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: 0:35

Welcome everybody to episode 16 of the Aerophone Academy podcast. Now, I remember last time in the podcast, Matt, we started with a little chat about the weather and I can remember I told you that actually things were pretty warm. I'm glad to say it's got a little bit cooler. What about you? Are you getting a bit of cooler weather now?

Matt Traum: 0:57

Yeah, we're starting to get that fall feeling, even though it's not quite fall yet. It's that time of year when you remember I remember going back to college, driving off in my car, you know, and you've got that sunset and a bit of a breeze in the air, and this nice cool kind of thing happening.

Alistair Parnell: 1:15

Yeah, it's certainly got a bit cooler here and, like you say, a little bit of a breeze is really helpful and yeah, that's kind of a familiar word now just recently the, the breeze, the Brisa, breeze, Brisa, right.

Matt Traum: 1:28

Brisa, yeah, I think. I've heard that word. It's Spanish for something.

Alistair Parnell: 1:32

Yeah, something like kind of a gentle cool breeze or something, and I believe we've started to hear something about a, a breezer instrument. Is that right?

Matt Traum: 1:42

I think so. What have you heard?

Alistair Parnell: 1:52

Yeah, okay. So everybody, I'm sure that some of you will know by now Roland have just announced their brand new wind synthesizer called the Brisa. I believe it is really going to be known as one of the Aerophone family. And it's the Brisa. And the big difference is, of course, as you might have seen on a couple of their promotional videos already, it's a flute, or what we might call a transverse instrument. It basically looks pretty much exactly like a flute. Now, Matt and I have been very lucky to be able to actually see it and play it.

Alistair Parnell: 2:27

We've got some demos coming up for you later in this episode. In fact, we are thinking of making it a two-part breezer special. So in this first episode we're going to look at some of the basic construction, some of the sounds. We're going to talk about fingerings, about the new technology that's involved, and then in the second one we'll do a bit of a deeper dive. For all of you nerds out there, if you want to get into what can you control, what can you do with MIDI, what can you do with audio, all that fun stuff. We'll put that into the second part of our two-part Brisa podcast. So let's get into it.

Matt Traum: 3:21

So, Alistair, with this Brisa, now you're the woodwind person here between the two of us, so I will defer a lot of these things to you. I'm actually curious to ask you about what is different about this other than the physical shape which we see. Obviously it's a flute based on a flute concept the fingerings there. There's also a special mouthpiece that they've developed for this particular instrument. That's totally unique and totally new. I've never seen this before.

Matt Traum: 3:50

Can you explain a little bit about this mouthpiece sensing that they have.

Alistair Parnell: 3:54

Yeah, well, as far as I'm aware, there hasn't been a kind of flute or sideways wind synth like this. If any of you know of a difference to that, let us know in the in the uh, in the comment that you can leave underneath the uh, the podcast. But, yeah, it's, it's, uh, a new technology Now. Um, most of us are aware that the flute is a sort of has an open aperture hole at the top on, on what we call the lip plate. I'm not a flute player, by the way, so I'm just kind of going on what I've learned over time, and this Brisa has a similar setup. But basically what they've done is they've taken that lip plate where the hole usually is, usually on the flute. You know, you blow kind of across the top of the opening there, a bit like blowing over the top of an empty bottle, and what they have? They have two kind of divisions to that kind of mouth hole, if you like. There's like an upper and a lower part.

Alistair Parnell: 5:03

Now, something we have to talk about pretty early on is that there are two breath modes, if you like. For the Brisa we have what they're calling the Brisa mode and there's also the flute mode. Now, in the flute mode. These two sections of the aperture work a little bit as a kind of two different directions you can push the air into. If you blow into the upper part of that opening, then you can get the upper octave. And if you blow into the lower part of that opening, then you can get the lower octave. And those are somewhat editable. You can change how much you have to change to to get to there. Now, Matt, you've seen some people kind of have a go with that flute mode. How do you think they got on with that kind of blowing experience?

Matt Traum: 6:02

I think it takes a little getting used to and an understanding of how it's set up. I saw some flute players play it and some of them got it as soon as they knew how to do it and they were able to play pretty quickly within minutes and they were pretty comfortable. As far as I think it has to do with the opening, the I don't know what you call it the venturi of your mouth, the, you know you close one of these holes, you kind of pucker more to close and kind of concentrate on one of the holes and for the one octave and then as you open, you get the other octave. And there were some flute players that struggle a little more with it. And again, it doesn't have to be used that way. If you don't want to, it can be used as just a breath sensor and then you can do octaves with just the thumb if you want to. But it's going to vary on the person playing it and it takes a little bit of adjustment.

Alistair Parnell: 7:00

Yeah, yeah. So there's what they call the Brisa mode, which is more or less similar to how we would use an aerophone, where you have octave key jumps with two thumb buttons, or, if you choose to. You can use the flute mode.

Alistair Parnell: 7:20

Now I guess really the thing we should just mention first, Matt also is of course this is a pretty major new instrument. I mean, it's not a new instrument category, but it's a kind of new arm of this Windsynth category which I guess only a company you know with the kind of resources like Roland or maybe Yamaha, would be able to do. Now you're kind of a little bit more on the tech side and I think you've got a bit of an idea. Perhaps you know it's a pretty small tube, isn't it to get all of that technology into.

Matt Traum: 7:58

I'm not sure exactly, but it's pretty much the size of a flute. Maybe it's an inch or two shorter. Is that possible, Alistair? Do you know physically?

Alistair Parnell: 8:07

It's pretty close. I haven't compared it, but yeah, the diameter is a little larger than a standard flute, but otherwise the construction, the key layout is, as far as I'm aware, pretty much identical to a flute. Yeah, so the balance, the size, the weight of it is great. It's really nice and portable. But how do they get all that stuff into such a small tube?

Matt Traum: 8:30

Well, like you say, it's only a Roland or a very large company could be able to even do this. The home hobbyist is not going to come up with an instrument like this. This is super high tech. It's very impressive. Now everything's inside a flute body. Essentially, you've got your synthesizer in there, your key switching mechanism, usb. There's a small, very small display on there. It's not just a number, it's an actual alphanumeric display with some form of graphics in there as well, and there's indicators for the various S1, S2 switches, which we'll talk about in a little bit. There's buttons for navigating the parameters and digging in deeper into the parameters.

Matt Traum: 9:11

USB. You know, a small speaker as well, a small speaker up by the head joint. It's coming out of the left side of the instrument. As you look at the instrument, it's very small. You know how big can it be being inside of a flute, right, but it's there, it's not bad for practicing and it's right near your ears, so it's easy to hear. There's a headphone jack on there, stereo, full stereo effect with beautiful sounding reverb, a rechargeable battery in there this is the first for Roland as far as the Aerophone series. So it's charged via the USB-C jack, yes, and you just charge it up and you're good to go. You don't have to worry about batteries for quite a while and I'm sure it's replaceable.

Alistair Parnell: 9:58

And that same USB output will also send out audio and MIDI. I found that the audio going out to my Mac anyway didn't even need a driver of any sort. It went straight into Logic with no problem, as did the MIDI. So that USB out, or it's both, it's an input for power and it's an output for sound and MIDI as well. So pretty cool. By the way, the headphone out just so people know it is on a mini jack, not a quarter inch jack.

Matt Traum: 10:29

Right, it's like what we have referred to as an eighth inch jack here. What is it? 3.5 millimeters, I think. Yeah, yeah, as far as the USB connection, what you say not needing a driver means it's class compliant. I don't know if they actually say that in the specs. They probably do, because without needing a driver it would be class compliant. Now, that's a big deal. Some people may not realize. If it require a driver, that means going down the line 5, 10, 15 years from now and the operating system is updated on your PC or your Mac or your iPad. If it required a driver, you may be out of luck.

Speaker 4: 11:03

Yeah.

Matt Traum: 11:03

You may not be able to use it for certain things like the editor or whatever, but if it's class compliant, that means that it just connects with USB. That really adds to the longevity of the product. So kudos to Roland for doing it that way.

Alistair Parnell: 11:16

And just going back to the screen, the screen is small for those of you of age 55 plus or, like me, just past 60, I find I've definitely got to have my glasses on. It's pretty small. But I do think there is a step forward here in terms of the way they've got the menu system arranged. Rather than it being one continuous long line of settings, which is the way that it is on the Aerophones, this is done more in a kind of chapter setup, so you can just go along a top kind of row of headings, chapter markers, if you like, and then you go into each kind of set of settings. And I find it pretty intuitive. It's pretty good. It is small but it's very functional. And then the other thing, just to finish off explaining we also have kind of a thumb rest with a little thumb button which sits under your right thumb or kind of just to the side of the right thumb, I guess, which is what it happens. So this is a little kind of on-off switch. Really it's not pressure sensitive, but there's quite a lot of functions that you can apply to that button, to, you know, give you various different controls depending on how you want to set it up for each sound.

Alistair Parnell: 12:40

We do have all the traditional flute trill keys, the little kind of fork keys that come in between the main pads, and of course we've got the little finger keys. There's no low B key but it's down to low C, and in between the two hands we have two extra keys. That's where they've put the S1 and S2 keys. Anybody that's familiar with the Aerophone series you know that they tend to have these S1 and S2 keys. In fact they're on a lot of synthesizers as well and once again, they are used to add, to change settings. You can choose what that does. It maybe could turn harmony on or off. It can change which sound you're on. Whatever you choose those to do, I find those pretty handy because they're pretty easy to reach. I use those with my right index finger. Two little S1 and S2 fingerings there. Works very, very well, very neat. The whole thing is a great package. It's nice to hold in your hand. Um and uh, it's.

Matt Traum: 13:47

It's all been very nicely designed, in my opinion yeah, I agree, and, like I said, being so small to create all those functions and, uh, integrate that onto a small chip and to fit inside of a flute body is really remarkable. I wouldn't be surprised if this instrument gets some kind of a mechanical design award or something like that. Really, do you think so? It's very unique.

Alistair Parnell: 14:09

Yeah, well, it's a first, isn't it? And it's always interesting to see what happens when people start to get them into their hands. Maybe we should also say Matt, as far as we know what you get in the box?

Matt Traum: 14:27

Okay, so in the box it looks like we're going to get the quick start sheet and a tone list. There's, I believe, 100 sounds in it. As it comes out of the box, a couple moisture bands, cleaning cloth. There's a little blower, a little. It's like a syringe type thing, that kind of puffs air, you know, to help get some of the moisture out of the mouthpiece, if you ever need to do that. There's some USB cables and an adapter and audio adapter and you get a little a pretty nice bag. Would you call it a bag or a case? I guess it's more of a case, isn't it?

Alistair Parnell: 14:55

Yeah, I think I'd call it a case and it's. Yeah, it is nice. I don't think there's much room for too much else in there. But remember, this whole thing is a pretty nice, small, compact, portable instrument. You could certainly take it on as hand luggage on an aeroplane or, you know it's, as an additional instrument for gigs. You want to keep things pretty small and light and this certainly ticks that box.

Matt Traum: 15:23

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Matt Traum: 16:56

So here's my impression when we heard about it and finally received a prototype to try and play and offer suggestions. You know I'm not a flute player, I'm a brass player, but I got it and the great news is that there's the brass fingering system in there that we developed for the previous Aerophone models is in this flute, so trumpet players can play this flute. So it's exciting and it actually works out really well. We can go more into depth on the brass fingering, but the way a flute is set up, there's those fork you call them fork keys. Alistair, is that right On the right hand? Yeah, I think. Yeah, okay, yeah, they're kind of to the left of the three main pads, on the right hand. So you've got the three pads, which are like the three valves, and then right next to them you have three fork keys. So now you've got the three trill keys right there in the right spot. In a way, it's almost perfect as far as an EVI or a brass fingering. So now you've got three trill keys and in the right pinky. There's three keys there that can be used also as another trill key or an octave extension key. So yeah, so a brass player can. If you're familiar with EVI brass fingering, trumpet fingering on the Aerophone or any of the Akais, I think you can pick this up pretty quick. It might take you a couple days to kind of adapt to some slight changes, but in some ways it's even better than previous model Aerophones in terms of the trumpet fingering system on it. So I'm very happy. That really opens up the market.

Matt Traum: 18:16

And again I keep going back to the size of this thing. It's so small. As a trumpet player I can see taking this out it's very small and that's it. It's taken this out, it's, it's very small and, um, that's it. It's self-contained. You can walk up to a microphone and play it or plug into an amp. You can walk around outside and just play your flute. I've found myself doing it all the time, walking around the house just kind of getting used to it and playing it.

Matt Traum: 18:37

The sounds in it are are very good, and oftentimes you get these uh instruments out of the box and they're like oh, you know, and and I can speak to a whole bunch of wind controllers out there We've talked about this before these knockoff of EWIs and things that come out and you can get them on AliExpress and you know the Chinese markets and things and they're. They look nice but the sounds just don't make it. But the sounds in this flute I would say every single one of them is useful in some way. You can play it. They respond to breath. They have nice legato. There's the reverb sounds good, they're just very tastefully done. So I can vouch for the sounds and we'll see someday. Perhaps you'll be able to edit them to some degree. Right now I think it's more well. At least right now it is more of a preset instrument. But who knows what's going to happen in the future.

Alistair Parnell: 19:28

So just on some of the specifications which we have here. So yes, we're looking the length I'm looking here. If we want to be really precise, we are 752 millimeters long. The weight is 437 grams.

Matt Traum: 19:49

That's one pound, yeah, one pound, and the length is about 29 and a half inches for us, yes, as US people, but yeah, it's a very nice size.

Alistair Parnell: 19:56

Yeah, the graphic display is evidently 128 times 32 dots. The lithium ion battery actually says in their specifications that the use time is approximately nine hours. Now that's pretty decent, you know. I think I don't only think about a gig, say your gig. You know tops is two or three hours. You might also need it for a rehearsal, which also could be a couple of hours. So for me you're looking definitely kind of four or five hours of usage. To not be kind of slightly concerned. Am I going to run out of power? And at nine hours you should have plenty of kind of time there. You know running time with your flute, even if you want to kind of leave it on. There is one of these settings where you know it'll turn off after 20 minutes or whatever, so it doesn't run the battery down, but plenty of power there. So you know specifications wise. It's looking pretty good.

Alistair Parnell: 20:55

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Alistair Parnell: 22:05

Now what about some of the more detailed control, Matt? Because we've talked about the mouthpiece, of course, the breath sensor is sensitive enough that a flute player would feel comfortable doing either diaphragmatic or kind of throat vibrato. That's not necessarily a new thing because, um, that's not necessarily a new thing because you know Aerophones and uh and uh EWIs are capable of kind of doing that. But we've got a little bit more detail, uh, Matt, in terms of um, you know some of the other kind of uh controls, um, things like uh, intelligent harmony and stuff. Do you want to kind of comment on a couple of those aspects?

Matt Traum: 22:47

Yeah, it's expanded upon, I think in comparison to the previous aerophones. There's some new things on here. So you've got the S1 and S2 buttons, like we mentioned. They're kind of in between the right-hand and left-hand sets of key clusters there, so you can kind of access it by either hand and you can do it without looking. That's very useful. You know exactly where you're at, you'd feel it. So with the S1 and S2 keys it's kind of similar to the way the Aerophone AE-20 and 30s work.

Matt Traum: 23:16

They can be assigned to many things. It could be maybe a vibrato, or you could set it to transposition or a drone note, one of the things that's new. Well, this flute has diatonic harmony so you can set the key. You know you can play in a note and it'll play a second note in harmony to the note you're fingering, but within a key. So you can say I'm in key of C and in real time you can change what key that you're playing in. There's ways to do it. If you assign one of the buttons, you hit the button, play a note and then that sets the new key. But the new feature that they've added, it seems, is you can set now the scale type, so it can be major, you can set it for minor and possibly others. I'm not sure how many others there are, if there are others, but I know there's at least major and minor. So that's a new feature with harmony.

Alistair Parnell: 24:11

That's very useful too. Have you used that much when, uh, in your playing on the aerophone? On the aerophone, yes, uh, and I have used it a bit. Um, well, we'll hear in some of our sound demos we've both used a bit of the intelligent harmony, haven't we? I really enjoy using that.

Speaker 4: 24:30

In a world where notes take flight. Alistair Parnell brings the joy of light. Online courses with wisdom to share. On the Roland Aerophone, he shows he cares From professionals to amateurs alike. In the warmth of his guidance we all unite. iSax Academy, the place to be when melodies dance and souls are free. Breathe in the notes, let the music flow. With Alistair guiding. Guiding. We're ready to go From the UK shores to the world's grand stage. He opens doors with wisdom and grace. Coast of the Aerophone Academy With Matt Traum, they create a symphony, blowing kisses to the wind. In harmony. Together they teach. It's pure euphony. Conductor and teacher, composer at heart.

Alistair Parnell: 26:12

And then we've also got a couple of different ways of using motion. Do you remember on the was it the AE30? At first we didn't know there was a motion sensor in there and then I don't know, a couple of iterations later with the software they said hey, we've got a motion sensor built in. Well, on the flute, on the Brisa. We have two types of motion sensor. It's it senses your tilt, as in lifting the kind of lower end of the breezer up or down can be a controller. Often the preset for that is introducing some vibrato. And there's also what they call a roll sensor. So imagine sort of rolling the head joint slightly further away from you or slightly nearer to you.

Alistair Parnell: 27:03

That can also be used as a type of controller useful for things like pitch bend or adding growl or again whatever you want to do to your sound. So I think that's really nice. I would miss should I say you know I'm very used to having the thumb lever on an Aerophone. It's nice that we've got that other type of control where we can influence. Particularly kind of pitch bending is nice. That's what I've been using it for. How about you, matt?

Matt Traum: 27:37

Yeah, I think the roll is really nice for pitch bend, like you say. It's just a slight motion forward as you play and you can get a little vibrato or pitch bend in there. Well, vibrato is good for lip. We found it's kind of natural to introduce and control the amount of vibrato. Now, on the right hand they do still have something, but it's a switch, it's under the right hand and it's kind of next to it and you kind of push your thumb towards the mouthpiece a little bit and you can press that switch in and that switch also is programmable to be pretty much, I think, the same options as S1 or S2. So you can use that for harmonies. If you want to turn it on or off really quick, that's a great way to use it. When you're playing a melody and you want to have a note underneath, you just hit that and it toggles it on, and hit it again, it toggles it off. Another cool use that are in some of the sounds are like the jazz organ. I have a demo where it you switch it and it turns on the rotary effect and you hear the motor speeding up on the rotary effect and you it toggles and then you hit it again and it'll slow down gradually and very dramatic. Yeah, it's cool, it's very useful.

Matt Traum: 28:45

Maybe we should talk a little bit about the? Uh. Well, first of all, the head joint. It's adjustable. It's physically adjustable. You can twist it. Oh, I don't know how many degrees it is, it's maybe a quarter inch, you know, in direction. But that's kind of useful to kind of customize its position physically. Yes, and maybe we should talk about the octave buttons a little bit. There's two octave buttons.

Alistair Parnell: 29:08

Yeah, so if anyone's familiar with the flute fingering and again, I'm not a flautist, so forgive me, but in your left thumb on a flute you've got two keys. I'm going to get this wrong, but basically one of them is a way of kind of turning the B's into B flats. I think they're called something. Forgive me, I don't know what those names are. There's a proper name for those two keys, and the other one is kind of for the fingering for the flute where you go from a B to a C, I believe. So one's like a B key and one's like a B flat key. Now on the Brisa they are kind of two square keys. They're kind of quite nicely shaped, not shaped like a standard flute thumb levers. There. Now they can be used in one of two ways.

Alistair Parnell: 30:07

In the flute mode they work the same as that B and B flat key, but then if you select the Brisa mode, then they become octave keys and, just like on some of the aerophones, you can choose whether they kind of work as like a, just one octave for one button and another octave up for the second button, or you can kind of have three octaves where if you don't press any button it's one octave. Then the first button is the second octave and the second button is the third octave. When you're in flute mode, as I've said earlier, you actually get the first two octaves by changing your angle of air and then after that you go into those standard high notes or fingerings that the flutist would be used to and again, we've both seen flautists kind of do that. Really, very naturally, you get into that third octave on the flute and there's all those weird fingerings which I don't know how you play those but they work because we've seen flute players do it and it kind of seems to just pop out no problem.

Matt Traum: 31:20

I want to add also on the octaves there's another option too, where you can get another octave. It's a similar way to the AE, 20s and 30s work where if you're not pressing that's one octave, press the first, it's the next octave up, press them both, it's the next octave up, and then press just the second one. It's an octave above that. So there's four octave range there.

Alistair Parnell: 31:39

Uh-huh, oh, okay, okay, right, okay, I think I was on and that's the one I use.

Matt Traum: 31:43

Actually, I use that one. It's a little more range to it. Yeah, yeah, I like it.

Alistair Parnell: 31:46

Yeah, oh and, by the way, what we haven't mentioned, we do have a Bluetooth similar to the Aerophone, so you can send out Bluetooth MIDI to a compatible you know if you want to send it to your iPad or iPhone or whatever and I don't know for sure, matt, but I'm assuming it maybe has that thing where you can send Bluetooth audio to the Brisa and kind of play along. Now, I haven't tried that and I might be wrong, that that's maybe not included, but I'm pretty sure it probably will be. If it's on the Aerophones, I would imagine it is, and I haven't tried it myself either.

Speaker 3: 32:32

So you know there's more to come because we're going to do a second kind of episode on this, so we'll have a bit more time to uh, to maybe dive a bit deeper.

Alistair Parnell: 32:39

So I think we've kind of covered a lot of the detail there. Um, I guess people want to start hearing what some of it sounds like. Matt, what do you think?

Matt Traum: 32:47

I was just going to say so. We have several audio clips that we just quickly recorded for people to hear. I think mostly this instrument uses the SuperNatural synth engine. I believe I was told that it is an all-new synth engine that they've developed just for this flute, yeah, and maybe going forward, maybe they'll use it in other things, we don't know. But it's very nice, and I will say that one of my pet peeves is legato, and it seems like legato's beautiful on it now. Where your tongue, you hear the tongue. When you slur, you don't hear the tongue, you just get the slur, and so it's very pleasurable to play and it kind of feels right now. So you want to start with some flutes, since this is a flute controller.

Alistair Parnell: 33:30

Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I mean, I feel this is a bit of a pressure because, again, I'm not a flute player. Now, one thing we did discover getting a few flutists to try this out, which was very interesting is something I've been aware of a long time, which was very interesting. It's something I've been aware of a long time.

Alistair Parnell: 33:50

But, of course, if you're looking at someone playing a kind of instrument that looks like a flute and it's played sideways like a flute, um, it's, it's, it's just it feels good and it sounds good because it looks right, do you get what I'm talking about? You know, because we watch some of these people play. And do you know, of all the flautists I saw try it out Matt, I don't know if it was the same for you I don't think any of them actually questioned the sound of the flute. They just sort of took to it pretty naturally. I'm sure if people hear recordings they're going to say, oh, that's not quite exactly like my concert flute, but the players that I saw play it felt very comfortable with some of these kind of starting off flute sounds Was it the same for you.

Matt Traum: 34:34

Yeah, I didn't hear anybody complain about that.

Matt Traum: 34:37

Yeah, I have to add one thing that boy, I mean even as a brass player playing this, for whatever reason, when I play it it kind of sounds more like a flute player's playing these sounds, which is beautiful. There's something different about it I don't even know how to describe it If it's the physical layout or the way you hold it. There are certain things that happen that if that you get playing an acoustic flute and it really imparts kind of a flute feel and absolutely currently I'm not able to use the flute embouchure uh sensor, it's for brass fingering, it's only the just a regular breath sensor. I'm hoping that maybe that'll that'll be incorporated at some point. I imagine it will be where I can actually use that flute sensing and still play in brass fingering mode. Yeah, but it's just there's something about the physical layout and maybe the amount of air that it takes that it just you are forced to having that kind of a flute characteristic to the sound. So maybe you'll hear that when we play some of these demos.

Alistair Parnell: 35:39

Yeah, yeah, but if you're listening to these demos, I mean a couple of things Always remember, you know you're hearing a bit of a mixture of just kind of straight sounds and I've done a couple of versions of stuff where I've had a little bit of backing, just to kind of put it into context. But yeah, you have to kind of visualise it because it's obviously this is a podcast. You can't see what's going on. But you know, seeing that flute layout with the kind of sideways angle of the flute, it really does make a difference. Anyway, here's my little pop at a bit of a flute, kind of a more of a classical flute sound, and and there's a nice little bit more airy sound in the lower register and then the higher sound is, I think appropriately, you know, brighter. I mean I think it sounds really good.

Matt Traum: 36:57

I'm hearing like again. Like I just said, I'm hearing little glitches in a good way, where it's kind of jumping an octave and stuff as a glitch. But that's what makes a flute sound like a flute. You expect that, yes, and it's in there, so that's a good thing. In this case, yeah, and you know, if you listen to that, it doesn't sound like somebody playing an EWI or something playing a flute sound. There's something new about this.

Alistair Parnell: 37:20

Yeah, no, I agree, and it certainly feels like it. I love those lower flute sounds. There's a nice alto flute and a bass flute. Here's a little alto flute demo. It's got a little bit of a synth pad behind it just to set it in a sort of sound kind of field.

Matt Traum: 38:00

Yeah, you hear how the breath is coming in there. It's like that whistly kind of breath sound in the low range. That's beautiful, that's exciting.

Alistair Parnell: 38:11

Yeah and yeah, again, that vibrato that's not me, that is actually the built-in vibrato. But you can control kind of the speed of that by lifting the kind of tail end of the Brisa up and down. And then we've got a few different recorders. Here's a little recorder and then, matt, I think you've done a few kind of, there's a few kind of, if you like, flute variations. This is where I think the Brisa works really nicely again, because we get into this sort of almost a bit of a crossover from, if you like, acoustic flute into a more synthy type flute sound, of which there are a few and I like that. Which ones would you like to play, Matt?

Matt Traum: 39:09

here. This one's called Wide Syn Flute and you'll hear it. And then there's some diatonic harmony in there as well that's being generated by the flute in real time. So I'm just playing one note, but you're hearing both notes at the same time.

Alistair Parnell: 39:48

Yeah, nice, nice. I like that kind of it's what I would call a kind of crossover sound. You can tell it's kind of got that flute thing, but it's got a sort of synthy aspect to it as well. And I think that's where a lot of flute players are going to like the Brisa, because you know, I think, having seen some of them try it, their eyes were lighting up when they were trying these synth sounds. It was like, oh wow, I can play this thing and make all these different sounds. That's what seemed to really get them excited.

Matt Traum: 40:18

Yeah, I think so. That was my observation as well. And there's organs in there and vibes and drums, things that you would never play on a flute or even think about it. And they were playing a tuba on a flute. We have a tuba demo that we can play. Yeah, yeah, it's just, it doesn't match the visual. You're looking at it and like what?

Alistair Parnell: 40:37

Yes, so you've got a nice square flute lead as well. Shall we have a listen to that one? Yeah, nice control of your vibrato. Were you doing that yourself manually?

Matt Traum: 41:05

I think that was built in as well to some degree, but I was controlling the depth of it. Yep, sure, nice, nice. Here's another one I did. It's called Lyrical Soft Lead. It's one of the presets, and there's some harmony also. This is a good thing. Does it sound like they reduced the volume a little bit on the harmony note so that the lead is standing out over the other?

Alistair Parnell: 41:43

Yeah, I do wonder about that. And the other thing which I found actually a little bit better, I think in my experience, sometimes on the Aerophone when you turn the harmony on, sometimes you have to remember to turn the volume down a little bit. Now I haven't found myself needing to do that on the Brisa. It feels like somehow they've done that a little better. So maybe you're right, maybe they've kept the harmony sound just a little bit lower for volume, which is great. That's what we want right.

Matt Traum: 42:08

It's hard to prove it, but I think that's what's happening and I think there's some thought that went into this. It's just beautiful to see the next generation come out and there's additional thought into these things and it just keeps getting better and better.

Alistair Parnell: 42:32

Now it's hard to demonstrate on a podcast, Matt, this idea of this different flute embouchure thing. I just tried to do this very kind of basic sound demo here of the flute sound, but now I'm using the flute embouchure changing. I think you will hear it. It sounds different to a kind of physical switch to change octaves. Just have a listen to this, see if you can hear what I mean to listen to this, see if you can hear what I mean it. Just it certainly feels different to play it. You know you feel like you've got to kind of pitch that lower octave and it certainly feels different when you play it that way. I think if flute players really want to dig into that with a little bit of practice they'll really feel that that works well for them, I'm sure.

Matt Traum: 43:30

Yeah, there's some like we keep saying there's some nuance here that doesn't exist, playing on other wind controllers. We haven't quite figured it out yet fully, have we, Alistair? We're kind of figuring it out ourselves.

Alistair Parnell: 43:42

Yeah, that's right. Okay, so what else have we got? We've got some good brass sounds. How should we take some brass ones next?

Matt Traum: 43:55

Yeah, so I did several brass demos here. Let's start with. Let's do the mute trumpet first. That one's kind of nice. You heard a little bit of a pitch down on one of those notes at the beginning, and that was from the right hand thumb switch. I was playing a note and I just kind of pushed the button and it it generates us a kind of a bend down and you can set it for bend down or bend up that certainly seemed to add a nice little inflection there.

Alistair Parnell: 44:32

What, what, what next?

Matt Traum: 44:34

let's try the french horn sound. Now. I kind of like that one. It's there, I think I played a a line and then I added the diatonic to me like the second player is a little bit under the lead player. It doesn't sound like they're equal volume, which is what you want. Like you said, sometimes if you have these harmonies going, it drowns out the lead, like on the AE-20 and 30. You could have what four notes playing at the same time yes, and your, your lead kind of gets, uh, overpowered by the other three voices.

Matt Traum: 45:26

So, yeah, we'll have to check with the engineers and see if they did that, but it kind of sounds like that's what's happening to my ears, sure, how about um playing the the trumpet? Here comes a trumpet.

Alistair Parnell: 45:48

Yeah, in a similar way, Matt. You, I think you can tell. Just some of those little licks you play kind of come from a valve player, a trumpet player. They're different. You do different things when you're used to a certain instrument, and I think that's what we're talking about with the Brisa. When you have this instrument in your hand, you play things differently because it's different. It's not the same as a regular aerophone or an EWI.

Matt Traum: 46:17

Right, and on that particular trumpet, I was trying to show how the legato is working. It's not it's it's not like smooth legato, but it's a legato like you'd hear on a trumpet, where I'm not tonguing every note. It's I'm doing a valve change and that's how a trumpet is. It's not a perfect pitch shift, you know there's a little blip in between notes but it's not tongued. Yeah, there's a difference. You know there it does. Yes, I can hear two notes, but it's not a full tongue to tack on those notes. Sure, and that's that's to me. That's, that's heading in the right direction. That sounds pretty good. Let's hear the um. Did we play the trombone yet? And the tuba? Maybe go into those two, okay? Yeah, nice.

Matt Traum: 47:16

That's more of a valve trombone. I guess you might consider it almost sounds like it has valves. Yeah, but that a valve trombone? I guess you might consider it almost sounds like it has valves. Yeah, but that's just how it is, I guess. Let's hear the tuba now. And here's the tuba. Yeah, imagine a flute player playing that sound through a big yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say.

Alistair Parnell: 47:45

You know, and you see the face of a flute player playing this thing and suddenly you've got this tuba sound coming out like three octaves lower than they're used to playing. I mean, the ones we've seen try it out, they've just absolutely loved this thing, so it's great fun.

Matt Traum: 47:59

Yeah, they lit up on those very strange things that were unexpected. So, Alistair, maybe we should maybe just show that the range of this uh sounds that are built into the barista they're not only wind instruments we've got. We've got some percussion in there as well and there's some keyboard-type sounds, but let's play some of the percussive-type sounds. So let's listen to the vibes sound in this. It's pretty easy to imagine a vibes player playing that. You know. To me it sounds like you're listening to an actual vibe player.

Alistair Parnell: 48:49

Yeah, and I think what's really important, you know that sound is still breath sensitive, so you're still getting some change there in, if you like, how hard the mallet would hit onto the vibraphone, and so, yeah, you still got expression there, getting some change there in, if you like, how hard the mallet would hit onto the vibraphone and so, yeah, you still got expression there. It's not just you know, one sound being triggered. In the same way it sounds great. Okay, I've got a little bit of a marimba Now. This is leading to a little bit of a sound combination that I did, matt, but let me play your drum kit first, because you can actually play drums on this thing as well. Matt did a little demo here of some kind of drum kit, but also some congas and things and even triangles going on. It's got a huge amount of variation in sound you can make.

Matt Traum: 49:34

I was just trying to demonstrate some of the things that might be useful if you're playing a gig and you want to play a little conga, part behind the lead, you know, if you're not, instead of just standing there, you can do something. And there's a tambourine or you know just a percussion type instrument. So there's a couple little clips here where I'm just kind of playing. These are all played in real time. This is not looped or recorded sequence or anything like that, just played real time.

Alistair Parnell: 50:33

Yeah, yeah, it's great, it's again. You know hearing this come out of a flute and you know, isn't the Brisa? I mean, it's. It's a looper's dream, isn't it? Because you know they can just set up with the one instrument. They could put a pretty amazing loop together just with this one instrument. It's amazing.

Alistair Parnell: 50:57

Now, I did try and kind of do something similar with that, just to finish off this section of the podcast here. So I've got a little bit of a recording here. I recorded a little bit of marimba sound like this, and then I included, of course, some of the kind of flute sounds, including a little bit of the kind of pan flute sound and the drums that you just heard. Similar to what Matt's done. I just kind of played around with a bit of a looping idea which I wanted to just show you now because, like I say, if you're into looping, this could be a dream. Now this loop does start. I actually started this idea with a tiny little phrase being played on the piano, but everything else that you hear in this little minute and a half piece is all done on the Brisa. Thank you.

Matt Traum: 53:19

That's fantastic. You know that kind of shows that there's a full palette of sounds built into this Brisa, and anything from drums to, you know, leads, synth leads, acoustic leads. I think there's even basses in there, isn't there a couple of basses?

Alistair Parnell: 53:38

Yeah, and you can put down any of those synth sounds. You can drop them down an octave or two, which I did in that little loop as well. We haven't touched on strings. We'll do a little bit of strings demo in the next podcast. Yeah, there's a tremendous amount of scope there and all to be played very expressively, like you can do on a wind synthesizer.

Matt Traum: 54:00

I would just like to say that you know, when we first heard about the Brisa and a flute wind controller, I was very intrigued by it. But I was thinking, okay, maybe it's not for me. I'm a trumpet player and I have wind controllers here and I don't need another one. But I have to say, as it turns out, and after playing the instrument and exploring the sounds, that I'm more excited about it than I expected and I like it far more than I thought I ever could, and it's just a lot of fun. And it's a fun factor I would say. Would you agree, Alistair? It's just the size and having so much power in such a small instrument is it's really. It's a lot of fun just to play.

Alistair Parnell: 54:43

I think that's true, Matt, but I think, as we've alluded to a couple of times, it's also about that feeling as you play it. So there are certain sounds, like certainly the fluty sounds, that for me, I feel I can play more authentically. I play differently using a Brisa. Even if the sound is similar on an Aerophone, you make a different sound on the Brisa. It kind of just leads you to do things differently, just like you would do if, say, you were a whistle player. You might play a low whistle different to a high whistle, or I don't know a string player. You play you know strings differently. It does make you think and feel differently and that's what's so brilliant about it. You don't have to say, well, I've got an Aerophone, I don't need a Brisa. Well, if you try it out, you might sort of think, actually, this is pretty cool, because I'm going to do things differently on a Brisa to any other wind synth, so add it to your collection, why not?

Matt Traum: 55:46

So, of course, this Brisa is going to be available here in the US through Patchman Music and again, I and Alistair were on the team that helped with the development of this instrument, so we know it pretty well. And if you're in the US and you'd like to know more about the Brisa, as far as purchasing one or more details on it, please visit patchmanmusic dot com. All you have to do is go to patchmanmusiccom, look for the Roland button and click on it, or you can go to patchmanmusiccom slash Brisa B-R-I-S-A and I have a page dedicated to the Brisa instruments and tells you all about it, with additional sound demos and purchase information if you'd like to pick one up and we'd appreciate your support.

Speaker 5: 56:35

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Alistair Parnell: 57:36

Yeah, great. Well, it's a very exciting new instrument and, like I said at the beginning, we'll do another podcast edition next time where we'll do a little bit more detail If you want to really be nerdy about things like MIDI settings and system settings and all that kind of cool stuff that we like to get into, with plenty more sound demos as well. So I hope you're excited about it too. There'll be more media coming from Roland. I shall be doing a couple of videos as well on my youtube channel, so check out the iSax Academy youtube channel. I'll be doing some walkthroughs there as well. So, Matt, uh, it's exciting times and and we're looking forward to getting these out into people's hands and seeing what fantastic music they can make with the Brisa. So we'll sign off, Matt. Thank you very much for your time again and we'll see you in the next one.

Matt Traum: 58:34

Thanks again, Alistair. Take care everybody. Bye-bye.