Matt Traum: 0:02

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

Alistair Parnell: 0:06

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

Matt Traum: 0:18

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

Alistair Parnell: 0:26

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

Matt Traum: 0:32

and patchmanmusic. com.

Alistair Parnell: 0:36

Welcome everyone to episode eight of our Aerophone Academy podcast and let's welcome our co-host, Matt Traum. Welcome, Matt, thanks.

Matt Traum: 0:48

Hi, Alistair, nice to talk to you again and this will be a fun episode on string emulations.

Alistair Parnell: 0:55

Yes, now we had to make a little change, didn't we, Matt? We have to be honest about this. We thought we'd do a whole collection of different sounds in this episode. We suddenly realised, hey, hang on a minute, there's a ton of stuff just to talk about on strings. So we decided to make this episode just on strings. There are lots of other sounds that are going to come up in future episodes, so make sure you stay tuned to those, but today we're going to just concentrate on some of the great string sounds that are available. Now, Matt, I think you're going to agree with me on this. Neither of us are string players, right?

Matt Traum: 1:40

That's correct. I've played a little bit of upright bass when I was in college and I do play electric bass, but that's about it for me.

Alistair Parnell: 1:47

Yeah, me too. I always found that you know the string players you've always got to work for a long time to be a good string player. You know, even after you've done years and years of practice on a string instrument, you're still not necessarily going to sound good. You've got to be an extremely good player, haven't you, to make a decent sound on a string instrument.

Matt Traum: 2:08

Yeah, you can just listen to a beginning player and how difficult it is to listen to. Sometimes it's hard just to get a good tone and a steady tone and to play in tune and have a nice vibrato. Absolutely, it's one of the more difficult instruments to play, I would think.

Alistair Parnell: 2:24

Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure, yes, and we both, you know, have great admiration for anybody that plays those string instruments, the acoustic instruments, but luckily we've got some fantastic sounds that we can use on our wind synthesizers. Now, as usual, we're going to be looking at several different ways of getting the string sounds. We nearly always look at those internal Aerophone sounds which we'll be hearing in a moment, of course, the SWAM sounds, the audio modelling, Swam string sounds are always excellent, but, Matt, you've also, I think, got some demos of some of your bits of kits. Do you want to just tell us what's coming up for that?

Matt Traum: 3:11

Yeah, I went through and compiled some of the nicer string sound well banks that I did that have nice string sounds in them. So I have some little excerpt of the Fantom XR sound sound bank that I did for wind controller, also the Motif XS, the Yamaha series of motif and also the Roland XV-5080 and those three uh also, of course I have to include some of the VL70 turbo sounds too. There's some nice solo strings in there, I think as well. So we have a lot of audio examples in this episode, so it'll be a lot of listening.

Alistair Parnell: 3:48

Okay, so let's dig in with a couple of audio examples. And well, you just mentioned there the VL70-m Turbo, just to make sure people understand. I know we talked about this in a couple of episodes before, Matt, but what is a VL70-m Turbo? What is that about?

Matt Traum: 4:08

Well, the Yamaha VL70-m sound module is a little half rack sound module that was specifically designed for wind controller players quite a few years ago, but it's still very popular. And then, of course, I developed the turbo upgrade chip for it, the Patchman music turbo upgrade chip, which people can put into their VL70, and they have a whole set of brand new sounds 256 new sounds that are just really nice. So, yeah, that might be a nice one to start with. Maybe we could play some of those solo string audio demos.

Speaker 4: 5:43

Let's have a listen to a few with you.

Matt Traum: 5:47

So on those sounds you can hear that those are created using physical modeling, so there's no samples involved. It's all a mathematical model and it's been programmed to sound like those instruments. And the vibrato that you're hearing is being generated by me on my wind controller as I play those instruments, so that it's not built into the sound. You have complete control over the vibrato depth and speed and when it comes in and starts and stops.

Alistair Parnell: 6:15

And an important part about the sound. Matt, you know that portamento sound. Are you controlling that from your wind synthesizer or is that kind of built into the sound? How is that working?

Matt Traum: 6:25

It's not built in, but I am controlling it. I'm using, in my particular case, an EVI wind controller which had a glide, a sensor on it which I can control, the portamento time controller. And when I send that out, when I touch the controller I can regulate the speed of the glide slow it down, speed it up. So that's also under my control. Now, those sounds are not necessarily the greatest emulation. I fully understand that. The SWAM instruments are incredible and of course samples sound like a real instrument because they're recordings of a real instrument. But they're very expressive and they're very responsive and it's just part of what that Turbo VL70 offers. There's, of course, other wind instruments and plucked instruments and things in there as well. So it's a big collection of sounds and that's just a small subset of them.

Alistair Parnell: 7:18

Yeah, so particularly with your Turbo chip. I mean, how many sounds does that run to if you get that set up, Matt? Are you talking a couple of hundred sounds or something?

Matt Traum: 7:28

Yep over a couple hundred. There's two banks of 128, so there's 256 built-in sounds on the turbo chip and then there's another bank in there that'll hold six. They call it the custom bank, and that was just in there for people that were editing and they wanted to send a new model over to it, so there's six more there. And then there's a bank of 64, what's called the internal bank, and that's basically just where you can collect your favorites you put together and you can adjust the pitch and the vibrato response and controller response, things like that, and you can save them all in that one bank of 64. This is for easy access.

Alistair Parnell: 8:07

So, basically, though, there's 256 main sounds in the VL70. And I think one thing that we perhaps haven't mentioned before I can't remember mentioning in another podcast you know there's this whole thing about hardware. Software isn't there. The Swam sounds are, in my opinion, some of the best sounds that you can get, but you have got to have either something like an iPad or even a Mac, which means you've got to have that piece of equipment and you're running a piece of software. Hopefully everything's going to run okay, and if you're doing that on a live session it adds perhaps a little bit of uncertainty. You know what I mean. Whereas if you've got a hardware box like a VL70, you kind of trust that that thing's going to be 100% rock solid. So that's another consideration for sort of live performance, right yeah?

Matt Traum: 8:58

I've always found that hardware synthesizers generally never crash. They always work. They work for decades and then they never crash once. So it's not a bad idea if you're, if you are using a soft synth setup with a laptop, not a bad idea to have one of those in your bag in case you have a problem with your computer or sometimes when you're on uh on a gig and all of a sudden it needs to be, uh, re authorized. You know you have a plugin and it's like you know you're in the middle. Of a sudden it needs to be reauthorized.

Matt Traum: 9:26

You know you have a plug-in and it's like you know you're in the middle of a gig, which makes no sense, but stuff like that, Anything can happen with a computer, so not a bad idea. The VL70 is a small sound module. Like I say, it's only a half rack size, maybe I don't know eight inches across by an inch and a half tall and nine inches deep. Very small. You can put it in a bag and just have it as a backup. Yeah, it's not a bad idea to do that.

Alistair Parnell: 9:52

Let's go on and have a listen to a couple of your other demos you've got. So you've got the Fantom XR, is that right? You've got a string demo for that that I can see you've sent me here. Shall we listen to that one next. Yeah, that's for the Fantom XR, is that right? You've got a string demo for that? That I can see you've sent me here. Shall we listen to that one next?

Matt Traum: 10:06

Yeah, that's for the Fantom XR. It's a rack mount sound module. It also works in some of the other Fantom series keyboards and what I did is that this is from the audio demo for the sound bank from Patchman Music that's available and I just edited in just the string sounds you can hear. Here's what they sound like.

Alistair Parnell: 11:30

Yeah, there's a nice bit of speed going on there. It's obviously responding really quickly to your articulation and your fingering right, which is nice to hear.

Matt Traum: 11:39

Yeah, they're very responsive. They're very realistic sounding, I think, because again, they're based on samples in the ROM. So those are actual sounds of real instruments. Yeah, and the Roland they're known for responding well. It's a good, great module. I still have a Fantom XR in my rig, my hardware rig, and I highly recommend it. It's a great little box. You can get them pretty inexpensively and get the sound bank from Patchman Music. They recommend it. It's a great little box. You can get them pretty inexpensively and get the sound bank from Patchman Music. And also the filters in these Roland synths are very responsive and they sound good, very musical, so I've always been happy with them. I know Niall Steiner uses a Fantom XR or has one. He owns one. He's a big fan. And also another thing I'll mention on a lot of the Roland modules is portamento is done correctly, that is, portamento is read continuously.

Matt Traum: 12:27

So if you're gliding between an octave C to the C above it and you have your portamento kind of slow and all of a sudden you want to go faster in the middle of that glide, you can do that. It'll change speed in the middle of the glide. A lot of synthesizers will just read the portamento value when you start a note and that's it until it gets to the destination, which is incorrect. So Roland's doing it correctly and they're also doing it where if you portamento since you're using samples it has to end somewhere and if you bend a sample too far, it'll start to sound unnatural. So what they do is they switch to the new sample at the beginning of the glide and then, when you get to the arrival point, you're on the correct sample and it sounds good. Yeah.

Alistair Parnell: 13:11

So it's very well done, very thoughtful. And just to be clear, because next on my list here I'm going to play a couple of your XV-5080 patches.

Matt Traum: 13:18

Now that's a different module right, it's a different module, the XV series. There was XV, x 2020, x 50 50, x 50 80 and also um. The Sonic Cell is also very similar, um, so that's yeah, that's an older module that came before the phantom right, and those modules are also excellent. I I highly recommend them. They're they're not expensive and I do have a nice full sound bank of sounds for wind controllers.

Alistair Parnell: 13:48

So we've got a couple of examples here. The first one is your string patches for the 5080.

Matt Traum: 13:57

Yep, that's another excerpt from the demo that's available. If you want to listen to the whole demo, put a Patchman Music and you can hear it, but here's just the string patches from that sound bank.

Alistair Parnell: 14:34

And again there's some built-in effects, right.

Matt Traum: 14:37

Oh yeah, definitely built-in effects very good sounding effects and the vibratos in those, as far as I I recall, are all being controlled by me as well from the wind controller. They're not built into the sound, so you have full control over that, sure? Now there's one more sound example I wanted to give. This is from the same sound bank, the volume one for XV Roland. It's a performance that I designed for polyphonic use, so there's a chord that you'll hear that you play. And then I'm using a Yamaha MFC2 foot pedal, which was made way back in 1987 when the original WX7 came out. I remember it. Yeah, it's the only pedal ever made, ever that allows you to sustain a note with a wind controller. And that is, it sustains the note, but it also sustains the breath level. Yes, if you, if you were just to use a pedal like a sustain pedal on a keyboard, it it wouldn't work with a wind controller because as soon as you stop blowing, the sound's going to go away. But this MFC2, really cool little device allows you to play on MI I channels hannels I channels and you can sustain and hold and do some nice fun tricks.

Matt Traum: 15:42

By the way, there's a a video that I posted of Avery Burdette from Yamaha. He was the product manager. I know he demoed the WX7 when it first came out and it's up on YouTube. I digitized that. It was a little sales video that Yamaha put out and I've had this tape here for many years. It's really kind of cool. He's using one of these pedals and he's using a WX7. And it's also a good video if you want to learn how to set the bite control and the breath the little trimmers on that. He demonstrates exactly how to do it correctly. A lot of people have trouble with that.

Matt Traum: 16:15

Anyway, here's that demo of the polyphonic sound on the XV-5080.

Matt Traum: 16:53

It was actually two performances that were designed for the MFC2. Yeah, they sound great. Thank you, it's a lot of fun to play with that kind of stuff, sure, sure. There's one more sound demo that I'd like to play from the Patchman Music sound library for the Yamaha Motif series. It's available for certain Motif models, including the XF-6, 7, and 8, the XS-RACK-6, 7, and 8, and the MOX-F 6 and 8. MOX S Rack 6, 7, and 8, and the Mox F 6 and 8. And I've done three full banks of sounds for those synthesizers and each one has 128. So there's 384 breath-controlled sounds in there designed for wind controller players. And here's some of the strings from, mostly from Volume 2 within those three banks. So here's a little bit of the string sounds from that.

Matt Traum: 19:58

And if you'd like to pick up any of those sound banks for the Yamaha Motif, just go to patchmanmusic. com and click on the Yamaha icon and then there's a disc icon there that'll take you to the sound banks and you can see what's available and read about them and hear the full demos for all three banks.

Alistair Parnell: 20:16

Okay, so I think we could carry on and maybe look at, perhaps next, some of the internal sounds or sounds for the Aerophone. Should I say before we do that, Matt, I thought it might be helpful well for the two of us and hopefully for the listeners if we share any little kind of tips or tricks in terms of the way we would play a string, either solo instrument or a string pad. And you know, let's perhaps share if there's anything that we do in our playing technique or the way we like to set up an instrument. If we know we're going to play that. Do you have any specific kind of tips or ways you like to set things up?

Matt Traum: 21:03

Well, if I have a patch that's already been set up properly to respond to breath and it's a solo string patch like a solo violin or cello, I find myself usually I'll give it a little oomph at the beginning with my breath to kind of emulate the attack of a bow, you know, to get the string moving and then you can back off a little bit. So it's like you know, you kind of kind of give it a little bit of a kick at the beginning of the note. I think that's a good way to emulate successfully. Yeah, the vibrato is important, of course. When do you put the vibrato in and how fast should it be and how wide should it be?

Alistair Parnell: 21:40

That's something you just have to get from listening to players actually playing those instruments and trying to copy it as best you can so for me, um, I mean I think with pretty much any sound that we have to play on a wind synthesizer, the way that we get the best results from the sound is is experimenting with the different volumes that you can get. What's the kind of general level you should play at? Certainly the attack know some sounds like you say on the string sounds. If you get a little bit of a push at the start then you get a bit more kind of string attack sort of thing. But sometimes you want a much more gentle start of the sound. So you might have to be very, very gentle and very smooth with the way that you use your breath at the beginning. But you know, I have this thing.

Alistair Parnell: 22:29

There are basically for me four different types of articulation. This is a kind of generalized thing, something that I use when I'm testing out a sound, and that is that we can use our tongue to start a sound and we can use our breath to start a sound. So no tongue, effectively you get a more gentle attack. And then when you get to the end of the sound in my case, I mean I could also use my tongue to stop the sound or I can just let the breath, decay the sound. So for me that gives four options.

Alistair Parnell: 23:09

I speak of it like this, Matt, that if we use our tongue, I call that a closed attack. So I'm basically closing off the airflow, I'm releasing the tongue to get a more sudden attack. So closed closed would be tonguing the start of the sound and using my tongue to stop the sound, Whereas closed, open would be using my tongue to start the sound and using the air just to decay the sound. So that's two different ways. And then I can, of course, use my breath to start the sound. So open, start and a closed finish, using my tongue to finish the sound, and then open open, which is breath start, and breath finishing. They're the four different articulations that I kind of use to audition a sound and see what results I get. And of course, you've got all the control of the dynamic range in between. I don't know if you've ever thought of it like that, Matt, or if that's something you've kind of come across before.

Matt Traum: 24:17

I haven't thought of it that way, but yeah, I'm sure I do it without thinking yes, but one thing I should say is that I agree with everything you said, and the only way to be able to do all those things at your will is to have a sound that completely responds to breath, and you don't have a built-in envelope already in the sound. So all you want is full control over that sound and then you're able to control it as the player with your breath and your tongue. And, to the contrary, if you had an envelope in the sound already programmed in, it's hard to overcome that, if at all even possible. Yes, so yeah, you generally don't want to use an envelope on these types of sounds and you want to allow the player to have control over that.

Alistair Parnell: 24:57

And then the other two things for me. We talked earlier. We mentioned about portamento, the sliding effect between two notes. Now I think if we were much better aware of string sounds, of course, I do believe that it's not possible to portamento between any pair of notes. Right, that's as much as I understand. So I think you do have to be a little bit mindful of just sort of kind of slurring all over the place. But portamento is something that, if it's not already in a sound, that's one of the first things that I'll try and add on the Aerophone. Very often on an AE-30, I'll put that on to the thumb pad. So by pressing the thumb pad we'll get the portamento sound. And just to be a little bit more technical there, matt and I hope you can just back me up here there are usually two settings right for the portamento. There's a portamento switch on off, which is that CC05. Have I got that the right way around?

Matt Traum: 25:59

portamento switch.

Alistair Parnell: 26:00

I think is 65 oh, okay, the other way around and that's just on off. Yeah, and then the time is the 05 is, is that right?

Matt Traum: 26:07

I believe that's correct. Yeah, I always get it confused between four and five. I think four is the pedal, MIDI pedal and five is portamento time.

Alistair Parnell: 26:13

Very, often I have to get a MIDI CC chart up and just check that I'm doing it the right way around. And now the vibrato, Matt, this is something I don't think we've ever discussed this, but I think it's something that's useful. So, coming from a saxophone background, I very often find that the string vibrato is quite fast or needs to be quite fast. Certainly, they seem to do it quite quickly on high notes or when they're playing quite loud.

Alistair Parnell: 26:41

Now, something I'll often do and I'll do this on a swam sound and I'll quite often even do it on an Aerophone sound as well you can, of course, map your breath, if you want to, to your vibrato, because I find it's really hard to get the fast enough vibrato that I imagine the string player would use. So sometimes what I'll do is I'll map my breath pressure to influence the speed and the depth of the vibrato. So I don't actually necessarily do that myself. The louder I blow, the more vibrato I get. And again, I don't know if that's something you do, Matt, it's something I found works pretty well for my playing style.

Matt Traum: 27:24

Yeah, that works well. You kind of lose a little bit of control that way, because you might want to have a quiet note with a lot of vibrato. But I think what you say makes logical sense. I think when you think of a violin soloist, when they're playing intensely, they're going to really dig into that vibrato and, you know, really really do it so musically. I think it makes sense what you're saying.

Alistair Parnell: 27:44

Yeah, and so if anyone is delving into those swam sounds I mean, the similar settings are there in a lot of synthesizers and on board on the Aerophone. But consider that if you're having a little experiment on the swam sound, you can go to the MIDI settings and you can basically learn what you want the SWAM Sound to pick up as the trigger, if you like, for the vibrato. So go into the settings page on the Swam Sound and basically you're looking for the vibrato setting, highlight the vibrato setting, and basically you're looking for the vibrato setting, highlight the vibrato setting. It will take you to another page and then it'll ask you what controller you want to use to trigger the vibrato. And you can either press a learn button at the top and just blow into the instrument or you can just type in CCO2, and that will have the same effect. And then you can do things like control the amount of curve that's involved on that. So if you don't want to overdo it, you can kind of limit the curve. There is some fantastic settings there that you can use to get your own sound. So that's just my little tip on playing styles.

Alistair Parnell: 29:05

I think we should move on, Matt, and let's have a listen to perhaps some of these internal string sounds. Now we're actually going to feature and we have done before some of the sounds of the AEZ. These are the packs that you wrote, Matt, the string layers, and there's a wind and string layers as well, and these are available at a very reasonable price from the Roland Cloud. Isn't that right?

Matt Traum: 29:34

That's correct. I did eight AEZ sound banks and AEZ-007 and AEZ-008 have some string sounds in there. Seven is the String Layers, volume 1, and 8 is Wind and String layers. Now there's 10 Scenes in each of those but within the Scenes there's more than one sound generally. So you may have up to maybe four or more sounds in a Scene and those sounds also are new. So you can actually go in if you hear a string layer or maybe it's a string quartet sound and you like the violin, you can take the other three out and just have the violin and then save that as a new scene for yourself and you've got another additional solo violin to work with. So I want people to know that you know if you get those banks from the Roland Cloud, there's a lot in there. There's more than 10 sounds, as you would see listed.

Alistair Parnell: 30:26

Yeah, so we've both done some demos on the string layers. Let's hear a little bit of a collection of these string layers that we've both done here.

Matt Traum: 30:38

Okay, should we start with AEZ-07?.

Alistair Parnell: 30:41

Yeah, okay, string layers, volume one. I think that's what it's called, isn't it Correct, okay?

Matt Traum: 32:49

Those are some of the demos from the also some of the demos from the AEZ-008. Yeah, Wind and string layer. So you're going to hear woodwind sounds and maybe some brass.

Speaker 3: 33:41

I can't remember if. I used any brass .

Alistair Parnell: 35:13

Yeah. So, as you mentioned, Matt, not only have we got those layered sounds, but within those layered sounds we've got sometimes multiple new sounds that you also wrote, and I find some of those individual sounds can be very useful on their own. So, for instance, here from one of your string layers, this is just the viola that I've taken. I think one of your layers was violin and viola and this is called AEZ Viola Vib and this is what it sounds like on its own and I've also got the work very, very well and they are well in my opinion. Can I say they're better than some of the factory internal sounds that we've got as well, and it's very easy just to separate those out the app for the Aerophone Pro or the AE-20,. You can just go in and silence one of those sounds in the editor there.

Alistair Parnell: 37:20

And if that's something that you're into and you'd like to learn more about how you can edit the sounds or indeed layer your own sounds together, you'll probably know by now I do my own set of courses for the Aerophone. That's at the isaxacademy, and on the advanced Aerophone course we do a whole lot of programming of those sounds. Don't get put off by that. It's not kind of anything too deep. But in terms of layering your sounds together banks doing exactly what I've just demonstrated there with the sounds that Matt did in the string layers, it's very easy to do once you get a little bit of guidance. So take some time and visit the isaxacademy. But yes, Matt, they are very worthwhile. What are they? $20 or so, or is it even $10 for a pack?

Matt Traum: 38:13

I think it's just under $10 for each one. So, yeah, they're all available. There's eight of them on the Roland Cloud and I believe to get there you download an app. At least on my Mac, I download an app it's a Roland Cloud app and then that helps sort it out. You start an account and then you can download files. Some of them are free, by the way, I think is it the first three of the AEZ banks yes, yes, okay, yeah, those are free, so you can get those. And then the other five are under $10 each.

Alistair Parnell: 38:42

Just something. It's reminded me of somebody that had some questions earlier in the week, earlier in the week. There are a whole lot of other sounds that you can download for your Aerophone, but they have not been specifically written for the Aerophone, so the AEZ files they're the ones that Matt's done that work very, very well for the Aerophone. Roland do advertise a whole lot of other sounds and there's a huge amount of. There's a whole library of sounds there. Just be mindful that those sounds won't necessarily respond quite so well with your Aerophone. You can try them out Again. They're not too expensive, but be careful, because they are not going to work, um, really like the ones that Matt's done specifically to work, uh, with your Aerophone I wanted to just, uh, maybe interject here a little bit.

Matt Traum: 39:48

You, you mentioned briefly about vibrato speed. Yeah, and between, uh, stringed instruments and wood and woodwinds and brass instruments. I think you're right, I never thought about that. But strings definitely do a faster vibrato for trumpet and flute and sax and violin. But yeah, if you did that fast of a vibrato on a trumpet or sax I don't think it would sound very good at all. So it's interesting that vibrato it's expected to be a little quicker on a stringed instrument. At least on the smaller stringed instruments the violin and viola, maybe the cello and bass they get back down to a slower speed. You think that's correct.

Alistair Parnell: 40:32

I think that's correct. That's what I've noticed and, like I say, I just found it very difficult to achieve that speed of vibrato with my embouchure. I use the embouchure for vibrato on a saxophone. I know some people can use a more kind of diaphragmatic vibrato or throat vibrato. I don't do that on the saxophone but I can't make it quick enough, I can't get it fast enough for a realisti isa. y string sound. So I, like I said earlier, I tend to program it into the SWAM sound and we. hear that. Actually I've got a couple of examples here. So I mentioned actually maybe a couple of episodes ago about a recording I did.

Alistair Parnell: 41:18

Now this is just a brief part from my recording of the Schindler's List. Now I actually did this on the AE-10 and I did it about six or seven years ago and this is using the swam sound. Of course, the swam sounds have come on quite a bit from there, but let's just take a little listen to this. You can see this video online. If you look at my YouTube channel isaxacademy YouTube channel you'll see, if you go back a little bit in time, this version of the Schindler's List ¶.

Matt Traum: 42:40

Wow, that's a tremendous emulation you did there. That's probably one of the best violin emulations I've ever heard.

Alistair Parnell: 42:46

Well, thank you, that's really kind of you. I did spend a lot of time doing that. I got the score and I actually wrote in as much as I could of the original Itzhak Perlman kind of phrasing and I have to say it took me quite a lot of attempts to get it.

Matt Traum: 43:03

So that's an AE-10 with controlling the SWAM violin.

Alistair Parnell: 43:07

Yes, Schindler's List on AE-10 and, well you know, using the SWAM sound.

Matt Traum: 43:11

By the way, when we say SWAM, we're talking about the Audio Modeling SWAM instruments. It's a series of instruments that Audio Modeling, the company Audio Modeling, created and markets. It's just have you seen the film, Matt? Yes, yeah, you know, it's one of those films where I don't want to see it again, you know. Yeah, it's so emotional.

Alistair Parnell: 43:31

Oh, absolutely. But the music from it is just incredible. And how different is that music, you know, from the rest of John Williams stuff? You know we're used to the kind of, you know, jaws and Star Wars. And then he writes this absolutely sublime score for for Schindler's List and um, oh gosh, it's just absolutely. It's such a moving piece of music that so, yeah, that's the Schindler's List and if you want to hear more of that you can go on the YouTube channel. The one that I've always demoed, of course, is the famous Bach cello suite. I wonder if people cringe at wind synthesizer players playing this, but of course, if you're a wind synth player, doing things like playing some of the Bach music is extremely good for your technique, let alone if you're going to enjoy the sound or not. So let's just have a listen to a little bit of the SWAM cello with this very famous Bach cello suite. This is now using my AE-30 and the SWAM cello.

Speaker 3: 44:38

Ah, wonderful.

Alistair Parnell: 45:04

You see, I just love that piece of music, Matt, and I know I can play it on a saxophone. It's actually quite hard to play it on a saxophone but I just love to play it on a saxophone, but I just love to play that on that sound and I could never get tired of that piece of music. It's just fabulous.

Matt Traum: 45:19

That's very impressive how you did that as well. Playing pieces of music written for other instruments can be difficult with all the arpeggios and skips and things Not exactly easy to do on a wind controller, so maybe a little easier on the actual cello. But bravo to you.

Alistair Parnell: 45:39

Well, it would take me a few decades to get to that level on the cello, I can tell you that, very nice. But also, of course we've got w this problem. You know string players well, I know they'll tell you that they do breathe. Of course they breathe musically, but they don't have to take a breath, right? So, playing something that's more sustained and this is something that happens in the bark cello suite as well um, you've just got to take a breath sometime because, uh, you just can't keep it sustained as long as a string player could do.

Alistair Parnell: 46:17

And I've just got a couple more things to share with you. Again, on the swam, do you remember? A couple of episodes ago, I showed you that Davisi Mate app where we could separate the kind of big band sound. Well, I had a little play around with that because I thought it would be interesting to hear what some of the SWAM string sections sound like. So, just to try to explain what this is, rather than taking a SWAM violin and then opening up five instances of it and maybe eight of the cellos and what have, you can have up to about five or six different celli or violins in that, and they've done it very, very cleverly because it's not just five complete copies. Of course each one of those replications is slightly different, so it's slightly different set in the stereo field and it's slightly different instrument. It will respond slightly differently. So just like having five different players.

Matt Traum: 47:40

Yes, and I wanted to, since you brought it up, the idea of being slightly different is something we should talk about. With string instruments, at least the violin, viola, cello and bass there's no frets on those instruments, so the pitch is always going to be a little bit different every time you play. That pitch, yes, um, whereas with the fretted instrument it's, you know, always going to be pretty close to the same. So that's part of the sound as well. Um, so randomness is always a little uh, is usually welcome in the programming. If you can get a little bit of random pitch in there, it will sound more realistic. Even though it's less perfect, it's still. To me it sounds more real.

Alistair Parnell: 48:18

And the other thing they've done as part of that plugin is they've developed their own kind of sound stage.

Alistair Parnell: 48:26

So it's, you know, in most simple form it's a reverb, but they've done it in such a way that you have a kind of visualisation of a room, a church, a recording stage, various different kind of atmospheres or venues, should I say and you've got control over not only the amount of the time of the reverb but also the positioning of the instruments within that space. So if you decided, actually I want my bass instruments to sort of sound like they're slightly further away from the listener, you just kind of slide this little circle away from the microphone, a little icon, and you get this fantastic version of space. And the other thing that they've done with that if you've got several instances open say, you've got a violin and you've got some cello section and you've got a bass section you don't have to go through and do all of those in each separate plugin. You can just do it in the one plugin and somehow they've made them all link and you can just move them all around in one kind of stereo field. It's really, really clever.

Matt Traum: 49:43

Really nice. I like the visual aspect of that. Do you remember Wallander WIVI instruments W-I-V-I.

Alistair Parnell: 49:50

They had a similar, they did something similar.

Matt Traum: 49:52

Yeah, that's right, it was several years ago. They sounded great. Yeah, great sounding instruments. I don't think they're not available anymore, unfortunately, but they were very nice. Had the same type of idea in the interface.

Alistair Parnell: 50:04

So here's just a very brief example of some chords that I just played. So this is just played in one pass. This is Divisi Mate, splitting my sound from my Aerophone into four different sections, four different string sections of the SWAM sections plugin. That's a lovely rich sound, isn't it beautiful? Yeah, and then on a second pass I just added a SWAM solo violin. So basically, in two passes this is what I got in my door. That's how you do it. Not bad for a wind synth eh?

Matt Traum: 51:59

I would say, most people you know. If you didn't tell them, they would never know.

Alistair Parnell: 52:02

Well, absolutely absolutely. And if you again, if you're going to play that within an ensemble or maybe a musical theatre set up or recording some, you know, I just think that's it sounds like film music, right? I mean, you can, you can do your film, composing or whatever you want to do, and be very, very expressive, because it's all breath controlled and so infinitely controllable for the shape of the dynamics, and that's what makes things sound really beautifully, musically shaped, and that's why we love our wind synth, right, we sure do.

Matt Traum: 52:35

By the way, when we say SWAM, we're talking about the audio modeling SWAM instruments. It's a series of instruments that the company Audio Modeling created and markets. If anybody's looking for any of the SWAM instruments for the PC or Mac, contact me at Matt at patchmanmusic. com. If you mentioned this podcast, I'll give you a special consideration on the price, and I generally give the best prices available anywhere. Now, if you wanted the SWAM instruments for iPad or you know they run on iPhone now as well they're a smaller versions of all those instruments. Those are only available through the Apple store, so you'd have to get those direct.

Alistair Parnell: 53:12

So as just Czardas final little fun thing on the Czardas, I did actually record again. This is on the AE-10 using the swan violin. I used it in a live concert. We did a version of the Monte Giardas. You'll all know that tune. It's a very famous tune. Now you can see this performance on the video.

Alistair Parnell: 53:36

If you search Czardas, that's C-Z-A-R-D-A-S. If you search czardas and the Equinox Saxophone Ensemble, you'll find that on YouTube and I'll leave a link in the description below. Basically it's myself playing the Aerophone violin and an extremely talented lady that plays in Equinox. She's a fine, fine saxophone player and an incredible musician and also, by the way, she's a pretty decent violin player and we just had fun with this because Claire did a version of this for us where she plays a little bit. I play a little bit and it's quite a fun thing to to listen to and you can see just how close the the swam violin gets to a real violin side by side. Here's a tiny little clip, and you'll see if you watch the video. It's all a bit of a tongue-in-cheek thing because we're having a bit of fun and kind of budging each other out the way on stage and things we were just having a lot of fun and it's worth a look. If you have a spare minute to go and have a look at that.

Matt Traum: 55:32

That's incredible. I mean, I don't know if I could tell which one is which in that recording.

Alistair Parnell: 55:37

That's why you've got to see the video, you know, because it is really very, very close the way we had it matched up. So it was just great fun and it's a really good example of how we might use an Aerophone in a live situation as well. Now, before we finish, Matt, we have had a listener question. In fact, it's in two parts, but the second part I think we're going to have to wait for another episode, so you'll have to keep tuning in. So this is from from Wim. Wim is actually in my Aerophone Academy and he says how much he's enjoying the podcast and he enjoys the Aerophone Academy as well and he highly recommends it. Thank you for your podcast. He says there's always something interesting in there. Thank you, Wim.

Alistair Parnell: 56:37

And you've mentioned that the next podcast is going to be about some other instruments. Now, that's the bit that we're going to talk about at another time, because you're talking, for instance, about playing guitar sounds and things. We're going to cover that in another podcast. But you've also said that you've noticed both Matt and I have designed several of the sounds for the Aerophone and you were wondering how we got into playing a wind instrument and how we got involved in the programming of the sounds.

Alistair Parnell: 57:13

Now, firstly, what I would say to you, Wim, is, if you go again to my YouTube channel, there's a really, really good interview that I did with Matt and it goes through quite a lot of detail about Matt's history there and how he got into music and how he got into wind synthesizers, got into music and how he got into wind synthesizers. But I guess, just to make this a little bit of a shorter answer, I'm going to take it as perhaps you know how did we get into doing the actual Aerophone programming sounds? I think that might be a good way of sort of just taking a slice of that history. It would take us both several hours to go through our history. So, Matt, how did you get into actually doing the Aerophone sounds?

Matt Traum: 57:58

I've been in touch with Roland for many years. I've been a dealer for Roland products through Patchman Music and I've always offered advice and suggestions to the company and I remember even suggesting hey, Roland, you should get into a wind controller at some point, and this was way back and it was very happy to see that they did. And then they came out with the AE-10. I had nothing to do with that. This was before I was involved in that. Alistair, I think you'd agree that there were quite a few issues when the AE-10 was first released because it was their first product and you know there were some things that had to be worked out and I offered suggestions on how that could be worked out in that or maybe a future product, and I guess they found it interesting and helpful and brought me on board to keep advising and also create quite a few of the factory sounds as well.

Alistair Parnell: 58:47

Yeah, and it was a similar idea for me. I was contacted by somebody here over in Roland and that came about simply, I believe, because of my YouTube channel, because I'd done some stuff from. Well, it's been going 10 years now. I'd got myself established there as a as a wind synthesizer player and and educator, I guess, and so they got in touch with me, basically through the YouTube channel, and I did some demos early on for the AE-10. And, as Matt says, that wasn't the easiest thing because there were some teething problems with that, but they soon got those ironed out and then things went on and all the new models came about. But I think for both of us for Matt and myself, of course we had a presence there. Well, I don't know, Matt, how long have you had your website? We're talking decades right, yeah, decades.

Matt Traum: 59:40

I started the business in late 1984. Yeah, as far as the website, I came in pretty early when websites were possible to do, somewhere in the mid-90s, 96, 97, maybe, I don't recall exactly the year. It's been a long time.

Alistair Parnell: 59:56

Yes, yeah, so that getting established as somebody that's very well known and respected as a wind synthesizer player. Of course, that's what Matt's done, and I've done that from a later time, but I guess YouTube has quite a reach, so that's how I got into that circle as well. I hope that answers at least a little bit of your question, Wim, and, as I say, we will be looking at the guitar playing but that's going to come up in another episode. Matt, I've kind of been waiting this whole episode because I'm I'm absolutely incredibly excited, uh, about something that I'm gonna let you tell the listeners about, uh our next episode well, I'm happy to announce that we just confirmed an interview with my friend and fellow EVI player Judd Miller.

Matt Traum: 1:00:58

Judd's a phenomenal musician, great guy, funny guy, and he's done some serious work on wind controller that goes back decades. He's worked on films. He's worked in the studio with musicians. He, he did programming for Michael Brecker, his famous EWI sounds for his rig way back in the 80s he was the guy that was doing a lot of those sounds and Judd's gone on to do a lot of work with, like I say, Michael Brecker, He rb Alpert, the Yellow Jackets, on and on. The movies he's worked on, uh, playing EVI is just uh, mind boggling. I have a website, if you just search out Judd Miller, J U D D Miller, uh, Patch man Music, you'll see the tribute page that I created for him. You can see some of the albums he worked on. Uh, some of the movies I'll just look at the list here as it goes on forever but Adam's Family, City Slickers, a Few Good Men, Karate Kid, Ghost, Titanic, Unforgiven, it just goes on and on. These are big, big movies and he was up there playing in front of very large studio orchestras in the studio with an EVI and he's got some stories to tell that. Just blow your mind. It's going to be a very special episode next month.

Alistair Parnell: 1:02:20

I'm so excited about this, Matt, I can't tell you how much I just cannot wait to it. He's always been one of my huge influences and uh h eroes on on the uh on the wind synthesizer. I'm so excited, I'm so pleased you've managed to hook us up with Judd. And so, everybody, please don't forget, if you can uh, you know, make sure you spread the word of the podcast, especially with this Judd Miller interview coming up very soon. We'd very much appreciate your feedback, you sharing our podcast with as many people as you can, because you know we want to share all this news and all this good stuff with as many people as possible. We have both told you what we think about playing string sounds on a wind synthesizer. If you're a string player, please forgive us, because I'm sure we've made some mistakes. We're not, we're not string players, but we hope you've learned a lot in the process. Thanks again, Matt, for all your input and um, roll on the next one. Yeah? Sounds good.

Matt Traum: 1:03:30

We'll see you next time with Judd Miller!