right , because we can transpose Something like an Aerophone . We can easily transpose into any key . So just one of my knob if you want to buy a piece of flute music or clarinet music or whatever you want you , you can Start with anything , right almost I would say almost every wind controller has a transpose feature .

Matt 41:38

Some have only certain ones E flat , F , B flat , C but most of them have a chromatic transposition . You can go anywhere you want . You could play a Play a part that's in B or C sharp , and just just turn it up a half step and you're you're playing in C , but you're sounding in C sharp . Or if you want to play an E flat alto part , you just set it to E flat and and play the E flat music .I like to play personally , being a trumpet player . No , you'll of course drop . It's a B flat instrument , but my whole career I played in C , so I could just play off a lead sheet with the keyboard player and just stand right next to me . Sure , sure , sure , sure .

Alistair 42:12

I enjoy that very much and you know the other . The other great thing about it is , of course , when you do take it out and play Boy , do you get asked questions about it . I mean , how many times I've done a concert , you know , and I've I've been playing kind of big pieces on the saxophone or with my saxophone ensemble . You can pretty much guarantee that the thing that people come up to me and want to know afterwards , what was that thing you played , what was that kind of electronic thing you played ? That's the one that gets questions right , because I guess people just don't see them so often and they're really intrigued so you kind of get noticed if you play a wind synth .

Matt 42:50

Oh , yeah , that's a great , great way to well . It's great way for guys to pick up girls , at least to start a conversation, ?

Alistair 42:58

Yeah .

Matt 42:59

But yeah , I get you every gig . I would say . Somebody will come up and say what is that ? It's great . Hopefully they think it sounds good . I , there's also the people that are just interested in the novelty of it , and you know , I wonder , I hope they like the music . Yeah , you know , I'm up here just playing music . I , you know , to me it's just an instrument like any other instrument .

Alistair 43:17

Yeah , yeah , it's an instrument in its own right . I mean , although we have EVI and an EWI , you know , and there are similarities with the , the way that we play those , in terms of how it's similar to our acoustic instrument , you have got to treat them like a new instrument . You start off from a place of knowing at least kind of where to put your fingers , but you need to practice it to get the best sound , just like any other instrument . Right ? You've got to spend time at that's . You're not going to get the best from it .

Matt 43:49

Absolutely it's . It's tricky , it's not like having a trumpet in your hand and that's all you need with the wind controller . You have to have the wind controller . You have to have the right wind controller that has the proper features and design properly and does what it's supposed to do . Then you have to have good sounds . You know a lot of the sounds that maybe come with these aren't , aren't as good as they could be , to put it nicely , and so then you need good sounds . You need a proper wind controller , you need to practice on it . Of course you need an amplifier . Some wind controllers have a small speaker built in , but they're usually very small , maybe an inch or two . So you need to have a nice sounding amplifier because that's part of the instrument as well . That's essentially the , the acoustic bell of a of an instrument . So the is s as important as the sounds also and that that probably leads us quite nicely into .

Alistair 44:42

You know , we said we'd talk , maybe just briefly , as a kind of last topic here about breath control and you know , I know for both of us one of our pet things is is to kind of reinforce this idea that we need to be aware of how the breath control Should be used to get the best possible outcome from all the sounds , how it changes the sounds that we play depending on how much air you push through and also the articulation that you use .

Alistair 45:17

Because you know , on some of these sounds on on , particularly on the Aerophone , if you , if you start the sound with a tongued action , you get a very different sound out of that too . If you do a breath start on the sound and of course as you push harder and crescendo on the sound , you're going to be opening up filters or or affecting the sound and modulating in some way . So we I think we both kind of feel that we do hear sounds sometimes played the Aerophone or a wind synth where perhaps people have ended up tending to play everything kind of really loud . And then the question is well , maybe you could just do that on a keyboard . You're not really taking full advantage of the great thing about a wind controller which is got that infinite amount of breath control right

Why Play a Wind Controller?

Alistair 46:06

.

Matt 46:06

That's what we should be really concentrating on right , it's easy enough to play a wind controller really badly and to make it to make it sound bad . Any any good player and many bad players can easily do that . So , yeah , it's easy to play and blow . Just blow really hard all the time or have the settings wrong or have a sound that's not responsive to breath and play it and it's not gonna sound any very much different than a keyboard player playing it on a little , you know , inexpensive keyboard . So part of the what I had said having a system is that the wind controller , but also the sounds exactly sounds are critical . Yeah , the sounds . That , which is something .

Matt 46:43

I have always specialized in creating sounds that people could use in their synthesizers that respond properly to breath , with a range of super quiet to , you know , to no sound , and super quiet and dark to blowing harder , where it gets louder and brighter and more edgy , yes , and then then you'll feel like you have response . Yeah , but yeah , if you just blow into a wind controller and just super , super hard , any sound , even if it's responsive to breath , will sound horrible because there's no , there's no variation there . And , yeah , good wind controllers . Just since this is our first episode , maybe we should explain that oh , a good wind controller will have a breath sensor in it . Yeah , that responds to your you're blowing . And then a good one will also have some kind of a bite sensor for the , for the jaw or for the lips . Yes , that usually usually is attached to like a pitch , yes , pitch sensing , so you can bend a note up and down , you could do a vibrato . So you've got two sensors in the mouthpiece . Some even have three . There's some that have like the berglings and the , some that have like the berglings and the .

Matt 47:48

Well , the Berglund , NuRAD u NuEVI EVI have a lip sensor , which was actually designed by Nyle Steiner back in '90s 90s .

Matt 47:56

Right , I actually w i i i N Nyle and and helped kind of figure out a way to access that sensor . He actually "extra what he calls an extra controller sensor in his EVI , which is essentially an embouchure sensor . But we had to figure out a way to how do you access that embouchure controller . So we made a little brass piece of metal that kind of bends a certain way and if you tilt your head or if you push the mouthpiece a little further into your mouth it'll touch the upper lip , and the more it touches the upper lip , the more signal it puts out , and that signal could be a growl or it could be a vibrato . You probably wouldn't do vibrato because you're going to be doing that with bite or some other method , but usually I like to assign it to growl . So some of the sounds in the VL70 turbo upgrade chip that I did for the Yamaha VL70 are assigned to growl , and so you press it against your lip and you get that nice expressive growl in addition to bending and vibrato and breath . So there's three sensors in that mouthpiece .

Alistair 48:59

Yeah .

Matt 48:59

So that's the mouthpiece and then on the hands there can be sensors . The Aerophone AE-30 has a right hand pressure sensor under the right hand thumb and you're holding the instrument . If you press into it a little bit it's a little rubberized pressure sensor . You can add a controller and it could be anything you can assign it to again vibrato or growl or panning or reverb level , whatever .

Matt 49:25

It's completely programmable . Times , way more than you'll ever need . So there's a sensor there and there's also on the EWI series . There's a bend sensors for the right hand thumb that you can . You press your thumb against one of the sensors , the bend , the pitch , will bend down . If you press it against the other one , it'll go up . And on the tip of the thumb there's a sensor for portamento . So if you touch it , the more you touch it , the slower the glide is from a note to another note .

Matt 49:54

It became the left hand on later models of the EWI . So , starting with the EWI 4000 , 5000 and the EWI Solo , I'll have it on the left hand thumb tip , left thumb , yes . And again , another thing I should mention is the Roland Aerophone AE-30 has an actual sensing of the body of the instrument . So you can tilt it to the left . Motion sensor , motion sensor , yeah . So you can tilt it to the left and you could have a MIDI one control going to the left . You can have one going to the right that's different from the left , or they could be the same . And then there's one for height . As you lift the instrument up above the horizon or just towards upwards , you can send another controller . So there's actually three controllers just based on the physical angle of the instrument on the Aerophone . There's a tremendous amount of versatility in these things .

Alistair 50:46

Yes , yes , and I mean I know , you know I do the iSax Academy stuff . I mean that's why I did the advanced course that I do , because there's so much in that instrument to try and understand . And all of those controllers that you've just mentioned , you know most of them can control multiple things simultaneously as well , can't they ? So there's a huge amount of stuff to learn and really get the best from the instrument . Just going back to the breath control issue , so just tying in with what you said , Matt , about you know really important to have a good speaker system so you can hear yourself properly , because if you don't hear yourself , probably you're more likely to blow too hard . Right , because you're just trying to hear yourself . And then the other thing for me is that I find I pretty much have to take each instrument as like a new instrument . If you're really going to get the best from each sound , you've got to practice it as if it's an individual instrument , absolutely .

Alistair 51:51

What does it play like when it blows soft ? How does it play when you attack the sound ? What is it like when you blow really hard ? What kind of other controls have been included ? Has it got a harmony ? Has it got a modulation sound in there . Has it got any kind of portamento sound ? So really , it's almost as if every sound that we play you have to practice as a separate instrument if you fully want to get out of it what you can , and it's great , it's great fun , but you've got to practice .

Matt 52:19

Oh , absolutely . There's different reasons to play wind controllers , as we mentioned . Some people want to sound synthetic and they don't want to sound like an acoustic instrument and emulate an acoustic instrument , which is fine . You can play a synthetic sound and it can be very non-responsive if you want just have kind of a real straight sound , and sometimes that's appropriate for the music . But on the other hand , some people want to emulate a clarinet as well , as you can possibly do it . Yes , so there's no wrong or right to this , and a lot of people will argue about it and get angry . You shouldn't be emulating a clarinet with that . Just play a real clarinet . I'm a trumpet player and I need to play a clarinet sound . Or , as a trumpet pla yer in my jazz trio , I always wanted to sound like Michael Brecker or Stan Getz

Alistair 53:04

Sure - or somebody .

Matt 53:05

And because I love the sound of a jazz sax . I just want to have that sound in my music , and I'm a trumpet player . But this allows me to approach the sound of a sax . I don't know if you'll fool anybody , even with the very best emulations , although I think you can get pretty darn close .

Alistair 53:23

In the right blend with the right blend of instruments . So , yeah , you can get pretty close now .

Matt 53:27

So there's a whole thing there should you emulate ? And if you do want to emulate , those are the hardest sounds to do because it's like painting . If you want to paint your mother's face or something or somebody who , everybody knows , the president's face or whatever , everybody knows exactly what that face looks like . So if you're off by a little bit , it's like no , that's not right , exactly .

Matt 53:53

If you're trying to do just a synth sound , there's really no model there and anything sounds good . So the hardest thing is to emulate and do a good emulation . And again what you're saying if you're going to emulate , then you have to study what those instruments can do . You need to know what the range is . What's the normal range they play in ? What types of cliched phrases do they play and note combinations ? How do they articulate all ?

Matt 54:20

of those things If you're playing a harmonica sound , there's a certain way you play , like jumping around an arpeggio , how they slide their lips across the harmonica . That's an arpeggio , whereas if you're playing a violin , you're going to have lots of vibrato . You're going to have glide in between the notes a lot of times a smooth transition , Guitars guitars are going to play a lot of hammer-ons and slides and things like that . So you have to know when to tongue and when to slur . So every instrument has its own set of parameters that you want to understand if you really want to do it right , Absolutely .

Alistair 54:59

So I think we've probably covered quite a little bit there for our first podcast . What we thought we would do

Our Track of the Month Recommendations

Alistair 55:07

is also include at the end of each one maybe something to send our listeners away . Go listen to this track , because this is something that's inspired us in some way . So my track we're going to call it Track of the Month my track of the month is actually Eli Benacot . So he did an album called "Hybrid Connections and the track I'm suggesting you might go listen to is actually "Hybrid . That's the name of the track .

Alistair 55:39

I think you know of Eli , right , Matt ? Oh , great guy , great player , yeah , lovely player . So the thing I wanted to just kind of emphasize here if you listen to his way of articulating , he plays pretty much all kind of synthesized sounds , but if you listen to the amount of expression that he gets out of his way of playing , it's really inspirational for me . He also he's got a really clever way of interacting on that album . Sometimes he'll be playing a lead line , but then it's with a guitarist and you know , Eli will change over to being kind of the bass player for a little while while the guitar plays . And of course , that's another great thing about the wind synth . You've got like eight octave range . So if you want to play something up top , you can do , but if you want to become the bass player , you can also do that . Have a listen to that Eli recording that is . It's amazing . I just love his sound on that and the whole album is great . How about you , matt Matt You got one to recommend .

Matt 56:40

Well , I guess I'm going to go with the kind of the classic quintessential Iwi solo . It seems like everybody kind of points to this video . It's Michael Brecker playing his EWI . Not sure what year it is I would say maybe early nineties , not sure , but it's called Michael Brecker plays EWI and it's on YouTube If you want to check it out . There's about 554,000 views on it right now . But it's a classic where he's actually playing the heck out of the instrument and he's looping . He's using a floor looper which is basically a recorder that just kind of loops around two bars or four bars continuously and you can layer different sounds . He changes sounds as a loop is going on . He'll change sounds and he'll play another instrument part on top of that . Then he'll play a second part that's in harmony with the one he just did and then he'll start a whole new loop and then to go back and forth between the loops .

Alistair 57:32

It's crazy .

Matt 57:33

And then improvise over the loop and you know it's crazy , but that's yeah . Michael Brecker plays EWI . Check that one out and you'll get an idea of the absolute amazing potential of a wind controller .

Alistair 57:44

Phenomenal , phenomenal video to watch . That is absolutely incredible .

Matt 57:50

And there's many more too by him on YouTube . Just check out Michael Brecker EWI , and it's he's the master , yes , phenomenal player . Yeah , if you're into this , you'll love it . Steps Ahead . The things he played with Steps Ahead are fantastic, too .

Alistair 58:05

So , everybody , thank you so much for joining us for this , our first podcast . I hope you've enjoyed it , hope you find it's useful and I hope you'll join us again next time . Make sure you subscribe to the podcast and you can find me online . There's a YouTube channel , which is the iSax Academy YouTube channel , and you'll find me on the website , which is www . isax . academy . And Matt , where do we find you ?

Matt 58:32

I guess the best place is just patchmanmusic . com and

How to Find us on the Internet

Matt 58:36

you can start from there . I've got links . There's a section at the top where it says wind controller links and that'll get you going . Yeah , and also we have a nice forum on the website too . If you want to learn about wind controllers , you should mention your forum as well . But I have one on my website . It's called wind controller forum and you go up there and just start an account and there's it's been up there for many , many years All kinds of great information .

Alistair 58:59

Yes , brilliant , and I think we'll sign off and we'll say goodbye . We'll see you next time , looking forward to next , next month . See you then , Matt Bye .

Matt 59:34

y y . .