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 back everybody to episode 11. We are discussing synthesizer sounds, of course, driven from our wind synthesizer. And before we make a start, let's welcome our usual guest host, and that's Matt Traum. Welcome, Matt, how are you getting on?

Matt Traum: 0:55

Thanks Alistair, looking forward to this episode. This is one that we've been talking about for a while and we were thinking, okay, we've done lots of the emulations and now we could talk about strictly doing synthetic sounds on your wind controller. And uh, Alistair, you had a great point when we were kind of talking about the show beforehand, that, uh, this is a way that people can find their own voice, their own unique voice, as compared to trying to emulate a trumpet or a saxophone. Um, there's a million, unlimited ways you can go.

Alistair Parnell: 1:24

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like the. For me anyway, the synthesizer sounds are the kind of true voice of a wind synthesizer. Of course it's very helpful and you know we can enjoy playing those emulative sounds, but for me, playing those emulative sounds, but for me playing a synthesizer sound, is where I feel, that's where I get my own personal voice for the instrument. And sometimes I feel perhaps people are a little bit reluctant to investigate the synthesizer sounds, perhaps because very often I think they maybe just haven't listened to enough really good demonstrations of those sounds. I mean, we all know about the huge names. We're going to talk about some of those huge names in this episode the Michael Breckers, the Judd Miller, you know but have they really listened very carefully to some of those recordings? Maybe not, and I think once they can listen to those recordings and really appreciate the sort of sounds these guys are making, I'm sure, like the two of us, they'll fall in love with those sounds and hopefully want to investigate them more. That's what we're here to do for this episode, I reckon.

Matt Traum: 2:38

Yeah, you know, I have to say, as you were saying, that I was just remembering back to my days, early days, when I was playing with my jazz groups and the larger groups and I always thought, oh, I have to sound like a sax or a flute or a flugelhorn and I was always afraid to try any kind of synthetic sound. And I'm thinking that the audience wants to hear realistic sounds and I'm not sure that was a correct assumption, I think as long as it's expressive and it fits the music, I think it's and it's played well, I think it's fine. But I had my own aversion to doing synthetic sounds.

Matt Traum: 3:10

Now there's some people that have an aversion to emulating sounds and they don't want to sound like a saxophone or a real instrument, thinking that they're going to take a job away from an actual sax player or whatever, but I think I was kind of the opposite as I think about it. Did you ever have a problem with that, thinking, oh boy, is the public going to really want to hear this weird sound?

Alistair Parnell: 3:30

Absolutely. yes, but I think, like I say, listening to some of those great players play and realizing and for me this is where the wind synthesizer really shines that you can be so expressive with those synthesizer sounds that they really take on a personality of their own. And I think if you learn to play a wind synth really expressively, then you know really any sound can work really really well, but for me, particularly those synth sounds. So, yeah, it gives us a chance, I think, for us to find our own voice and of course, there are so many different variations in the synth world. You know we've got endless possibilities. I mean, there's, you know, thousands and thousands of sounds we can make and you'll never get through the list of possibilities. And that's another great thing that we can actually choose which sound we prefer.

Alistair Parnell: 4:22

We're going to talk about some of our own personal sounds and play some demonstrations of us playing those sounds as well. So plenty of things to look forward to in this episode. We said, matt, that we might actually look at, you know, some of the great players, and maybe that's the place for us to start. Do you think, shall we start looking at some of those inspirational players that have really led us to be head over heels with those synth sounds, absolutely.

Matt Traum: 4:56

Let's see who can we go back to. I guess Nyle Steiner is one of the very first, absolutely, since he essentially invented it. There's a clip of Nyle Steiner demonstrating some of his sounds that he was doing on an old analog Steiner phone synth that he made in a suitcase and it's just a simple sawtooth wave or square wave with a great filter and you know, you listen to him play and if it's played right, that little sawtooth can really sound like a trumpet or whatever. He's so talented at that. So maybe we should talk about that a little bit.

Matt Traum: 5:26

It's a clip, Nyle Steiner, it was from 1983. He was over in France, I believe, playing a concert over there with Vladimir Ussachevsky, I believe in 1983. So here he is playing a little bit of a sawtooth on his analog synth, but listen to how wonderfully acoustic this sounds. That's amazing. Little maynard ferguson there at the end. Yeah, absolutely, 40, 40 some years ago. Yes, incredible. Yeah, no samples, just a analog synthesizer, um. So there's another clip. It's actually from an LP that they did. He recorded a Ussachevsky piece called Four Studies for Clarinet and EVI. In 1989, they recorded an LP with F Gerard Errante. Am I saying that name correctly?

Alistair Parnell: 6:39

Well, that's yeah, sounds as good as I could say it.

Matt Traum: 6:43

And he is on the clarinet and Nyle Steiner is on his EVI playing like a trumpet type sound. Maybe we can listen to that now too.

Alistair Parnell: 7:56

of how you can certainly blend those synthesizer sound with acoustic instruments, right?

Matt Traum: 8:02

Exactly that's what I was thinking too. It's not so much about the timbre that he's playing, but how it just blends with the acoustic instrument To me flawlessly. It's wonderful, yeah.

Alistair Parnell: 8:10

Yeah, it's um we we did a piece with our um Equinox uh saxophone ensemble, uh, which was written by um a guy over here called Nigel Wood, um called Partial Eclipse, and actually we could put a little bit of that in here as well as a sort of similar idea. This is with a nine-piece saxophone group which I run called the Equinox Saxophone Ensemble, and I'm actually playing the wind synthesizer. This is done on an Aerophone. In fact, it was done on the AE-10 originally. In fact, it was done on the AE-10 originally. And another example of how well we can blend instruments, both acoustic and a true synthesizer sound.

Matt Traum: 9:40

So I did want to mention that if a person that plays wind controller is inclined to try programming, or at least tweaking sounds, that it's another way that they can make their own voice, their own personality, you can take a sound that I did or Alistair did or whatever and change it around and find something that appeals to you.

Matt Traum: 10:10

You don't have to be a master programmer to do that, to just find little things and find your own voice.

Alistair Parnell: 10:13

Yeah, because there's some quite easy things initially that you can do that can quite radically change the sound or even just slightly change the sound, which can make the world of a difference to the way you want to play it. So you're talking about things like the filter and the resonance, and usually they're fairly easy little tweaks to make on an instrument or an interface and then you know, you save your own version of it, and I mean that's what you and I do, Matt, probably pretty much all the time, and even depending on certain pieces of music. I'll play you a demo slightly later of a recording I did, where I did just that.

Alistair Parnell: 10:50

I just felt for this one particular piece the sound just needed to be, you know, just not quite so bright, just a little bit warmer sounding. So all I had to do is just slightly change the filter control and yeah, then you've just got the sound that you think fits that one piece. And again, that's another great thing about your synthesizer repertoire you can take one particular sound but you can have quite a lot of variations, as many as you like, and that might suit one piece in particular, and you might choose something brighter or different for another piece. So you've got endless possibilities and again it's finding your own voice.

Matt Traum: 11:32

Yeah, it's kind of like a sax player looking for a certain type of sax or a mouthpiece, or reed or you know neck on their sax or trumpet mouthpiece. It's, um, you find these little subtle things that you like, or maybe you'd prefer one synthesizer over another. I just like that sound because it's a little warmer than this other one and um, so, yeah, it helps to experiment sometimes too, and sometimes you have to go through a few iterations of a wind controller rig before you find something that you really like a lot.

Alistair Parnell: 12:01

But perhaps with one advantage over that scenario that you were just talking about, where you know a sax player might experiment with different reeds or mouthpieces or whatever, of course. Then you've got the problem, and I'm talking as a saxophone player. You know you've got this quite obvious variation, sometimes because different reeds you buy a box of 10 reeds and they're all going to feel slightly different and one day this reed might feel good on this mouthpiece but then it won't feel so good the next day, usually, of course, on a wind synthesizer. Because you know you've got these sounds actually saved. You can be pretty sure that you're going to get the exact same sound again if it's a digital setup on the synthesizer. So that gives you a nice bit of confidence to know that you've saved that sound. You'll get exactly that sound back tomorrow, and that's something you can't always guarantee on an acoustic instrument.

Alistair Parnell: 12:53

And some people would say, well, that's a great thing about acoustic instruments, yes, but there's also the downside of like, well, I don't quite know how that's going to sound, you know the next day. So, having your sound saved into your sound bank, you know you can recall it in the same way and that's your own sound. So, talking of your own sounds. Let's have a look at some of the sort of players, certainly the players that have been very influential to us, and hopefully, if you've not listened to some of these guys playing, you really ought to, and we're going to help you along the way, because we've got some demos of them playing, so we thought we might move on to somebody like Bob Mintzer, do you think, Matt?

Matt Traum: 13:38

Yeah, let's talk about Bob for a minute. He's a longtime EWI player. He started back I guess in the late 80s. He had the first Akai EWI1000 model and he recorded quite a bit with that, with the Yellow Jackets, and now he's moved on to the EWI 4000, and that seems to be his instrument of choice. The EWI 4000, of course, is a digital synth inside this instrument, but it's an analog modeling type digital synth and it feels very analog when you play it. It's a fantastic response.

Matt Traum: 14:09

In fact, Bob, he's a good friend of mine now and I've worked with him, working on his horns and things, and he's proud to say he uses my sounds for the EWI 4000 exclusively and he loves them. In fact, when he was in Cleveland a couple of years ago I brought an EWI 5000 with me, put it in the car and I said hey, Bob, I got a 5000 out in the car, if you want to just plug it in and try it. And he was not interested in the 5000 because it's more emulative and it has samples and it's not based off of that analog model and he just really prefers the analog sound. So as far as I know, he doesn't really have a lot of he as far as I know he doesn't really have a lot of. He really doesn't want to get into emulation that much with his wind controller.

Matt Traum: 14:49

But we have a nice clip of him fitting in with a big band Now. He's been with the WDR big band in Cologne, Germany, for many years as their guest conductor there and composer and arranger. He's doing great things over there. Check him out on YouTube, this WDR big band. It's incredible. This clip here was, uh, from a Grammy nominated CD from 2022 with the WDR big band and the Yellow Jackets combined on the CD and this track is called One Day. And he's again. He's playing the EWI 4000 with one of my sounds in it. Just thought you might like to hear this with an EWI blended in with a big band very tastefully.

Alistair Parnell: 16:29

Thank you, great stuff, I just love that. Again, a brilliant mix, a blend of that synthesizer sound with acoustic instruments, and it just sounds great.

Matt Traum: 16:39

I agree he's a master. Yeah, he's just using the EWI 4000 by itself, no sound modules anymore. He likes to keep it simple and just put it in a gig bag on his back and carry it on the airplane, I guess so he's been very happy with that, and again he has no desire to do anything more than that. That's his voice.

Alistair Parnell: 17:01

I think I did see an interview. He was talking about this and, yeah, absolutely, he says about the 4000 and um. I believe I'm right in saying that he very often sticks to relatively few sounds. Um, you know, he's got maybe half a dozen sounds that he enjoys playing and um, but he's really learned to play those sounds very, very well and get so much expression and precision of technique, of course, but of articulation, and that's something that's always going to come up with any sound, the way that you articulate a sound, the way you use the dynamics in the sound. And he's just got that half a dozen sounds but, wow, he makes this amazing sound on all of them. He really knows them well.

Matt Traum: 17:49

Yeah, I'm proud to say that. I've asked him several times and he says no, those are your straight sounds, but he's just picked the ones that he likes. I know there's one that kind of overblows as you blow it. Honestly, I can't remember the name of it, uh, but I know it's in the bank. It's the one where you overblow it and it jumps an octave and it's this really fuzzy, beautiful sound. But the only thing he might have done was maybe pull down some of the reverb, because when he's playing live I think he prefers to have a little more dry and let the sound guy control that. But uh, yeah, it's just he's. He's found his collection in there that he likes and that became his signature.

Alistair Parnell: 18:30

We also want to keep talking, I think, about this. You know the way that we make our own sounds and you know you've already mentioned, say, about a saxophone player and you know how you might create the sound. And you know, I've been teaching saxophone for 40 years and it's always the thing, I think, that I say to my pupils. Well, you know, how do you know what you want to sound like if you haven't heard that sound?

Alistair Parnell: 18:58

If you can listen to some players and think I really like that guy's sound, or you might like one person's sound for the way he does a certain thing high notes, low notes, vibrato, whatever. I want to blend that with somebody else's sound when he does staccato or whatever it is but you form your own sound and without that aim, without that goal in your head, that blueprint to aim for, then inevitably you're going to be quite lost. And this is why I think we really want to encourage people to listen more to players that are using synthesizer sounds, because if you hear people like Bob Mintzer we're going to hear Brecker shortly as well Once you've heard those sounds, then this is certainly what happened to me. Then I start trying to emulate that sound and that's what really gives you that focus to start to get into the synthesizer sounds. If that's something you haven't really got into yet.

Matt Traum: 19:58

Yeah, Should we go to maybe an older recording of Michael Brecker playing his famous EWI solo?

Alistair Parnell: 20:05

So this is probably the most famous recording right Steps Ahead, Magnetic 1986. And this is the well very famous for wind synth players. This is his amazing recording of In a Sentimental Mood.

Alistair Parnell: 21:38

So actually a little story about that. That was definitely the track that got me into playing wind synthesizers. 1986 was when I was at music college in London and actually I knew a house full of jazz musicians similar age to me and it was them actually that said, oh, surely you've heard the Michael Brecker In a Sentimental Mood and at that point I'd never come across it. And well, of course, when I heard that I was absolutely blown away and that was definitely the track that started me on the road was with wind synthesizers. Was it similar for you, Matt, or you were probably into it a little before?

Matt Traum: 22:20

The very first time I heard a wind synthesizer was in probably 1982, three, something like that. At college there was my good friend, Brian Gaber, who teaches down at Florida State University, Okay, and I think we mentioned him in one of the early episodes and he brought a Crumar EVI to a jazz jam at one of the local hamburger sandwich shops there on a Thursday night. I watched him play it very tastefully and he was playing jazz and I was blown away because I had dreamed about an electronic trumpet but I didn't know it existed. I didn't know anything about Nyle Steiner, so that was the first time I heard it. And Brecker came in later on and all these great players. So I had a little bit of a different history. Yeah, but this recording by Michael Brecker, yeah, I would say that's probably, boy, one of the definitive earliest wind controller recordings. That really really took it somewhere, wouldn't you say? That's a very special record.

Alistair Parnell: 23:20

Absolutely, Absolutely, yeah.

Matt Traum: 23:23

I have another clip here that we talked about Michael Brecker playing Original Rays from his Michael Brecker album. I think this was his debut solo album after he had done so much studio work and he figured out this with Robbie Kilgore, his programmer, and Judd Miller, and they all worked together and they got these kind of rotating chords that were happening as you play a note. The chord underneath would change and the bass note would hop around. And this was talk about game changer. Let's listen to this.

Alistair Parnell: 25:01

just explain a little bit more about what's going on. That is just Brecker playing one note at a time on his instrument, but the synthesizer that it's connected to that's what's creating the harmony and that has a part in it that is changing some of the notes automatically in a certain sequence, sometimes randomly. Sometimes it automatically in a certain sequence, sometimes randomly, sometimes it goes in a specific order. Perhaps not everybody would realise quite what's going on there, and if you are fairly new to wind synthesizers perhaps you won't be picking up on the fact that those notes are changing. So even when he just repeats the same note over and over again, the notes underneath the note that he's fingering, those notes are changing as well. So there's quite a bit going on there. Perhaps to the novice it's not always obvious quite what's going on. So hopefully that explains a little bit more clearly what happens in that sort of a sound.

Matt Traum: 26:06

Yeah, Michael was using his EWI, hmm, so 87, it could have been the Akai. It could have been the Steiner phone. Might've been the Steiner phone made by Nyle Steiner. But then he's triggering an Oberheim Xpander or a Matrix- 12. They're basically the same thing. The Matrix- 12 is two Xpanders with the chords and with that rotation mode, working and doing all kinds of special things. But yeah, that's a single performance of one person playing. There's no overdubs on that, just a lot of layers and a lot of really clever programming.

Alistair Parnell: 26:43

Yeah, and extremely clever playing as well, might we add. For sure, but yeah, all of those come together to make an amazing solo sound like that.

Matt Traum: 26:55

So we should say the Aerophone. Getting back to the Aerophone AE-20 and AE-30, and some of the sounds that I voiced for the factory that are included in those instruments has the rotating feature very similar to what you're hearing in that trend setting recording there in 1987. The synthesizers have finally caught up to where you can put it all inside of one instrument. So there's several of those rotating chords built into the factory presets in the Roland AE-20 and AE-30. So do check them out. They're a lot of fun to play. You can play for hours with those things. So here's a quick demo of those sounds in the Roland AE-30.

Alistair Parnell: 28:28

Yeah, as you were saying Matt, the Aerophones, the AE-20 and AE-30, the, the synthesizer that they have inside that, those instruments is, you know, pretty amazing If you think about. I know we're talking about 40 years after Brecker recorded that stuff, but you know we now have a considerable amount of synthesizer power just in the, the, in the instrument itself, without any external gear. I've got a couple of demos here that I did of a couple of sound banks that Matt did for the AEZ series. These are ones from the Roland Cloud and this is a little demo first of the synthesizer set from the AEZ01. And it's kind of a continuous track that I did. So we'll just start this off and you can have a listen to the first couple of sounds on this.

Alistair Parnell: 31:44

So you can hear already that there's a tremendous amount of variation there. Pick one of those sounds that you like and start working on it to get its full expressive capabilities. And here's a little bit of the second bank, the AEZ02. Similar idea I kind of did a little bit of a track and just kind of switched through each of the 10 sounds that are included in there. I believe those first two banks are actually free. If you've got AE-20 or an AE-30, you can download these for free from the Roland Cloud.

Alistair Parnell: 32:52

Thank you that sounds great, yeah, so plenty of variation, and you can take any one of those sounds and if you want to make slight adjustments to it, you can certainly do that and save that as your own sound. So you can more or less think of those, as of course they're great presets, but they can be great starting places as well to experiment and make your own versions of those sounds.

Matt Traum: 34:06

So there's a couple sounds that are kind of standardized or wind controller type, sounds that you see in a lot of sound banks that are for wind controllers, and we thought maybe we'd highlight a couple of those too. One of them is sort of the classic Judd Miller sound. Judd Miller, we had on our show last two episodes, really excellent series of interviews with him, studio legend, EVI legend. But he had the sound that was kind of a I don't know two sawtooths and one kind of blipped a little bit in pitch and came back down- kind of a doubling effect. Sawtooth and one kind of blipped a little bit in pitch and came back down kind of a doubling effect, kind of a brassy sound. But it became sort of a standard wind controller timbre that people like. So, um, here's, here's what it sounds like. Here's just a real short clip of it. So we've all heard that one a million times, yeah.

Matt Traum: 34:55

And there's another kind of a variation on that. I don't know which one came first. They were probably pretty close to being at the same time Lyle Mays with the Pat Metheny group. Lyle Mays was the famous keyboard player with Pat Metheny. He's now deceased, fantastic talent, and he added a lot to that group, but he had this kind of a sound very similar to that, but it was with square waves so it has more of a hollow clarinet-y kind of sound. So here's his version of that and here's a version of it within the recordings with Pat Metheny a couple songs that he recorded with him. So that's the famous uh song called Are You Going With Me, from the Offramp album by Pat Metheny 1981. Beautiful, beautiful piece of music, yeah, masterpiece. This other one is called Facing West from 1992 with Pat Metheny.

Alistair Parnell: 36:51

I was just thinking, Matt, do you think we said we would go into the area of talking about how you know, some people prefer synthesizer sound, some people prefer emulation sounds, and actually people can have quite strong views on that, right, I mean, I've certainly got people in my iSax Academy.

Alistair Parnell: 37:15

They're really only interested in doing emulative sounds and some of them really not into the synthesizer sounds at all. And I just thought, listening to those Lyle Mays sounds there and the fact that you've introduced those as Lyle May sounds and you know those people that know that music yeah, that's his sound, you know that was one of his sounds he used. Do you think that perhaps if people aren't so comfortable with synthesizer sounds, it's because they struggle to, if you like, name them or categorize them? Perhaps they just feel that there's this whole world that they don't understand and they can't quite sort of categorize it properly. So maybe they I don't know, not that they're afraid of it, but they don't quite understand it or they can't quite label it and so that makes it a bit more difficult for them to get into. Do you think there's some truth in that?

Matt Traum: 38:15

Sure, maybe that fear of the unknown. You know there's no reason to fear it, but they just but you know, I mean a lot of horn players, classical players or young players, and they just grew up in high school learning trumpet. They don't really know about the world of synthesis and so so maybe they're afraid of that and they find it intimidating. But it's just another timbre and it's fun to explore it.

Alistair Parnell: 38:41

You can spend your whole life learning and it's just a beautiful thing. I don't know about you, but you know, if someone says to me, oh, can you play a trumpet sound or a violin sound, tend to be a little bit more. I think. Perhaps initially at least, I'm thinking more about how do I make this sound like a violin, how do I make it sound like a trumpet? And then you know you've got a whole load of thoughts that you've got to take on board to try and, if you like, abide by that acoustic instrument's. You know physiology, if you like, You're trying to imitate it, right, and that doesn't have to be, you know, limiting in any way musically.

Alistair Parnell: 39:26

But I tend to find that if I'm on a synthesizer sound, I don't really have to think about that stuff. I can think about just getting the best from the sound that I've got. No one's going to judge me and say, oh, you don't sound like a so and so because, no, I'm going to sound like a synthesizer and therefore it feels to me like, you know, the handcuffs have been taken off, I'm free to do whatever I like. No one's going to judge my synthesizer sound. Is that the same for you?

Matt Traum: 39:54

Yeah, I hear what you're saying. You know it's like if you say, oh, I'm imitating a saxophone, now, as soon as you say that, then everybody knows what a sax is supposed to sound like and they're going to say, no, that's not close. You know, you have that mental image of what a saxophone sounds like and you're judged, judged against that. It's kind of like you're trying we use this analogy in previous episode where everybody knows what the Mona Lisa looks like. So if you're saying, oh, I'm, I'm emulating the Mona Lisa, well then you better be pretty good at it, because everybody knows what it looks like. And, yeah, you know, uh, there's only one real Mona Lisa that you can go after.

Matt Traum: 40:30

But if you're, if you're saying, oh, I'm emulating a synth stack, uh, geez, I mean, that could be anything. So it's wide open and there's there's a whole lot less stress too. I think if you uh are not trying to emulate, yes, it can be a very relieved uh, very, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Uh, yeah, you're talking about being free, very freeing, very. Uh. You know, it releases all those in those preconceived uh, things that that you have to work towards. And when you're playing a saxophone, you have to always think, oh, would a sax player play this? Whereas if you're doing a synth, there is no preconceived notion and it really does free you up to do things.

Alistair Parnell: 41:14

So, Matt, do you have your own kind of favorite sounds? Are you like me? You've perhaps got a few sounds that you tend to use more often, do you have some favorites?

Matt Traum: 41:28

Yeah, I was thinking about it. In terms of non-emulations, I always gravitate towards that simple sawtooth, brassy sound with a filter on it, real simple, one oscillator, like I say, trumpet, trombone, flugelhorny kind of sound. Yes, um, I also like sounds that you can overblow, like when you blow a penny whistle or a recorder, and it kind of jumps over the octave as you blow. I love that kind of transition into the octave and while you're playing lines it's kind of going back and forth between the two octaves. I love that effect.

Matt Traum: 41:59

Also, layering I really like to layer sounds and that's where the fun comes in, as far as I'm concerned, when you layer more than one timbre and experiment with things. But maybe we could play a couple things. I have a couple clips that I did uh with that, that just that simple sawtooth, the uh sound that I always gravitate towards, and I'm not the only one, there's a lot of people that like that. So, um, here's a piece that I I just recorded a Chuck Mangione classic called chase the clouds away a couple years ago and I'm playing to a backing track, but it's uh, it's essentially that sound. Maybe I may have layered a second one just in unison with it, but this will give you an idea.

Matt Traum: 42:49

Thank you, so it's nothing special.

Matt Traum: 43:30

It's just kind of a nice brassy kind of sound. I think it works very well and I can't imagine people having a problem listening to that.

Matt Traum: 43:39

No Over an actual flugelhorn,

Alistair Parnell: 43:42

Absolutely, yeah, it's really nicely played, very expressive. I was just thinking, Matt, as I was listening to that. I don't know if you've ever thought about this yourself, but I'm not sure. But I think I could probably tell the difference if someone's playing an EVI or a woodwind type controller. What do you think about?

Matt Traum: 44:06

That Interesting. I'll bet you that has a lot to do with fingering patterns and also vibrato,

Alistair Parnell: 44:13

I think so, and articulation, I think to some extent.

Matt Traum: 44:17

Oh yeah, interesting.

Matt Traum: 44:19

Yeah, but no, I reckon it'd be fun to hear you play that. You should, we should. We should both play it and just see what the differences are.

Alistair Parnell: 44:24

That would be. That would be a good comparison, wouldn't it? Yeah?

Matt Traum: 44:27

Yeah, so there's one other clip that I picked and then let's get to yours. Maybe I'll do mine and get them out of the way. So the the next one I did. There's a piece that I recorded with my daughter it's Christmas, My Favorite Things yeah, it was a couple of years ago and it was just a little recording we did and she's singing and I'm playing some parts in the background that are actually I believe they're FM8. You know the Native Instruments FM8. It's an FM synthesizer but this is kind of an unusual FM sound. It's a real breathy FM sound. But this will kind of give you an idea of some things that are not certainly not emulative, but they're not generally considered synthetic too.

Matt Traum: 45:11

They're more, I don't know, just effecty, almost.

Alistair Parnell: 45:14

Okay let's have a listen

Alistair Parnell: 46:16

Oh, that's nice. I like that she's got a great voice as well.

Matt Traum: 46:20

Thank you, very talented young lady, I may say.

Alistair Parnell: 46:24

Absolutely. Yeah, lovely, you should make an album together.

Matt Traum: 46:28

Thank you, yeah, I'd love to yeah, well, let's hear some of the things you've chosen of yours. What do you like?

Alistair Parnell: 46:35

Okay, well, similar kind of thing. I kind of fall back on that. That saw wave quite a lot. But like you say, it's kind of variations, I guess. On that I'll play you a couple of little bits here. This is actually one that I guess for me as well, because I'm a keyboard player and very often you know the backing tracks that I do. I kind of make those myself as well, so that very often leads me to a certain sound that I think hopefully fits with with the kind of tone and kind of character of the piece.

Alistair Parnell: 47:11

So here's a little example so and I quite like that little bit of kind of breathy sound. It gives you that sort of organic sort of sound to the attack, which is lovely. And, by the way, just a little small point there, that's one of the preset sounds on the AE-30. Can't remember the name of it, but what I'm doing on that version there is the backing track is actually being played directly off the AE-30 as well. It's actually a sample that I took from the Fantom keyboard. I recorded it onto the Fantom keyboard, exported it as a sample onto the AE-30 and I trigger that basically as works like a drone effectively plays in the background while I solo over the top. So the whole of that demonstration is purely just AE-30. There's no other sequencer or whatever doing the backing track

Matt Traum: 48:52

oh, very clever, I love it.

Matt Traum: 48:54

It's kind of a voicey kind of breath yes, yes and uh, who, who knows what it is.

Matt Traum: 48:59

You know, you can't really classify it, but it's perfectly acoustic sounding as far as I'm concerned and expressive yeah as much as anything, yeah.

Alistair Parnell: 49:09

Um, and I quite like a little bit of a kind of um, you know funky kind of track, um and uh, here's a little bit of a kind of you know funky kind of track and here's a little bit more kind of speed of attack and you've just got to get the right balance of. I guess you know the timbre where it sits within the track as well, so it blends quite, quite nicely.

Matt Traum: 49:58

And um yep, and folks might recognize that as one of our uh segue pieces for the Aerophone podcast.

Alistair Parnell: 50:03

That's right w e use some of that in our links in our podcast. And um, um, one of my favorite tracks, um, here this is a little bit of that Joni Mitchell track from Both Sides Now. This is the version that she did. You know, more recently she recorded this as a new version and I've always loved this arrangement. And this again is, I think, is that CR Hard Lead on the AE-20, AE-30? Very, very slight change in the filter just to kind of slightly warm up the sound a little bit. This is the first little bit of that track.

Alistair Parnell: 51:57

Thank you, and a flugelhorn-y kind of sound on that. Yeah, it's just nice and warm, you know I just wanted it to sit there um in the mix and, uh, beautiful, yeah, it's just lovely to play those sounds.

Alistair Parnell: 52:05

You can really just relax into them and just concentrate on the way that you're playing them. And I think we've mentioned this before, Matt sometimes, um, you get somebody that you know they'll hear a track that you've done or something, and they very often sort of say oh what, what sound is that? What sound is that? And it's almost as if, you know, they think we have some kind of secret about the sound. Or, you know, we have our own kind of tweaks to everything and very often I'm saying you know what? This is just the preset sound.

Alistair Parnell: 52:37

And, um, I do feel that very often we can slip into the kind of dangerous area, if you like, of searching for another bit of kit or another sound. Or, you know, we're constantly thinking it's the equipment that's going to make a sound good. And of course, as we know very well, it basically comes down to practice, practice listening and, you know, working hard on those sounds to really get the most expression that you can out of it. And sometimes I think there's a danger we try to look for too many gadgets and bits and bobs, concentrate on just a few really nice sounds that you enjoy playing and work on them a lot and get used to exactly what their parameters are and how you can control them. That, for me, is the key to making a good sound on a synthesizer, sound on a wind synth.

Matt Traum: 53:40

I agree, but I will say I was listening to that and I was thinking, could I imagine a keyboardist playing this exactly like that? And I can't. No, it's just there's something about a wind controller. There's these little subtle bends and little subtle vibratos and, yes, uh, you know, changes in breath level and stuff absolutely fingering and slurring that you're just not going to get on a keyboard. I agree, and, uh, I think in that case the equipment you know, the instrument basically is, uh, is making a difference. Yes, um, but of course, yeah, any sound can be played poorly or badly. You can take the most expressive wind controller sound that responds to breath and just blow super loud, yes, all the time, and just not take a breath, and it'll sound like a synthesizer. I guarantee you 110%. Yeah, it won't work.

Matt Traum: 54:27

Yeah, so you know, yes, it has to be played correctly

Alistair Parnell: 54:30

Yeah, yeah, get yourself a decent wind synth, get yourself some good sounds to start off with and then work on them and work on your expression.

Alistair Parnell: 54:41

That's the message, I think

Matt Traum: 54:50

I want to say one more thing too. When we talked about finding your own voice, you know and the other thing also is very much related to the way a sax player picks an instrument or a read or mouthpiece is the amplifier, and we have talked about it in the past. But uh, the amplifier is where the all the sounds coming out of, you know, essentially on stage. So that speaker is part of your instrument Absolutely. So you know you want to get an amp that sounds good to your ears.

Matt Traum: 55:17

I've found that you want to stay away from guitar amps or bass amps that are tweaked just for electric guitars. Now, acoustic guitar amps, they're probably okay because they're more full range and they usually have a tweeter and a full range. But it's really important to have a full range amp, a vocal type amp or a PA type amp or a good keyboard type amp, and you may have to go out and try a few or go to a store and try them and you just don't know which one's going to sound good. It could be the best amp in the world, but it might not sound good with your particular rig, sure. So that's pretty critical. You have to point that out.

Alistair Parnell: 55:57

Absolutely, and so, talking about sort of you know more of those options for sound banks and things, what about some of your other sound banks, Matt? You've got some favorite sort of sound banks that you've produced so many over the years, but you've got some demonstrations lined up for us, I think, of some of the ones that you like to play.

Matt Traum: 56:12

I kind of went through my library that I've done over the decades and found some that are based on analog synthesizers and aren't necessarily emulative type synthesizers. So here's some just parts of the audio demos. Now, these audio demos you can hear the full version on the patchmanmusic. com website. But here's one well, the most recent one of all of the ones that I picked would be for the Korg Mono/Poly soft synth which you can get from Korg, and they usually run a sale on those things at half price and they always run sales, a sales couple times a year. It's like 50 to get the the synth. Um, and I did two banks of sounds for the uh Korg Mono/Poly. So here's a little clip from some of those demos so wow, thank you.

Matt Traum: 59:02

Here's one for the apple uh Apple es2 synth ES2 Now we've mentioned this in the past and I've mentioned it several times, because it's just a really expressive analog modeling synthesizer. It responds really well. Apple did a great job programming it and I did a full bank of sounds for that that are designed to respond to breath for the Apple ES2 soft synth which plugs into Apple Logic or MainStage. Here's a little example of that demo ¶¶..

Matt Traum: 1:00:29

And here's a quick demo of some of the sounds that I did for the Akai EWI 4000S. Now these are the same sounds Bob Mintzer uses with the Yellow Jackets and all his recordings for many years actually

Alistair Parnell: 1:01:38

Oh yeah now we also have had a question from a listener which isn't really related to the subject of this podcast, but nevertheless, we love to get your questions. We have a thing called a Speak pipe and that's when you can actually download or upload, should I say, your questions. So let's have a listen to the question. That's coming from a listener, I believe from the Netherlands.

Speaker 4: 1:02:26

Alistair, this is Yellow Wills from the Netherlands. I was wondering how Aerophone could help me with my saxophone technique. Specifically, do you have any exercises you could recommend to work on my technique? Because I do find that flapping my hands or having the fingers too far from the keys causes more problems on aerophone than on saxophone, but the other way around. Sometimes some technique is easier actually on the aerophone than on an acoustic saxophone because all the keys are at a similar distance from the instrument. So any specific exercises you could recommend I'd much appreciate. Thank you.

Alistair Parnell: 1:03:17

Well, Jelle, I hope I've said that name something like correct. Thank you for that question. In fact, this is something that comes up quite regularly on the forums and things. This is something that comes up quite regularly on the forums and things you know. Inevitably, I think if you really want to improve your saxophone playing, you're probably better to use your time, you know, practising that acoustic instrument.

Alistair Parnell: 1:03:39

But I have got a couple of suggestions for you. They're quite simple suggestions, but they are things that are going to need a little bit of patience and thought. The first one is in terms of finger movement, an exercise that I give my saxophone pupils and also Winsynth pupils as well easy scale, really very slowly, and as an experiment, see if you can release the keys as you lift a key up for each note of the scale, but see if you can remain in contact with the actual key button, so you'll end up not losing contact with the actual key itself. You're taking the pressure off to release the key but you're not moving your finger off the actual key itself. It's harder than it sounds, but it really is a good way of getting some discipline as to not moving those fingers too far. Remember, the further away from the keys you move, the further you've got to get back to get back to your next note. So minimising movement is always going to be a plus. And the other thing that I find causes a lot of movement, and that is, you know, we have our opposing thumb mechanism and this is something that we actually find quite tricky to move our thumb or our fingers independently, particularly of course for the left hand as a Winsynth, Woodwind type player. And something you can do as a very simple test is can you practice, even without the instrument, keeping your fingers still and independently, just moving your thumb? Or the other way around keep your thumb still and just independently moving your fingers?

Alistair Parnell: 1:05:44

I very often find people are sort of grabbing too hard, almost too violently, when they're using their thumb to change octaves and so again, there's extra movement there that isn't really necessary.

Alistair Parnell: 1:05:59

So I hope that gives you a little bit of something to think about Basically, keeping your hand posture relaxed and trying to minimise movement. That's where it's at. I think the parting words that I'd like to leave with listeners is, particularly if you're someone that hasn't really explored the synthesizer sounds on the wind synthesizer then I'd really encourage you to listen a little bit more to start to play some of those sounds and to experiment with being very expressive with those sounds. I'd really like it if, after you'd listened to this episode, that's at least going to make you think well, you know what, I'll go and try one of those nice saw lead sounds and see if I can play even just a nice slow tune on it and just experiment with just what you can get out of it for expression. I'm sure once you've started that journey, hopefully, like Matt and I, you'll begin to really enjoy playing those synthesizer sounds synthesizer sounds.

Matt Traum: 1:07:15

So, Alistair , we always want to mention our ventures that we have, and you, of course, have the iSax Academy, which is, I think, an outstanding resource for wind controller players, and you talk about tweaking sounds and making changes to sounds. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do in these courses?

Alistair Parnell: 1:07:31

Yeah, so in that advanced course it's specifically really for the AE-20, AE-30. You know we don't get into like the depths of filters and resonance and things. You know. We talk more about some pretty easy ways that you can combine some of the sounds and use some of the features on those two instruments, and the examples there are very nicely set up, just very easy, straightforward instructions where I'm showing you exactly step by step. You can download a PDF with the instructions on and, of course, once you've done that a couple of times following the course there, you can get on to doing your own versions of those sounds pretty easily. So, yes, if you have one of those Roland Aerophones an AE-20 or AE-30, and you'd like to just understand a little bit more about using that editor app and how you can make your own combinations of sounds, then please visit the www. isax. academy.

Matt Traum: 1:08:30

And, of course, if you're looking for sounds for various hardware and software synthesizers, or if you're looking to purchase a wind controller, Patchman Music is here. I'm here for you. Within the US I can ship you the Aerophones. I carry the AE-20s and AE-30s and the other models as well, and of course the sound banks can be shipped anywhere in the world, so that's not a problem going overseas on those.

Speaker 3: 1:08:55

That's patchmanmusic. com

Alistair Parnell: 1:08:59

Okay, Matt, I think we've had another interesting episode. There's actually quite a lot more we could talk about in synthesizer sounds that we haven't touched on today. We can certainly have another episode, because we hope to be doing this for some time to come. In the meantime, we look forward to our next episode, episode 12. And we hope to be looking at our kind of dream controller wind controller rig. We'll talk about our own setups, that we have, things we might want to see in the future. So please join us for that next episode if that's something you'd feel you'd be interested in. And, of course, don't forget, you can send us a message, leave us one of those voicemail messages if you like to, and let us know what your dream rig would be, and we'll listen to your ideas as well. See if we can't influence some of those big companies, eh, Matt?

Matt Traum: 1:09:58

Absolutely so. Thanks again, and we'll look forward to the next episode. Take care, Alistair.

Alistair Parnell: 1:10:43

Thanks, Matt, see you next time. Bye.