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

And a very warm welcome to all of the listeners. We are on to episode seven of our podcast, and in this one we are going to be discussing some live performance tips. There's, as always, lots to get through and before we go further, let's welcome our co-host, Matt Traum. How are you doing this week, Matt?

Matt Traum: 0:59

Thanks, Alistair, doing great, looking forward to this. We thought it might be a nice interesting topic for people, for live musicians that are out there playing week to week with groups and different size groups, and we both have many years of experience and maybe we can offer a few tips for people on this episode regarding that.

Alistair Parnell: 1:17

Yeah, absolutely so. We plan to discuss everything from the kind of solo performer, maybe, you know, playing with a backing track or something, then perhaps looking into small group setup and then even beyond that into bigger setups, maybe even if you're playing with something like a wind orchestra, or you're doing some playing with a musical theatre setup, which is actually becoming more and more popular now for Windsynth players to be taking part in that. So plenty to look at and we hope this is going to be valuable for you. Just remember, before we get started, feel free to shoot us a message. There are links below in the podcast notes to get in touch with us. Any question that you like that's Winsynth related doesn't have to be specifically Aerophone.

Alistair Parnell: 2:08

Whatever you like, please send us a message and we'll do our very best to reply to you, okay so let's think now, firstly, then, about some of the, if you like, more practical things, because, as you know, Matt, it's really important to do your preparation, do your practice, get all your material together, whatever you need to do with rehearsals, but at the end of the day, it's down to those very basic practicalities first that you need to make sure you've thought about. So things like you know how you're going to set up on stage, what kind of equipment you're going to use, what amplifiers, about cabling, all that sort of thing. So perhaps we'll tackle some of that first. And top of my list, Matt, then, is you know how we set up on stage and you know where we place our monitor speaker, how we do all of that? Now, you've done a fair bit of playing with small groups, right, as far as I know, like a trio or quartet set situation. Is that right, Matt?

Matt Traum: 3:22

Yeah, I've pretty much been in the similar situation most of the time when I played out with wind controllers and that was either a three or four piece, sometimes a two piece jazz combo featuring wind controller. That's all I played in these groups. I didn't play any Well, I played some other instruments, but mostly wind controller. And then the other group I was in was more of a dance band, weddings and things like that, where it was like a larger six-piece group. In both groups I was the only horn player. There's a third group also. I did some backing up for a singer here for many years and he would sometimes have other horn players playing acoustic horn players. Most of the times it was by myself, but there were a few occasions where I played with another trumpet player or another sax player or both.

Alistair Parnell: 4:09

I guess the most times when I've used my wind synthesizer. I've done quite a lot of solo. You know things like weddings and functions and things where I've done with backing tracks. I do quite a bit of playing accompanying some singers, various little singing groups and things, and one guy in particular we do a kind of duo thing. He sings, I play piano and then sometimes we'll have a track and then I'll swap on to wind synth or saxophone, so, and then a little bit of musical theatre stuff which I really enjoy doing. And I've done some slightly larger things I've used it in. I have a saxophone, nonnet, and I usually play sopranino and soprano saxophone in that, but occasionally we bring out the wind synth in that as well. So between us we've got quite a lot of variations. So let's think firstly, Matt, what do you do for the idea of sort of setting up a speaker? Do you like to have it sort of fairly near to you? Do you have it on the floor? Do you have it raised up? What's your setup generally for that?

Matt Traum: 5:25

Well, I've always told people to try to get a be in control of their monitor. That's very important In some. Some cases you can use the monitor as your main PA speaker going out to the audience. For example, the Bose systems. You know those towers? Yeah, I had one of the original. I think it was the PAS system with the L1 bass subwoofers great system. And the nice thing about that was that that tower was taller than I am. It's probably six, seven feet tall, so you could put that behind you and so it would be your monitor as well as your PA. And I guess that's the idea with those personal amplifier systems. The PAS, it's a monitor and a PA in one, and the idea is that each musician on stage might have one of those and they would control their sound just like they would if they were playing acoustically in a room yeah, sort of mixing themselves. So I've always liked to have the monitor behind me, or at ear level. That's always nice, it's a little clearer that way, I think. Yeah, or at ear level, that's always nice, it's a little clearer that way, I think.

Matt Traum: 6:28

The other amp that I used was the old Yamaha MS60S. They called them powered monitor speakers. I think those are real. They're small and I would use two of those for a nice little stereo setup. I would have two of those behind me angled upwards slightly, maybe a 45-degree angle upwards in stereo, and that having stereo really adds a lot.

Matt Traum: 6:48

Other times when I was playing in a larger group like the six piece group, I would feed the mains. I would have a separate feed on my mixer that I could control the feed to the main mixer and then it would go out to the PA in front of the band. But I would also have my own monitor under my own control as well the mixer. I had had separate output levels for each of those so I could control my own monitor.

Matt Traum: 7:10

Ultra important to be able to control your own monitor with a wind controller, since wind controllers generally don't make sound on their own. A few of them have speakers built in, but for the most part they don't make much sound or any sound unless you're plugged into an amp. They don't make much sound or any sound unless you're plugged into an amp. And if you're trusting somebody to send you a monitor and something's wrong or they don't know there's something's wrong and you can't hear yourself, you're in big trouble with the wind controller because there's nothing coming out. In the case of the larger six-piece stance band, I would be feeding the mains and I would have a monitor, in that case, in front of me, facing upwards towards me. Those are the basic setups I've dealt with over my career.

Alistair Parnell: 7:50

How about you? Actually, mine is pretty similar because I use those Bose the L1 compact. I think they've actually been replaced now with something called a L8 or something or L16. There is, I think there's, two larger setups now. I've found them very good. I have two of those.

Alistair Parnell: 8:08

It's great if you're doing just a solo gig with a backing track, you can just take one of those, have it behind you so you can hear your backing track and you can hear your wind synth nicely. I use it for my saxophone as well. I have a little clip-on mic for the sax. So that's a really nice little setup. And just as you say, you've got the at least the kind of tweeter. Part of the speaker is right, kind of at your head height and I like that right behind me. I don't seem to have problems with feedback If I'm using the sax mic on that. It seems to be pretty good for that. And then I've got two of them.

Alistair Parnell: 8:48

So if I do a slightly bigger gig, like when I'm doing the stuff with the singer or whatever, we might be in a bigger room, a bigger venue.

Alistair Parnell: 8:56

Two of those again set back a little bit, usually, unless we start getting some problems with feedback and then with the singer's mic we might have to kind of push that a little bit, usually, unless we start getting some problems with feedback, and then with the singer's mic we might have to kind of push that a little bit further forward. But in that case I'll usually have either some small monitor speaker next to me or in here monitors, which we will probably talk about, um, a little bit later. So, absolutely agree, you've got to have control of your own sound, and I think it sounds like maybe you're the same, matt. It's totally dependent on the sound man. But you just have these worries that the sound guy well, might not have much experience of mixing a wind synth perhaps and so or might not be expecting certain sounds to come out at a certain time. So it's nice to have as much control of your own personal sound as you can and have it close to your own head right.

Matt Traum: 9:52

Yeah, I think I found that hearing that little high end like you mentioned the tweeter, you know, having that little high end, being able to hear that really clearly, really makes a difference, because that's where the attack is when you're playing a wind controller and the breath and the tonguing You're hearing that and that really affects the timing of your playing. I find Absolutely so. It's super important to have a nice clear monitor I can't stress that enough and also be in control of that level, if you can you know for yourself, control of that level, if you can you know for yourself. I would also use, as far as the overall volume with both groups that I would play in, I would have a volume pedal also. We can maybe talk about that as well as I'm playing.

Matt Traum: 10:34

You know, if I'm playing a section sound, I'm in the background behind a singer I'll have it set, but if I need to play a solo, I'll I'll mute maybe the two of the synths and the third synth will be my solo saxophone or trombone sound or whatever, and then I can push the pedal up a little bit and get more volume very quickly and I don't have to reach down. I found that to be very useful and then you can go back to your section playing, but if you need a boost, that's a great way to do it. The volume pedals that I was using was the Yamaha FC9, I believe it was. Oh, yes, and was the Yamaha FC9, I believe it was and you know it's a nice little powered active pedal.

Matt Traum: 11:07

So it has a preamp in it. It's stereo in, stereo out. You can either run a nine volt battery or an AC adapter into it. But having an active pedal, the sound was clear and it didn't get muffled as you come down in volume. Sometimes with passive pedals that are designed for other purposes. Yes, if you start to reduce the volume sometimes with passive pedals that are designed for other purposes If you start to reduce the volume, the impedance changes and the tone actually changes too and it gets muffly. And that was a nice pedal. There's other ones out there that are active. Behringer even makes one. Now that is kind of a clone of the Yamaha. I have one of those. I haven't actually tried it, but I assume it's probably pretty good. It's not terribly complicated to make an active volume pedal.

Alistair Parnell: 11:43

And you can get some nice little compact pedals. Now my latest rig is actually. In fact, I was going to ask you, Matt, do you use any kind of outboard effects or do you tend to really just use what's on board your, your either your wind synth or your sound module, Because nowadays we've got plenty of options there. We don't really need an external kind of effects module. We used to right, I remember my original setup with a WX7 and the what TX81Z, Z as you guys would call it, and then you needed a. You probably needed some kind of external kind of effects unit if you wanted some effects, because I don't think that unit had effects on it, did it, uh?

Matt Traum: 12:29

The 81z. No, not, there were no digital effects. Yeah, it's I. Even with units with effects, I I like to have a separate effects box to feed multiple modules into. If I have two or three modules, it, um, it kind of unifies the sound. You, if you want, you could reduce the effects coming out of each individual module and then run them all into your mixer and then have an effect send and bring up some reverb and delay, but it's affecting everything at once. It kind of makes the layered sounds blend together better and sound more unified in my opinion. So yes, I do prefer having an an effects also, even if there's effects built in. I was using the Boss SE-70 for many years, which is a half rack digital effects box, and it was just did everything. It did pitch shifting and delays and reverbs, and really good quality too. It sounded wonderful. It's a nice little box. You can find them on ebay and, yeah, you know the used market, they're not terribly expensive yeah.

Alistair Parnell: 13:25

So I've used as a kind of more mobile setup. I've been experimenting lately with using the Boss. There's an RC-600, you know looper pedal, but it actually has quite a decent set of effects and you can actually change them from the front panel pretty quickly so you can set up the pedals to turn off delays and choruses and reverbs and things. So I've been kind of playing around with that recently and you can actually use it like a little mini mixer as well so you can input, you know, keyboard and sax, mic, wind synthesizer. You know there's enough there to kind of get I think it's six inputs and then you can apply the effects to all or any of your inputs. So I've been finding that's quite nice as a little portable rig. The other thing I use quite a bit, though, is the main stage setup on the Mac. I use that more if we're doing more of a kind of concert type setup. If I do one of these concerts with a singer which I got one coming up this saturday, so I have a whole kind of set list there set up on main stage it'll run my soft synths like my Swam sounds. I'm actually going to use your.

Alistair Parnell: 14:36

What did you? You did a sound bank for contact. Right um there's a wind. They call it wind pack. Is that what you call?

Matt Traum: 14:44

it, wind packs. Yep, there's three, three sets of those. There's five instruments in each of those, so there's 15 instruments for contact and they're all set up to respond to breath and legato.

Alistair Parnell: 14:54

They're really, really nice they are great and, um, I've I've very often come back to those, so you know I'm doing a little kind of celtic thing in that. So you've got a really nice kind of Irish whistle in one of those sets which I use, and then some swam violin, that sort of thing. So, and of course, your main stage you can put in a microphone or put effects on that. So that's quite a nice setup with a nice kind of visualisation. Obviously you're looking straight at the Mac screen, so you've got plenty of controls right in front of you. You can set it up exactly the way you want it.

Matt Traum: 15:30

Yeah, for Mac people. You know main stage, unfortunately, is only Macintosh. But yeah, that runs great on laptops and if you want to get into it you can do anything with that. You can set up loopers in there and layers and if you want to get into that using a laptop, it's great For the PC side. What's out there that is similar?

Alistair Parnell: 15:51

I believe Camelot runs on both, doesn't it? And Camelot can even run on an iPad, I think as well. So that's, and I have used that a little bit. I think it's one of those things, you know, whatever you got into first and really delved into, you tend to stick with that. Camelot is good for some things. There are a couple of things on Camelot that that can do that the main stage can't do, but generally speaking, I tend to be set up on on main stage.

Matt Traum: 16:20

So yeah, we should probably mention because I was curious about this if Camelot would be used like MainStage using the Apple SoftSense. I don't know if it'll. Is it able to load Apple SoftSynths? I don't believe it can. No, okay, so it's yeah. Apple sort of protects themselves there with that, don't they?

Alistair Parnell: 16:39

I believe so. It's a shame, because that would be useful.

Speaker 3: 16:47

But no, I don't think you can load in things like the ES2 synth and that sort of thing.

Alistair Parnell: 16:53

I don't think so. Maybe we should look now at some. What do you use for things like stands? I mean, do you have a specific kind of stand for your synth or do you use stuff for music stands? What's your setup for that?

Matt Traum: 17:08

Well, you know, I play EVI most of the time, so there really isn't a stand for the EVI that I know of. Most of the stands are designed for woodwind-type controllers, so, yeah, I just put my EVI on whatever I could find. There's no stand for that. A few guys have used some things that they've devised. They'll go on a music stand in front of you and kind of hook it horizontally, but I never got into that.

Alistair Parnell: 17:35

How about yourself. So I use there is. If you search on Amazon, there is a kind of. Well, I searched for it for Aerophone and it came up. It's not great but it's kind of foldable. I think it's one of those bits of kit that comes under various names on Amazon. But if you search Aerophone stand, it's kind of got like a kind of tripod legs to it and it does have a sort of plastic like a rubberized kind of thing that'll come over the top and kind of lock it in place. Because one of the things I'm always really concerned about, especially if you're going to be connected by a cable, if someone's going to walk on the stage, you know, and catch that cable, you could easily have your Windsynth crashing to the floor and that would not be good. That's one of my main concerns.

Matt Traum: 18:28

I've been there. I've been there. I played bass in the larger group, as well as my wind synth and my trumpet, and at one point I had a custom you know, handmade bass by it was a kind of a boutique bass and somebody yeah, it was an accident, you know the cable got caught and the bass went and it just flopped right onto the floor and the headstock at the top of the bass just snapped off. I mean, it was a disaster. It was horrible, oh dear, but I had it repaired. But yeah, that was tragic.

Alistair Parnell: 18:58

Dear, dear, dear. Yeah, one thing we were going to talk about is redundancy. We'll get to that in a moment. But there was a company called SaxRax. They used to make really a very nice stand for the Akai series and I don't think you can get them anymore because I think they've gone out of business. But whether you can pick them up secondhand or whatever anywhere. And I have actually converted one of those to pretty successfully hold my Aerophone. And if you've seen any of my YouTube videos you might have seen in the kind of behind me there's a rack of Aerophones and they are all made up of the Akai stand. That was originally for the EWI 4000, 5000, but I've slightly converted it to hold the Aerophone. They work pretty nicely.

Alistair Parnell: 19:48

But you've always got to be careful about making sure people are not just going to trip over a cable. You know, if I'm in an interval or even just before the gig, I'll do a sound check. Usually, I'll unplug and I'll put the wind synth kind of away or to one side. Same with the sax. You know I'll very rarely leave a saxophone out on stage because with the best will in the world anyone can be on that stage and just accidentally trip up and you know, knock something flying and it's. You know it's rare that that happens, but you can bet your bottom dollar it's going to happen at the worst possible time. So I'm always rather overcautious about that. Do you play off a music stand a regular music, sheet music, matt or do you use an iPad?

Matt Traum: 20:35

Yeah, I've always used sheet music. I have a big four-inch three-ring binder that's got all my charts in it. I've always used that. I know with an iPad it would be possible to. I could take my PDF files that I have and combine them and make a nice file that I could use. But I'm okay with just the old way at this point. How about you?

Alistair Parnell: 20:55

Well, I've been using the iPad for the music oh gosh, maybe six years, eight years, and I've used it pretty much for everything. If I've been accompanying on the piano in concerts or in examinations, with anything that's been sort of acoustic instruments like saxophone stuff, I've done. Yeah, I pretty much solely used it. The one thing that I do find is extremely handy on the iPad If you're doing a solo gig and you're going to use, you know, one of these things where you're doing some backing tracks.

Alistair Parnell: 21:27

So the application called Forscore, which I'm sure you've probably heard of, not only does that catalogue all your music and you can put everything into playlists and search and what have you you know. So I've got about 4,000 different PDFs on my iPad, everything from kind of classical saxophone concertos to you know, teaching materials, all of that. But then I've got sets of music. Not only has it got the sheet music there for me, but you can link an MP3 backing track. So then that could be fed out then to your PA or your speaker for your accompaniment, and that really is great for those kind of solo gigs. Just turn up the next tune, the backing track's there, just press, play, bang, it's going. I've used that quite extensively for probably five or six years now.

Matt Traum: 22:18

So most of your songs are the in separate PDFs or have you made compilation electronic books of your Both, yeah, both.

Alistair Parnell: 22:25

Both. They can be separate or they can be within one combined PDF and then you can have bookmarks to access just the one tune. So you know if you've got a real book or something with I don't know how many tunes are in a real book, but the hundreds right. But you can separate them into different bookmarks so that you can go straight to that particular page on whatever PDF. So that's the way I've done it and you can annotate on it, you can make changes, you can make several copies of it, whatever you want to do, and I've found that very useful. And in terms of a kind of stand for that, again, I've used various things, but I do have what is essentially a kind of laptop stand. I just got that because it's a pretty solid piece of kit. Again, what you don't want if you've got a fairly expensive iPad on a regular kind of wire music stand, no way, you know that's going to be dodgy.

Alistair Parnell: 23:22

It's a pretty solid laptop type stand and, um, it folds down pretty small so it'll go into the car but it's. I know that that's going to be pretty solid and it has kind of locking devices on the top where you can actually lock the iPad to the top of the, to the stand, so that that is my choice anyway.

Matt Traum: 23:41

So um, yeah, you can't really be too safe buying equipment to hold your equipment and uh, you know, don? Yeah, you can't really be too safe buying equipment to hold your equipment and uh, you know, don't? You don't want to skimp on things like that. It's important. This stuff costs a lot of money and I wouldn't be using a wire stand to hold an iPad a thousand dollar iPad.

Alistair Parnell: 23:56

Absolutely, of course we are still. I often wonder if, you know, in another 20 years maybe this will be different. But we have to talk about cabling things like you know power, audio cabling, because we can also get ourselves into problems on that side. So you know it's worth considering that for power and for audio. For myself I've run into a lot of problems with getting kind of ground loop hums, you know, and I've realized over the years it's my own fault. You know you buy a cheap cable because you think it might be OK and then you realize on the gig, no, it wasn't a good choice.

Matt Traum: 24:50

Yeah, sometimes it's cables cheap cables it's. Again, it's not. If you really shouldn't skimp on things like that that are important to you as a performer and always have backups of cables and other things, Try to be redundant as much as possible with your equipment. But as far as noises and hums, ground loops, it can happen with even good equipment, depending on if you're you might be plugging into two branches of ac, you know, from two different places in the house and there's going to be a difference in voltage there that can cause hum and some people they use those little, the three pin to two pin adapters for the ac power, which isn't not a good idea. It's not a good idea to do that. That can cause shock hazard. It can be very dangerous. Actually there is a company that makes a safe way to do that. It's called the HumX H-U-M-X made by Ebtech E-B-T-E-C-H and it's a little box. It just has an AC in and an AC out but it safely eliminates the connection between the ground. It still gives you the safety of the ground but it's amazing how well it works.

Matt Traum: 25:54

If you have a ground loop problem and you're hearing that hum that's 60 hertz or 50 hertz hum and you put one of these in the circuit. It just goes away completely and it can be really useful in the studio as well. If you have problems like that, you should always have one or two of those in your gig rig. So highly recommended on that. I use those quite often. As far as running power, when we would have monitors out in front of the band, I would run one extension box to the front and then branch off of that for the monitors up front so you didn't have to have multiple ac power coming up where we're walking, more of a tripping hazard and just a clutter. So you know you can run one power up to the front and then branch off of that and plug your amps in there and your lights, your stand lights and chargers or whatever you're using.

Alistair Parnell: 26:37

And also one of the things I always was sort of taught to be careful about is trying to avoid running audio cables right up against AC cables, right Yep.

Matt Traum: 26:48

Yeah, especially if they're running parallel. Uh, you can, it's better to cross them at a perpendicular angle, if you can, yeah, yeah. But if they're running a long parallel, a long wire parallel to AC, uh, you, you may pick up some hum that way, yeah, so, and um one.

Alistair Parnell: 27:03

One thing that I had a little bit of experience with and I think when we spoke about this podcast a few days ago. I don't think it applies quite the same way in the US, but just to make everybody aware, you may well end up going to a venue that requires you to have a PAT test certificate. This is Portable Appliance Testing Certificate. As far as I understand it, in the UK we are supposed to have this PAT test carried out on anything that's going to have a power cable attached to it, so your amplifiers, whatever mixer or whatever you've got that actually plugs into a mains. The slightly odd thing about it is you don't have to have that done by a qualified electrician, as far as I understand it, but they should be tested and you should have a little sticker on the piece of equipment and you should have basically a piece of paper, a certificate, that says these items have been tested. So, for instance, if I go to do a gig in a hotel hotels are pretty big on this Very often they'll say in advance okay, before you come to play in our venue, you will need to give us proof of a PAT test to make sure that all your electrics are safe and, of course, very often we're also asked over here that we would have public liability insurance.

Alistair Parnell: 28:29

So if anybody's kind of thinking about starting off doing some gigs or doing some solo gigs, there are some extra little steps that you might just need to be aware of the PAT test and possibly getting some public liability insurance. I think you said that's not quite the case for you in the US, matt, is that right?

Matt Traum: 28:47

Yeah, I've never heard of anything like the PAT test here in the US. Correct me if I'm wrong, anybody out there? Yeah, I don't know. Another thing I would recommend would be some insurance on equipment. Yes, if it's important to you, insurance is not that expensive as far as I know for equipment.

Alistair Parnell: 29:09

Not a bad idea to do that Things get stolen, things get picked up off the stages. How many times I've heard people say you know my iwi got stolen, yeah Well, and you know unpacking and packing up the car. You know if you've got a ways to walk with your equipment, you might have to be leaving some equipment in your car at some point, and you know that's something else you've got to be mindful of. You sometimes need another pair of eyes to look after some equipment somewhere if you need to be in two places, either a car or on the stage.

Matt Traum: 29:33

For sure, and in that case if you have just a small amount of equipment, sometimes you can get by with a dolly. You know just a small dolly, but later on in my career I was using one of those larger dollies with four wheels and you could I could make everything in one trip. Yeah, my amps and boxes and instruments and things. If you can do it in one trip, that's, that's a big bonus, because otherwise you might be leaving your car there and hopefully you locked it. But you know just little things. You know you go to after a gig and you want to go to a get something to eat afterwards with somebody and uh, that's oftentimes when things get stolen yes, at a restaurant parking lot. So I've heard that quite often as well. Yeah, so you know, always, always lock, even if you're going to be gone for a few minutes there's, you just never know absolutely.

Alistair Parnell: 30:24

And we've talked about kind of cabling and things. What we haven't touched on yet is the wonderful world of wireless.

Matt Traum: 30:31

Matt, I was going to say that would be one way to help eliminate some of those problems With certain wind controllers. You can have audio wireless or you could have MIDI wireless, or even both in some cases. As far as MIDI wireless, I've used have MIDI wireless or even both in some cases. As far as MIDI wireless, I've used MIDI wireless quite a bit. Back in the day I was using the classic MIDI Works, midi Jet Pro, which I think may be still the best one ever made as far as I'm concerned. I don't know if they're even making them anymore. I know they're up. They're still up on my website as a. It's kind of a dead page there because I haven't been able to get them for quite a long time. I'm not sure they're making those, but there's other companies. Panda Audio makes the MIDI Beam, which is a nice little system and it's very inexpensive. And then there's CMI is it.

Alistair Parnell: 31:18

Yes, yes. They make a whole range of stuff, don't they?

Matt Traum: 31:22

And even Roland I know they have uh and Yamaha both have systems that are either MIDI or USB wireless, so that could be an option too. It depends on what type of wind controller you have, what type of wireless you want to have, but yeah, that'll, that'll help with wires and kind of clean up the stage a little bit sure, and it's nice kind of kind of from a performance angle, isn't it?

Alistair Parnell: 31:42

Not to have to feel like you've got a cable sticking there. I mean, I tell you I have done many times, you know, I've gone to kind of bring the Windsynth to my mouth and I haven't realised the cable's been under my foot and then you get that awful kind of jerking, you know it kind of hits you in the teeth because or you get you pull the cable out and oh dear, yeah, I've done that quite a few times. I can tell you it's not good so we have to differentiate.

Matt Traum: 32:10

To maybe some people that are newer to this is you can have wireless midi systems which transmit the midi data that you would have in a midi cable and it'll just transmit it wirelessly, so there's no audio going through that type of system. That would be if you're controlling. Let's say, you have an EWI 4000 and it has a MIDI output on it and you connect up to a MIDI transmitter and on the other end you have your VL70 with the wireless MIDI receiver and so that's, you're controlling the synthesizer wirelessly. Now the other one is an audio wireless, which would be again you could use it with the EWI 4000, since it has a built-in synth. You'd have a little quarter-inch audio outputs that would plug into an audio transmitter, like a guitarist would use they're just very common in the guitar world and then on the other end the receiver of the audio wireless would go into your mixer or your amp. So again, you could have one or the other or both, depending on your needs. Some people use they have two transmitters on their wind controller and two receivers on the other end.

Matt Traum: 33:10

Now with MIDI, MIDI has to be exactly perfect. If you have one bit that's off, one tiny little bit. It can cause a stuck note or a wrong note or you know other problems. So that's why I was saying the MIDI Jet Pro was in my opinion. I found it to be extremely reliable. Yeah, and Panda Audio is very good too. I haven't tried the CME yet, but Nyle Steiner reports to me that he loves it. Other people have used it. But they have to be right on the nose, they have to be perfect. Whereas with audio you can get by with, if there's a little glitch, doesn't matter, you know the audio continues. But with MIDI data it's a computer code.

Alistair Parnell: 33:48

It's got to be right on yeah, and just something else for people just to be aware of. You may well try some of that kind of wireless or Bluetooth connection at home and things will work fine at home. And things will work fine. Now, just remember, when you go out to a venue you may be confronted, where it's possible you've got 100, 200, 500 different Bluetooth signals kicking about because people's phones or any other bit of equipment that they've got, or other people have got equipment on stage that's using Bluetooth. You know you can get interference like that, so you've always got to make sure you are aware of that and, as much as you can, try and test it out before you actually play the gig.

Matt Traum: 34:37

Yeah, that can be quite troublesome. So always have a MIDI cable next year set just ready to go. Yeah, because you're probably going to run into problems fairly often. Yes, yes.

Alistair Parnell: 34:48

Both Matt and I have learned over the years that having backups of pretty much any cable that you might need. You know the beauty of having two speakers is that if one goes out you've got one that at least you can get by with anything that you can have available. So a lot of cars nowadays well, at least the last four or five cars I have there's like a sort of in the boot space at the back. Very often there's a bit underneath where sometimes you have a spare wheel. That for me is my go-to place for my spare cables. I always I never take those out of the car, they're always there. So there's like mains cables there, there's speakers cables, there's USB cables, there's MIDI cables, you name it. They're all in there and they do get used fairly often. So I always know they're there. I don't have to keep taking them in and out of the car. They just live in the car all the time and that's my kind of backup cabling. It's always worthwhile having those handy, absolutely.

Alistair Parnell: 35:58

So, Matt, let's say you're heading out for a gig it's a jazz trio or something and presumably like most of us, you've got I don't know a dozen sounds or something that you use kind of most frequently. Do you have a way of ordering those or selecting those? How do you go about the business of sorting out your sounds?

Matt Traum: 36:28

So there's different schools of thought on that. I've tried both. I just generally pick things on the fly. I'm pretty familiar with where things are in my modules and it's hard for me to plan. Sometimes I might want to try something different. At one point I tried to create layers and then I would have everything. And you know, if I set MIDI patch change number one, there there's my brass section. If I go to two, there's just a solo sax. But, um, you know, as you bring things in and out of your rig, uh, that you have to start over, and I I don't know just for me, I just tend to do it on the fly.

Matt Traum: 36:54

I like to have a more than one sound module in my rig. Um, I think I have three. Generally, I have two VL70 Turbos in there and then I have a Fantom XR, a Roland Fantom XR, which is a nice combination. You've got the sample-based and then the two physical modeling things and I can layer them and mute things as I need to. And then mixing I have a little line mixer that's all in the rack as well, and each synth goes into the line mixer and I can just turn the volume down on the ones that I don't want to hear, and if I want to hear everything, I bring them up. I pan them a little bit left and right if I have a stereo setup.

Alistair Parnell: 37:36

So when I'm using the Roland Aerophone so the AE-30, one of the great things about that instrument of course you have 12 user banks of sounds and I have, I don't know there's probably half a dozen sounds that I keep coming back to. But occasionally if I'm doing a specific gig, it's just so handy to have you know, say, another user bank. User bank eight or something is usually just where I'll kind of play around with different orders and stuff. So if I need things to be handy, to change quickly from within the Aerophone, I'll use one of those sound banks. You've got plenty to choose from. I've already mentioned that I use the main stage. Of course main stage can be set up to select a sound bank for you. It can select individual sounds from any of the sound banks from within something like the Roland Aerophone, as long as you know that MSB and LSB set up, because you need those correct numbers. If you're not sure about those, there's definitely one of my YouTube videos where I went through that quite extensively. There's definitely one of my YouTube videos where I went through that quite extensively. And of course then, if you're using main stage, anything that's selected within main stage, like a swam sound or whatever that you can just directly connect to that. So if I'm doing more of a kind of concert situation where there's maybe I don't know, 15, 20 numbers they're in a specific order I know I'm going to use this sound, this sound, this sound, this sound. They're all nicely there, pretty much prearranged, ready to go, even changing the internal sound on the Aerophone for me, by the way, just one little tip. That's one thing that the Camelot setup does very nicely and to my knowledge main stage won't do this. Anybody's got any different ideas on this, let me know.

Alistair Parnell: 39:27

But for instance, if you're again, if you're playing with some kind of backing track, very often you might want to make a change partway through a track. If it's you know two or three instruments, you want to make change certain places during the track. I don't think you can automate that in main stage. I might be wrong, but I don't think you can actually just let the machine do that for you. But in Camelot you can. So you can set up a backing track and you can say at a specific point you know, one minute, 32 seconds, send this program change to my Aerophone, bang, it's there already for you. So you don't even have to change the sound and I have used Camelot a few times for that specific purpose, but otherwise, like you're saying, matt, it tends to be. You tend to have your favorite sounds. You know where they are, you can get to them quickly and they're your kind of go-to sounds.

Matt Traum: 40:22

Yeah, I think you're right about that. In main stage I don't think it's. You can do that. But if you were to use something like logic, apple logic, you could still set up your layers there's ways to do it in logic and then as a song would play. If you had a midi file playing you could send a midi program change and you know it can be done that way. But yeah, like you say, most people I would say that play a wind controller.

Matt Traum: 40:44

They probably have a dozen or even 10 or less favorites that they use for the most most of the gig. Yeah, I know I do so. Yeah, it's something like the the Aerophone AE-20 or AE-30. It's just so easy to pick from the hundreds of sounds in there and just put them all into one bank and put them so you don't have to be searching around through banks. There's no excuse not to do that. It's easy to do a couple button presses and you can arrange it that way. I've also used Mainstage as well. I was talking previously about my hardware rig that I have. That's a larger, heavy thing, but I've done many gigs with just main stage and of course you can build your layers up in main stage. I could have a Swam sax and I could have a ES2 synth lead on top of that and some other whatever and then save it as one sound and that works great. That's very powerful.

Alistair Parnell: 41:38

Yeah, and then what I'll do sometimes with that is you can export just one patch. So if you've got a setup for a specific song or something that you want to use, a layer that you might want to pull into another set, you can save that as one patch and you can then import that into another set if you want to, with all your settings for the mixer, for the effects, for everything is already loaded on there. It takes a little while to learn how to do that, but I do find that is a really flexible, very reliable. I touch wood. I've never had that thing go down on me. You can also record your sets, if you want to, directly from within main stage. So I found it a hundred percent reliable. And, yeah, that tends to be my go-to for that more kind of concert type setup where you know what your set list is going to be.

Matt Traum: 42:39

Yeah, that's great One thing we should talk about. I don't think I have it in my outline for today's show, but you know USB cables and things. USB wasn't really designed for a live musician, musical instrument connection, I don't think. When they designed it it was for printers, for computers at home and you just plug it in and leave it there. But now, of course, you know there's what three or four different types of USB physical connections that you have to choose from, and some are better than others. Some are pretty fragile.

Matt Traum: 43:10

And have you found a better quality USB cables as far as the way they grip into a laptop playing MainS tage?

Matt Traum: 43:23

And I, I must have moved something or moved the cable slightly with my foot, the USB cable and all of a sudden, yeah, you know, uh and my I had to restart MainS tage, which can take a couple minutes if you have a larger setup.

Matt Traum: 43:33

Sure, uh, I wish there was a way that would be something I'd put out there for manufacturers some way to have a industrial quality USB connection where you know you plug it in, then you screw something in as a safety and holds it. Holds it there, because plugging into a USB port on a laptop is pretty risky. And if you're going to do that, I would say put your laptop on something, wrap the USB cable around yeah pole or the stand or something. Then plug it in so that if you do pull on the cable you're not going to flex that actual cable there and or the connection, yeah, and you know, risk pulling it out and you know if that happens in the middle of a gig it can be pretty catastrophic. Any comments on that as far as cable quality or tips as far as computer connections?

Alistair Parnell: 44:19

Exactly what you said. You know, loop it around something first before it goes in. I guess the issue with having something that would be more, shall we say, permanent, as a kind of connection that it locked on. Your danger then is if you do pull your USB, are you going to then pull your laptop on the floor and potentially break your laptop as well? It's one of those catch-22s, isn't it? Like you said, it wasn't invented to do that and it's not really the best setup. You've just got to be mindful that you're not going to pull that cable out because main stage doesn't like it, does it? It starts looking for another audio interface and then it wants to change all the settings and it's.

Matt Traum: 45:04

It can be not a good situation to find yourself in yeah, so, uh, on the controller end of it, you, the AE- 20 and 30, have a little cable clips on the end of the horn that you, you can. There's a little spring on them. You pull them out and you can wrap the cable around there. Yeah, so at least on that end of it, you you've got a little bit of reinforcement. But as far as the laptop, yeah, you've got to be careful.

Matt Traum: 45:26

I also should mention when I was using MainStage with my Apple laptop, I was using a Roland Rubix- 22, which is a nice little audio slash MIDI interface. It's like a third of a Rex bass width, I would say, and it'll give you stereo in and out very high quality, also MIDI in and out, usb. There's a headphone jack on there. There's also a separate volume for the headphone and a separate volume for audio. So I guess you could use one for monitoring and one for main feed. I just found that to be a nice little audio interface. I know there's lots of others out there, focusrite and all kinds of companies that make them. I like the Rubix- 22.

Alistair Parnell: 46:05

Yeah, my little mini mixer of choice is it's made by a company called Arturia and it's the AudioFuse. It was quite an expensive little box but it's a great little gadget. It's what? Five inches square, six inches square, but it's a really high quality. A little portable interface and it's great.

Alistair Parnell: 46:27

But just going back to the one thing that you talked about about cables, this thing, for its main connection to the computer, has a mini USB input and it's just terrible because it's very, very easy to pull that little mini USB cable out and I really have to be careful with this. It's the only downside about this little unit. It's a great, even has a kind of built-in USB hub which is really useful and you can plug, you know, two mics in and a couple of keyboards and it's got inserts, it's got phantom power, it's even got, you know, different controls on the front for each input. It's a brilliant little piece of kit. But that connection on the back with a little mini USB is terrible. It's really not very reliable at all and it's a shame because it's a great piece of kit otherwise.

Matt Traum: 47:29

Imagine if you were a big star and you're playing for somebody and there's 20,000 people in the audience and somebody bumps it. You don't even have to pull the cable out, you just wiggle it a little bit and it loses connection for a millisecond. You know that can be catastrophic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. Maybe Roland can come up with some way. I don't know how they can do it, but you can't really control the laptop side of it other than making a. Making your own laptop for musicians. Yeah, or maybe they can have a way to mount a laptop into a box and then it's hardwired and USB is more solid. I don't know.

Alistair Parnell: 48:02

Yes, it needs some thought, doesn't it?

Matt Traum: 48:05

It needs to be addressed somehow, I think in the future, if we're going to keep going this way. Yes, yeah.

Alistair Parnell: 48:16

And what about any tips on? Obviously we're playing with other musicians. What do you think about kind of tips with sort of blending with the other musicians and things, Matt, because you probably do that a little bit more than I do, I think.

Matt Traum: 48:30

I haven't done it a lot. Like I say, there was a singer that I would play with for quite a few years and sometimes he would bring in a couple horns if he wanted a small horn section. Most of the time I was by myself, but if he had a trumpet player and a sax player there, some things I could say is again, set up your speaker. In this case it's kind of important to have your speaker behind you, kind of close to your head, if you can, and have that sound coming out as though you're, let's say, a trumpet player and the sound is coming out of the horn in front of you. Yeah, try to, you know, match that whole idea and, um, try to blend with those players and I would suggest taking off the reverb and delay any kind of obvious effects like that, because you know a trumpet and a sax in the in the room aren't going to have delay and reverb and the room, of course, will provide the reverb and you will blend then with better, with the acoustic instruments. Yeah, so that's that's one thing, that's one good reason to have a separate effects unit if you, if you want to go in and edit all your sounds, uh, in your sound modules or in your soft sense, and just take the reverbs and delays out, save everything dry and then feed everything through an effects box. You can change from one type of gig to the next very easily. You know, if you don't need reverb, just pull it out, bypass it. You've got dry sound. You're all set and ready to mix in with those horn players. Yeah, that's a good tip.

Matt Traum: 49:51

Yeah, and just make sure you have a good amp behind your head and it's it's loud enough that it's matching, uh, you know a trumpet player? We've said it before, acoustic instruments are pretty loud. Yeah, uh, so you want to match the volume level and, um, make sure you're not topping out the sound and just blowing too hard and and not getting any expression. So turn up your amp loud enough so that, uh, you have that dynamic range and the expression still, and try not to step on the toes. We can also talk about that a little bit. You know what is the function of a wind controller player? If you have a sax and a trumpet in the group, obviously you probably don't want to play a sax or trumpet sound, unless they want you to, to maybe find something else that could blend in.

Alistair Parnell: 50:36

Yeah Well, I guess one of the things that the wind synth can offer is that kind of adaptability. So if you're in a group and you're playing, you know they might want you to do some kind of synth leads, but they might also occasionally want you to put some kind of an extra brass part in. And you know that's the great thing about the wind synth you can fill in those different sounds. And this is where I think there is a bit of a growing call for Wynton players in the musical theatre world. I have done a little bit of that. You know, sometimes now there's a move towards a smaller setup in a musical theatre show, sometimes financially, sometimes because of the space, and so you know, sometimes you'll see two or even three keyboard players and you know there might be a keyboard player that's trying to play an oboe line or something, and I'm sure they can do that very well. But I'm also sure that a wind synth can probably do that better and make a more expressive sound because it's a wind-driven instrument. So it's going to do that sound better. So, having the flexibility if you as a musician can say look well, you know I can sit in and I can do that lead line. I can do that flute part. I can do that bit of oboe, cor anglais, whatever you need those just those little subtle moments within a show where they just need that sound and they don't really want to play a pay another player just to come and do those few bars. So it's, it's another. You know, string to your bow. We could say as a as a musician, that you can offer those, those different instruments.

Alistair Parnell: 52:19

In fact, I think you're probably aware well, certainly you'll be aware, in the UK we have the ABBA show still running down in London. This is the thing with the avatars of ABBA. I've not been to see it. We do plan on going to see it. Actually, and I do know that one of the chairs in the band there is actually it's sax. I'm not sure whether you have played kind of two different saxes, but the reed player also has to play Aerophone. It's specifically written for Aerophone. So, as far as I understand it, the Aerophone is already set up for the musician to play and there are two or three people that I know who are gigging musicians over here in the UK and they do the ABBA show and you know they on some lines they just have to pick up the Aerophone and play whatever sound number it tells them to put on. By all accounts, it works great and it's going down a storm that show, so I really must go and get to see it.

Matt Traum: 53:20

That's interesting. So they own the Aerophone, the show owns it and they know what sounds are in it, and they specifically tell the player which, exactly which scene to play. Yes, that's interesting.

Alistair Parnell: 53:30

It is interesting and I assume the player probably hopefully gets a chance to take it home and has a little experiment on it. But I think it's pretty much been set up so that most players, with having the saxophone fingering on the aerophone, it's probably one of the easier ones to transition onto if you've not really played a wind synth before, Certainly would be easier perhaps than something like the Akai to get used to if you'd never played one of those instruments before. So yeah, and I do enjoy that kind of musical theatre experience. It's really fantastic to sit in with a good band and to be adding those little sounds to different scenes within the music. It's something I really enjoy doing.

Matt Traum: 54:17

I haven't done any theatre type gigs, so that's interesting. It'd be fun. It'd be fun to try that, Although I don't know if I could keep up and play like a clarinet or flute part. I know those are crazy, you know, us trumpet players aren't used to that kind of playing, you know.

Alistair Parnell: 54:31

But it would be challenging, but fun I'm sure yeah, so we've talked quite a bit about, you know, kind of our own rigs and, um, I don't know about you, matt, but I'm always looking for that kind of that little little compact rig because some gigs you can take, maybe something small, even like a sort of one of those Bose S1 speakers, which is a great little monitor speaker, and then maybe either just the iPad or something, and even something like you know, your phone, like your iPhone, right? Because didn't you do a set of sounds the Korg Monopoly thing that would even run on an iPhone. Like your iPhone, right? Because didn't you do a? You did a set of sounds, the Korg Monopoly thing that would even run on an iPhone, isn't that right?

Matt Traum: 55:29

Yeah, I was looking at soft synths that could be used on an iPhone. You know a lot of them are iPad, but this a couple of them are iPhone now and the Korg Mono/Poly was a nice little contender. And the Korg Mono/Poly was a nice little contender. It's a four oscillator analog type synth and it's got some really nice filtering and nice matrix things that you can do with assigning breath to different things, and I was looking for something that, in my case, I was looking for a little thing that I could run on my phone, that I could hook up my EVI to and get by like a jazz gig with respectable sounds. You know it's not going to sound like a sampled sax or anything like that, but I was able to get some nice muted trumpets and muted brass sounds and nice sawtooth type synth leads out of this little app. Of course it runs on the iPad, the iPhone and the Mac and PC, laptops and desktops, so it's the whole thing. Same sound bank runs on all those different platforms. Um, I ended up doing two banks of sounds for that and there's 128 in each one. 256 sounds and yeah, the idea. I just wanted to be able to play some jazz and make it sound decent and uh. So you can go out to patchmanmusic. com and click on the chord button and there's a little disc icon and you click on that and you'll see the Mono/Poly there and you can read about it and listen to a couple audio demos that I recorded directly off the iPhone, I believe. Yeah, and that includes the effects and everything that's coming out of it.

Matt Traum: 56:58

The only thing you need to do is the only thing that's tricky about it is hooking up to your iPhone. Sometimes you have to get a. Well. Well, you will have to get an adapter or maybe even two adapters. I think apple called it the camera connection kit. Yeah, and that allows you to have usb into your phone or your ipad, but also there's a separate connection for, like a lightning connector where you can power it, because sometimes these adapters, if you plug in your wind controller into a phone, the phone's not going to be able to provide enough power to power the USB type wind controller that you might plug into it. So that connector has two inputs and one's power and then one would be your data going in. Yeah, it's just, it was fun and Jeff Koshworth seems to like the SoundBank a lot.

Alistair Parnell: 57:42

I was going to say there's that great YouTube video of him just playing off his phone, right?

Matt Traum: 57:47

Yeah, yeah, he just did that on his own. It's really well done too, very tastefully done. You can check that out on YouTube. Just search out Jeff Kashiwa, Patchman, Korg Mono/Poly. I'm sure it'll come up. Yeah, but go to Patchman's site there and you can listen to some demos.

Speaker 3: 59:09

And we'll play a little bit here so you can hear some of the uh, the sounds that you might might enjoy playing.

Matt Traum: 59:57

So, Alistair, you've been with your iSax Academy course, your advanced course, I think you told me you had some kind of a specific course that you were talking about creating layered sounds and how to control things like that and good ways to do that in a live situation. Can you tell us about that a little bit?

Alistair Parnell: 1:00:13

Yeah. So the advanced Aerophone course. There's a whole kind of module there on building your own layered sounds, and it goes through different kind of instrument setups. There are synth layers, but there are also kind of instrumental layers as well. Lots of information there on how you can control them, how you can, like you've been saying before, kind of panning the sounds, layering them up using the harmony techniques yeah, and using the controllers on the aerophone, specifically for the way you want to do it as well, and each one of those lessons yes, you can actually download the sound and put it straight into your instrument. But, better still, you can follow the video. You can learn how to do it for yourself. There's an accompanying PDF for each one of those and hopefully by the end of the course you will be confident enough to just go ahead and build your own layer as well. So again, if you'd like to do that on your AE-20 or AE-30, please go and visit isax. academy and you can see the courses that are on offer there.

Matt Traum: 1:01:32

Well, just to make sure we get all the gubbins and the bits and everything is absolutely chock-a-block, as they say over there on the other side of the pond. We should talk about the solo gigging with wind controllers, because it's, I would say, would you say it's maybe one of the most popular ways of going out and playing. There's a whole lot of people doing it and they're playing the backing tracks by themselves or maybe with another, you know, maybe a singer, but it's pretty popular nowadays and probably will continue to be, so maybe we should talk a little bit about that. Now, I haven't done any solo work like this. The smallest group I've played in was a duo where I played with the keyboard player and he would play bass and keyboards and I would play the horn. But you've had some experience doing solo gigs. Can you give us some tips on that maybe?

Alistair Parnell: 1:02:21

Yeah, I think it seems to be quite often one of the first ways that people might get into doing a little bit of live performance. So, yeah, it is very popular and, yes, I've done a fair bit of it. Things like weddings, functions, restaurants, even you know, people's garden parties, that kind of thing yeah, it's very popular. Of course, nowadays you can get a pretty wide selection of backing tracks online. You can get them even in kind of different keys. So there are places like Karaoke Version online, one of the ones that does a particularly good quality backing track Bobby's Backing Tracks, I think it's called and they are extremely good quality backing tracks recorded by live musicians and really, really high quality and, like I don't know, $5 a pop or something you know, really great stuff.

Alistair Parnell: 1:03:26

And then either you know you're going to play along or play by ear, or getting hold of some sheet music for it. As I said earlier, I tend to use an iPad and the Forscore app can have your sheet music and your backing track kind of locked together. You can even train the specific PDF. If you're going to use a backing track, of course you might come across issues with page turns, but on the Fourscore app what you can do is the first time you try it through. With the backing track you effectively can record your page turns so it learns when to turn the page for you and then the subsequent times that you come to play that number you don't have to turn the page, it will do it automatically.

Matt Traum: 1:04:18

And there are foot pedals too, aren't there, Like USB foot pedals that you can assign to change pages back and forth?

Alistair Parnell: 1:04:30

Absolutely, there are yes and and. Um, yeah, I use one of those uh little boss foot pedals for that and that works well. But, um, you know, generally speaking it's a pretty easy setup. You do need to think carefully about the way that you blend with a track. Inevitably you're going to get some variations in the volumes of some of these backing tracks and that can be a little bit of a pain. But generally you kind of get to know which ones are the slightly louder ones or quieter ones and you can adjust things on the fly reasonably well.

Alistair Parnell: 1:05:00

Yeah, so you know, as a solo musician you can sit in a restaurant in a pretty small space. And you know, as a solo musician you can sit in a restaurant in a pretty small space. And you know, sometimes a restaurant will quite like you not only to have your own PA speaker with you, but they'll sometimes would like you to go through the house kind of music system as well. Because very often in a restaurant one of the things you've got to be careful about is you know you might be sitting, I don't know, just a few feet away from one table, but there's another table that's kind of you know, 50 feet away and round a corner and they can't hear you and if you're not careful you're too loud for the people sitting right next to you. So if they have got an internal speaker system, if you carry some cabling with you that you can plug into their system with, that can nicely kind of spread your sound around something like a venue, a restaurant or whatever.

Alistair Parnell: 1:05:53

It can feel a bit weird. I did a gig a little while ago in an Indian restaurant over here and somebody came downstairs. They'd just been up to the toilets and they said, wow, that was amazing. They were just in the toilet and they could hear me playing on the, on the aerophone in the in the toilets because it was being piped through to everywhere in the building. You know, but that could be a bit strange.

Alistair Parnell: 1:06:15

But you know it works very, very well and you know a musician can earn pretty nicely doing that kind of a gig, especially if you get some kind of regular booking for somewhere that might be hopefully fairly local for you and it's a great experience, you know, for players that are just setting out and you want to try out playing as a solo instrumentalist or something. It's a great experience. You can practice at home with your backing track and you take your stuff out and you do the same thing while you're out on the road, kind of thing. Not much gear and people seem to really enjoy it. You know, I know it's not live, live music. We would always rather have live musicians, of course we would, but just sometimes it's either not practical or money is not going to cover having, you know, four or five musicians. And so we feel the need, as people require it, I guess.

Matt Traum: 1:07:10

Yeah, someday I would like to see a wind controller that has a built in MP3 player or wave player or whatever. Although you can do that on your phone, it's pretty easy to do. These days you can even take your phone and send Bluetooth audio from the phone into your uh, air phone, right and, and the audio will all be mixed together with your playing and come out the audio outputs on your horn and uh. You can be wireless and send it to your amp wirelessly, and that's pretty nice. And the other thing about playing solo with the wind controller you can. You can.

Matt Traum: 1:07:40

It's, it's an easy sell. You could go in and say you know, I'm one person, it's not going to cost a lot of money, I'm versatile, I'm playing a wind controller, so you're not going to have singing, you won't be interfering with people's conversations, it's instrumental and I can play a plethora of sounds. Yes, you know, you choose. It's not like you're just getting a guitar, you're getting anything you want. So, yeah, plenty of variation. There's a lot of selling points there. Yeah, variation, and it can be a good way to make some extra money. Now I was wondering do you do a lot of talking on these types of gigs, or is it mostly just kind of playing in the background, or do you engage the audience at all?

Alistair Parnell: 1:08:22

Usually that's background. You know, just occasionally there might be something like I don't know a birthday or something that they'll want announcing, or you know if it's on New Year's Eve or something they might want you to do, the whole kind of 12 o'clock thing. So being prepared to do that is quite useful. I will always do some announcing. If it's more of a kind of concert setup, I do like to talk to the audience. I find that it gives you a stronger connection. It always settles me. You know, if sometimes you feel you're a little bit nervous at the beginning of a gig, I find as soon as I've spoken to the audience and got some rapport going, then it really starts to just get relaxed and more enjoyable.

Alistair Parnell: 1:09:05

So, but usually as a backing you know we have this term do you use the term wallpaper music, more or less? Yeah, I know what you mean, okay, yeah, or elevator music, right, you know it's the same sort of thing. Very often they they want you there to to provide some nice kind of gentle background music. And, like we've said before, matt, you are always going to get people coming up saying what on earth is that instrument? You know it's like they've never seen it before and they think it's cool and they kind of want to know about it, and so then you've got to show them and show you some different sounds, and you know they're always very interested, which is nice, you know. It's really encouraging. So so yeah, yeah, it's a great conversation starter.

Matt Traum: 1:09:47

Yeah, I even had a card made up, a two-sided card. On the front it would have my information and then on the back it would say right at the top, what is that instrument you're playing? Because you know. That's the question, yeah, and then I'd have a little one paragraph, you know, 10 lines or whatever talking about what it is. And here's a website to go listen to it. Perfect, read about it if you're interested. Great way to get started and get your cards out there for people. So, yeah, another thing you could do.

Matt Traum: 1:10:11

I found there's a lot of high quality karaoke tracks out there that are available for this free. Basically, you know, yes, youtube and things like that youtube and of course, the quality varies from total garbage to incredible, you know. And there's even tracks out there where they pull the lead vocals out and things. I don't know how that works out playing live, but you're playing with the Beatles. In that case, you know, you've got the Beatles tracks behind you, if you're able to do that. And also, I found I've used in the past to make tracks for my larger groups. We used backing tracks. Back in the 90s we were doing some things with. I would play MIDI files to back a six-piece band. It would kind of give us a hipper sound and you'd have that synthetic-type drum sound and things in there mixed in with the live musicians. But I was using arranger keyboards, Korg and Yamaha make wonderful arranger keyboards that you can sound incredible on.

Matt Traum: 1:11:04

You can pick the key and the tempo and put in what you want and don't want, and also Band in a Box. PG Music Band in a Box is an incredible tool, especially with what they call the Realtracks, I think. Yes, it's brilliant when they actually have recordings of these instruments, so you'll have a recording of a drum player and it puts these little loops together into a performance based on the sections and the fills Very clever, and there's bass parts that are actual bass players playing and guitar and piano incredible stuff. So you can make your own pretty easily as well. Absolutely.

Alistair Parnell: 1:11:39

Yes, yeah, I mean I do tend to make my own because I'm a keyboard player as well. So if it's something you know particularly like a concert, like this gig I've got coming up this Saturday, then the tracks I'll use are my own tracks. I do enjoy making my own arrangements of you know, my own cover versions of things. And just one tip if you are thinking about doing that kind of background, kind of restaurant or whatever music, you know very often they don't want anything too busy. So even just fairly simple tracks tend to work very well.

Alistair Parnell: 1:12:13

I've got some backing tracks that are actually just more or less just guitar and you know they can just sound really, really lovely in a kind of restaurant situation. You don't need anything that's too kind of heavy. You know it's nice to have some stuff like that if you need it later on a wedding or something. But you know generally if you're doing kind of background music, keep it simple. You know you can demonstrate all those great sounds you've got on your wind synthesizer and people are going to really enjoy it. It's going to be something new for them and it's great for the restaurant, great for everybody. So certainly I would encourage people to get out there and have a go.

Matt Traum: 1:12:51

I agree. Like I say, it's a great way to make some extra income. Yeah. Well, Alistair, do you want to tell us about Episode 8 coming up?

Alistair Parnell: 1:13:03

So Episode 8 looks like a very interesting one and I must admit, Matt, this is something that I quite often find challenging. So these are the kind of the other instruments, the non-woodwind and brass emulations, things like guitars, bass, percussion instruments, pianos, harmonica. Some of those instruments can be quite difficult to play well on a wind synthesizer. So we'll try and do our best to give you some tips. If you've been struggling playing the piano on your wind synth, we might have a few tips that can help you out there.

Matt Traum: 1:13:43

Playing the piano on your wind synth. We might have a few tips that can help you out there Strings and string pads, and there's quite a few things that you can do on a wind controller that you can offer to a prospective employer. Yes, and being versatile with those non-woodwind or non-brass sounds is one great way to specialise and offer more and get more work, absolutely.

Alistair Parnell: 1:14:04

So don't forget to leave us your questions. If you have a question to ask, check out the notes below the podcast and you'll find connections there to leave us some messages. We even have the kind of message service there where you can actually leave us a voice message and then you'll hear your own voice on the podcast. We hope that you've enjoyed this month's episode and found it useful. Please join us for the next one, and it's always very useful if you can share the podcast with anybody else you think that might be interested in it, because it spreads the words. It helps us to grow our audience. Matt, thanks again for joining us and giving us your expertise in the wonderful world of wind synthesizers. We'll see you in the next one, thank you.