Alistair Parnell: 0:01

Welcome to the Aerophone Academy Podcast with me, Matt Traum. 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: 0:17

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Alistair Parnell: 0:26

And while you're at it, why not check out www.iSax.academy and patchmanmusic.com. Welcome to episode 17 of the Aerophone Podcast. We're very happy to have you all back with us again, and let's welcome our co-host, Matt Traum.

Matt Traum: 0:46

Hey Alistair, how are you doing? It's great to be here again. It's been a little while since our last episode, but we thought maybe we'd expand more on the Roland AE Brisa instrument, because there's been a lot of interest in it. Have you noticed that as well?

Alistair Parnell: 0:57

the last episode, right? What was the numbers on that episode? I can't remember. That was that was 16. Yeah, that was 16. And how many downloads? We had a lot of downloads on YouTube this time, right?

Matt Traum: 1:08

Yeah, somehow, for some reason, on YouTube at least, it kind of went in our world at least, it went a little viral. I think we had 1200 or 1300 downloads just on that one episode. So there has been quite a bit of interest in it.

Alistair Parnell: 1:20

It's definitely growing, and that's that's great for everybody. Mind you, as we were just discussing a moment ago, Matt, the world of wind controllers is exploding, right? Because I think ever since Roland produced their first Aerophone, sort of the last, what, eight, nine years, there's been a tremendous amount of interest and companies producing wind synthesizers, yeah?

Matt Traum: 1:44

It seems that way. I who knows why, but maybe it just took that extra boost from a big company like Roland to kind of push it. And it's like I think you could go on the internet now and you go to some of these oh, you know, overseas websites, the Japanese websites and Chinese websites, and you'll see literally tens of different models of wind controllers. I bet you there's over 30, yeah, 30 wind controllers available of different different qualities, of course. But it's just it's been kind of a boom over the last, what would you say, maybe five years or so?

Alistair Parnell: 2:16

Yeah, absolutely. It's been amazing. And it's great because you know, they're not all great instruments, but it's really adding to the amount of interest that's out there. And otherwise, Matt, there there are things that are happening sort of in the news, as it were. I mean, obviously, our last episode was sort of introducing the Brisa. Now we've had the official launch. Now, you yourself, you know, at Patchman Music, you actually sell the the Brisa, don't you? Particularly to the the US market, right? and how's it been going? Have you had a lot of interest?

Matt Traum: 3:04

Yeah, it's been I think a lot of interest here on the Brisa. Now by the time you hear this episode, it will have been shipping. So I've got a lot of people lined up that definitely want to buy it. It's really I think it's a really nice instrument. And going back a little bit to what you were saying about all the different models out there and things, remember you you and I were talking this past week about was it a group in where was it? Germany or or somewhere that you said there was a lot of people that just gather together to play wind controllers, and they they're really not there to impress each other with the technology. It's just more of a social thing.

Alistair Parnell: 3:38

Yeah. It was China. Yeah, I have a lady on one of my iSax Academy courses who is Chinese. She lives in Canada, a lovely lady, and she sent me a picture of a gathering of, you know, I guess you would call them senior citizens. they were obviously all playing a wind synthesizer. There must have been at least 40 or 50, and I think they gather together very regularly, once a week, and they they play a tune together, and it's it's great fun, and it's for an opportunity for them. You see, if they are living in maybe an apartment or something, they can't play an acoustic instrument very easily, so a wind synthesizer is is perfect for this, yeah.

Matt Traum: 4:19

So the wind synthesizer in this case, it's more it's it's not even so much about the music, but it's more of a social thing. Absolutely. You have this wind controller, and it becomes your kind of your ticket into the social group there and the camaraderie, I guess you'd say.

Alistair Parnell: 4:33

Absolutely. And that's that's great, isn't it? Yeah, so Brisa is out. Now there are a couple of other instruments on the horizon or about to be released. I've I've been well, we've both had our hands on a DioSynth, an ASM DioSynth. This is showing a lot of promise, right, Matt?

Matt Traum: 6:06

I think so. Yeah, I've I've had again quite a bit of interest in it, and it is shipping as of this podcast. And yeah, Patchman Music, of course, you know, adds a little extra there. You know, I update the firmware and calibrate it and set it up so it'll be ready to play out of the box. Yeah, it's a nice little plus, and I'm here to answer questions too for my customers. So yeah, but yeah, it's shipping, and I'm quite impressed by it. I think it has a great potential as well. I you know, it's just version 1.0 software or you know, thereabouts first version. so it's only going to get better, and we'll we'll see what they can do, you know, as far as adding things and maybe fixing a couple little things here and there.

Alistair Parnell: 6:47

Sure. Now, Matt, you also said to me about the Robkoo Clarii Pro. Now I've heard of Robkoo and I've seen some of their instruments, they kind of look pretty sleek, but this new one, this Clarii Pro, I mean, you were telling me about some kind of pretty impressive specs on this thing.

Matt Traum: 7:05

Yeah, they're they're pretty serious about it, apparently. That's I believe it's a Chinese company. And I have the Clarii Mini here, and it's a little small instrument and pretty inexpensive, but it's pretty good. I mean, they did legato in the samples are is pretty nice, and it's got the gyroscope on there so you can do tilting and lifting of the instrument. Yeah. But this new pro model, it's got some promising things, I guess.

Alistair Parnell: 7:31

They're but also, I mean, it looks a pretty cool kind of layout. It's got a color screen. And didn't were you saying that you thought it had some kind of technology where you could, if you like, speak the name of the sound that you wanted to select? Is that right?

Matt Traum: 7:47

Yes. and they're not the first to do it. The Greaten series, the AP500, has this voice recognition also. You just hold the button down and you say trumpet one, and and it goes beep, and it's there, or you could say reverb three, or you know, to reduce the reverb or transpose plus two. Wow. And also this Clarii Pro also has voice recognition. So that's kind of nice when you're playing a gig and you don't want to, you know, or you don't have your glasses and you can't read the small display, things like that. So it can be in handy, and I'll tell you, as far as the Greaten AP500, I've tried it and it works in English and I'm sure other languages as well. So yeah, it's a useful feature.

Alistair Parnell: 8:28

Sure. I mean, we are we are very lucky to be living in you know a very exciting time for wind synthesizers. I mean, there's just so much coming out. You know, NAMM is has just gone as well, and there's oh gosh, it's really exciting stuff, and things are just gonna get better and better. the other thing I saw, Matt, online, which I wasn't aware of until I saw it on a, I don't know if I saw it on a Facebook post or something. Roland have got like a new HQ in in Hamamatsu. Now, I have been to the I guess it's the old place now, and you know, it was fun to go and visit, but to be honest, it did feel like a bit of a sort of general kind of industrial kind of unit, you know. but this new place, did you see some of the pictures? I mean it looks pretty swish. Yeah, the pictures are impressive.

Matt Traum: 9:31

so you've been to the old place, that's interesting. I've never been over there. What was your impression of the old place? Was it a huge place or how was it set up?

Alistair Parnell: 9:40

It didn't feel that big. And I think reading from what I've seen of the the new place, I think what they've concentrated on is trying to get you know, both you know, obviously it's going to be a really lovely place to work, but in terms of the sort of working departments, the old place felt a little bit like, you know, this department was here, and then you had to go all the way down the stairs and through another corridor and out to this department, and you know, it felt a little bit kind of separated off. So it feels like they're bringing these working spaces closer together, better collaboration, all of that kind of thing. Lovely open spaces with with lots of glass and stuff, you know. It looks like it's gonna be a very lovely place because am I right? I mean, they don't make them there, do they, in Japan, Hamamatsu? It's it's it's made in China, I believe, isn't it?

Matt Traum: 10:34

Well, China or Taiwan, I believe, some of these instruments. Yeah, they've they've they source them out. I don't think well I don't know. I don't know what Roland actually makes. maybe that's a RD headquarters there. I don't know what the official Absolutely, yes.

Alistair Parnell: 10:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I mean it's it's great. It would be nice. maybe we can get a trip over there together, Matt, and we'll go and see it. Would be great. We could do a podcast from there and we could you know, maybe even do some video stuff. That would be fantastic, wouldn't it? I'm sure people would be very interested.

Matt Traum: 11:05

What a great idea. And I think I think the Aerophone is hitting an anniversary mark pretty soon. Is it 10 years?

Alistair Parnell: 11:11

I think it's ten years next year, I believe. so you know, let's keep our fingers crossed. Let's let's hope that there's still more to come there with the Roland series, and you know, it would be great to think that there's there's new stuff on the horizon. We don't know of anything yet, but we keep our fingers crossed.

Matt Traum: 11:35

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Alistair Parnell: 13:06

Okay, so we've covered a nice lot of news there. Very exciting stuff, really, really cool stuff coming up. Now, we said we would talk a little bit more about Brisa, and one thing that we didn't touch on in the last episode, Matt, is the the app that accompanies the Brisa. I think when we did the first episode, the app was maybe not officially released. Well, it wasn't officially released, was it? So but now of course it is. And what do you think in general, Matt? do you want to give us a little rundown on what this app is looking like and what it can do?

Matt Traum: 13:44

Well, I think it's kind of a general app. I you can't really go in and edit the patches like you can on the AE20 and AE30 editors. it's more for selecting sounds and maybe setting the volume level, the reverb level, transpose, doing quick selections, you know, your favorites, updating the firmware. What else am I missing? there's a fingering, kind of an interesting graphical fingering page where you can push some buttons down on the on the Brisa and actually see what note it is. Maybe someday they'll have custom fingerings, we don't know, but maybe that would be used for that.

Alistair Parnell: 14:23

And it looks like all the the sort of MIDI out settings and that sort of thing you can adjust from from the app. I must admit, Matt, I don't know what you're like, you know, you get to a certain age and the glasses become more and more important. I do find the screen on the Brisa, you know, it's it's pretty compact, it's pretty small, isn't it? So having the details that you can adjust are on a bigger screen, like a an iPhone or something, I find that's that's really pretty useful.

Matt Traum: 14:55

Oh, absolutely. It's it's a big plus. I think the screen on the the breeze is maybe an inch wide by a quarter inch tall and two lines. And yeah, it's pretty limited, but it's nice to have it, you know. Yes. But yeah, if you have your phone, is it also I think it's Android also, isn't it?

Alistair Parnell: 15:11

I believe so, yeah. Yeah, I think so.

Matt Traum: 15:13

So just to have your phone on the music stand there and a larger list of your favorites, boom, you just touch the thing and you're on your trumpet or flute or whatever. I think it's real useful to have.

Alistair Parnell: 15:22

Yeah, absolutely. And they they have a kind of you know, it's nicely laid out with the patches. You've you've got sort of what is it, five banks of patches that you can kind of instantly recall. so what is that?

Matt Traum: 15:36

That's that's It looks like five times and then there's three times four, there's twelve. So five times twelve for for those.

Alistair Parnell: 15:45

Yeah. Yeah, which is great. You know, that's a lot of sounds you can get. I mean, most people are not gonna need that many sounds to select, are they? Right. But yes, what do you think about you're the expert as far in as far as I'm concerned on sounds, Matt? In terms of does it look like it's at the moment, anyway, we can't get into edit the sounds, not in the same way we can with the AE20 and AE30. Is is that right? We can't quite get into the detail as much as those.

Matt Traum: 16:15

Yeah, in fact, not at all. as I look at it, you know, you just you've got a fingering page, you've got your favorites page, and then the settings page, that would be for your general settings, your sound settings, control settings, control source, and MIDI settings. Yeah. So if I go to sound settings, you have basically effect type, transpose, and master tuning. And that's about it for the sound.[ Control settings, that would be you know, key delay, bend range, things like that, breath curve. but yeah, there's no way, no way to get in and edit the sounds. I don't know if it's even possible on the Brisa. I imagine it is. but I don't know if it'll be accessible. We'll have to just see.

Alistair Parnell: 16:56

Yes, it'll be interesting. but because we don't seem to be quite shall we say, they haven't really quite said exactly what the sort of sound engine is. It's it's not really Zencore, I don't think, but it's it's not quite the same as the original AE 10 sounds sort of engine. It seems to be a a new or or a different engine. Is that right? That's what I'm thinking.

Matt Traum: 17:24

I think it's a supernatural engine kind of on steroids. I think they added some things to it, but it's basically supernatural, I believe. Okay, which is great. I mean, if if if supernatural is programmed the right way, and it and it is. I mean, when you listen to these sounds and you tongue and you slur, you can hear a difference, and it's done properly, so it's very nice. but it's I don't think it's definitely not Zencore, as far as I can tell.

Alistair Parnell: 18:30

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Matt Traum: 19:48

Yeah, I tried with the iPhone and I cannot get it. It sees the BRISA there, but there's no way to select the Brisa. So it looks like at the moment, at least, with version one firmware, that you have to connect with Bluetooth only into the app. so I don't know. It sounds to me like that might just be a bug in the version one. Yeah. Because it is seeing the instrument, but it won't connect to it at this point unless I'm doing something wrong.

Alistair Parnell: 20:11

Sure. But we do know that you can connect to a computer. Now, this is a thing that I really like about the Brisa. So with one USB-C cable, you can connect to a computer to get MIDI and audio and power, and I think that is pretty convenient.

Matt Traum: 20:34

Yeah, I think that's that's just wonderful. yeah, I did play with that a little bit. I use the I have like the Korg Monopoly soft synth on my phone, and I connect it up with the USB to C to USB-C cable, just a plain old USB-C cable. Right. And it connected right up to the Korg soft synth, and I'm running the the you know the patch man music wind controller sound banks, and I can select the sounds in the Korg Monopoly, and it plays them very nicely. There's not I'm not noticing any you know major delays or latency or anything. And then the sound actually comes from the phone right in back into the Brisa. Yes. So it's it's mixing together the phone's audio with the Brisa's audio, and then the resultant sound comes out the the headphone jack, so you can connect to your amplifier or your headphones. now that works great, and it sounds wonderful when you're playing both of them together and you're getting these layers, it's beautiful. The the one drawback you might say could be mixing the volume levels of the iPhone slash iPad and the Brisa. yeah. At the moment, it looks like you have to go into the Brisa menu to actually adjust the volume of the Brisa in comparison to the sound coming in from the phone or iPad. So maybe at some point there will be an easier way to select and adjust the volume on the Brisa. Maybe there's a A key combination that we can we can offer as a suggestion to Roland. If somebody can think of that.

Alistair Parnell: 22:07

Yeah. That is something that is a little bit awkward. On the Brisa, you have to get into a menu to change the volume at the moment. And I can see there's be quite a lot of times when I'd want to kind of change that volume setting. And so it would be nice if we had some kind of combination of keys that we could adjust the volume for. I also did some of my little demo recordings. You you've been hearing some recordings as we've been going through this podcast as always. and some of mine, in fact, all of the ones I did for this podcast, I did directly with the audio going over USB, and it works perfectly well. I found that output volume sometimes I wanted to adjust that output volume, and I don't think there's any way to adjust the output volume over USB. it wasn't a problem. I could I could balance things inside Logic Pro that I use, but yeah, it's I couldn't find a way of changing the USB volume either. So that's maybe something that could come in a future update so we can get a little bit more control over volume in general, right?

Matt Traum: 23:23

Yeah, I'm thinking maybe a nice clever key combination might work, like maybe double clicking and holding on the tone button on the Brisa. So you double-click and hold, and then maybe you could use the arrow left and right to adjust the volume, and then when you release, you know, you're you're out of that mode. Yeah. Or you could double-click and hold on the tone button and use the S1 and S2 buttons for a volume up and down, or one of the keys on the instrument, maybe, you know, whatever. But just maybe a double click might maybe be a nice little shortcut there. We should we should suggest that.

Alistair Parnell: 25:01

I noticed DioSynth has the five pin DIN. there's just not enough room on a Brisa to have a five pin DIN. Did you did you get anywhere with investigating that?

Matt Traum: 25:10

I've been asking around a little bit and a couple ideas were recommended. Maybe the CME. There's different, there's different ways to do it. Basically, you're looking for a USB to MIDI host device, and those boxes can be found. They're they're not uncommon. I think they're usually under $50. And that would take a USB and then provide the legacy five-pin MIDI output on it. I don't know if it would have MIDI in. Maybe you'd be able to control the Brisa with an external another wind controller or a keyboard. That's possible. [ But so yeah, the the one of the ones that somebody recommended was the CME H2 MIDI Pro USB host box. it's pretty inexpensive and it's one of the newer ones. And it's got a lot of additional features like MIDI data filtering and mapping and things like that. So it might be worth trying. I have personally not tried it yet, but I'm sure there's a way to do that pretty easily.

Alistair Parnell: 26:05

Just in case people don't understand, if you only have a USB output on any instrument, any kind of musical instrument, if you want to connect, say, to some kind of external sound module or keyboard that only takes a MIDI input. That's that kind of five-pin MIDI input. It's been around for what 40 years or something. I mean, it's it's it's it's a an old technology, I guess you would say. But usually if you want to do that, you're a little bit stuck and you would have to go via a computer. You need what's called a host to be able to do that. And the computer in this case would work as a host. It would take your information from the USB from your Aerophone or Brisa or whatever it is, and it would then be able to connect if you had a kind of audio interface that had some MIDI capability with five-pin din, you'd you could connect your keyboards. Now, something like the H2 MIDI Pro saves you having to have a computer. So you can literally plug in straight from something like a Brisa, MIDI that would be USB to USB, and then you can take a MIDI cable directly out of another port. Now, Matt and I haven't actually tried this yet. If anybody is out there and you've tried it on your wind synthesizer and you found that it works, please let us know. You know, there's always, we always have a little shortcut that you can find on the podcast there. You can leave it a leave us a message, either a voice note or send us an email, and we'd be very interested to know if you've tried it out. But it certainly looks as if it should work. I do have, Matt, a couple of their what they call the WIDI device, W I D I. This is their wireless MIDI setup, and that works very well. once you've got it sorted, I find it a little bit tricky getting those things set up, but they work very well and you can connect all sorts of gear together. You can have multiple bits of gear connected over there. Have you tried any of those witty things yet? I not the WIDI, no.

Matt Traum: 28:21

I do know that they're highly regarded. I know Nyle Steiner likes it, and he recommended I try one of those. So if Nyle likes it, that's saying a lot, right? The pioneer of the EVI and EWI. Yeah. I will say also, you notice that we're talking about a wired USB connection now for this. So when you're contRoland if you're using a wind controller, you generally don't want to use Bluetooth for contRoland other synths because Bluetooth does have latency in it that's kind of noticeable, unfortunately, at this point in the technology. Maybe someday it'll get down to millisecond or sub-millisecond, but right now it's it kind of it's too much. you really notice it. But yeah. So we're talking about a wireless USB connection. So you want to wire into it somehow for the you know for the best response, you want to do that. and wire into one of these host devices, and then you'll you'll you won't have that latency problem. Now, if you're connecting to the editor and you're just selecting patches or you're setting a breath curve or transposition, you know, it doesn't have to be three milliseconds. if there's a slight delay there, you're just setting a parameter and you're that's a one-time thing. But for real-time control, you want it very quick. So yeah.

Alistair Parnell: 29:28

I do think that the WIDI devices are possibly a little bit faster transmission times than the built-in Bluetooth MIDI on something like an Aerophone. They do seem to be a little bit quicker. It's so important, Matt, just like you were saying, I think perhaps you know people don't always quite appreciate the fact for me it's things like the articulation. So if you're doing some faster articulation where you're trying to coordinate your basically your tonging with your finger movement as well, now you are talking about absolute split second timing there. And if you've got any kind of delay on the way that those instructions, if you like, are going to your sound source, then you are potentially gonna get problems. That's why it's so important. If you were just gonna play, you know, some slow melody line and you're not you're not gonna do anything too fast, you probably might feel it's okay. But if you get onto anything that's gonna be a little bit quicker for articulation, I think you'll start to notice it pretty quickly that it's gonna slow you down a bit.

Matt Traum: 30:39

I think that the CME products are designed for low latency. So in that case, it might be okay. it is gonna still add a little bit. You know, it always anything going through the air and having to be digitized and undigitized, or you know, whatever, it's gonna have a little bit of processing time involved. Whereas you don't generally get that with a wired connection as much. I wanted to see what that difference was recently when I connected up the Brisa to my iPhone with the Korg Monopoly. but with the wired connection, it was it was great. So in any case, I guess search around and see what people are using and try it for yourself and find that setup that pleases you.

Alistair Parnell: 31:24

So, Matt, let's talk about perhaps some of the sort of additional controls that we have on the Brisa, maybe in a little more detail. We mentioned what's available in the first podcast, but you and I have had a little bit more time now to experiment with this. So we're talking about things like the the the sort of motion control, the rolling control, we have the little thumb button under the right hand thumb. Now, how have you been finding those controls? are they are they coming fairly naturally to you now? Is there anything you would change or want to improve on those?

Matt Traum: 32:08

Well, I would say the trickiest thing with the Brisa with the as far as the motion sensing is getting it set up correctly and mostly the sort of the resting point of where those are. So you have to kind of figure out where you normally hold your flute in your hand, and then you know, that's the zero point, and then as you lift it, it'll send a MIDI controller. Same thing with the roll, as you kind of roll over the mouthpiece, looking downwards almost, and Roland the instrument forward. You want to find that zero point. that's really important. You don't want to be looking like doing contortion there there when you're playing, you know. So it's important to find that zero point and get it close to where your natural position is, and then and then you can adjust the the other parameters to get the you know a nice range of motion and a nice range of numbers going out to control things like vibrato or or growl or whatever you want to do, bending.

Alistair Parnell: 33:01

I mean I think it's speaks well of the Brisa. I mean, I hope you don't mind me saying this, Matt. Neither of us are flute players. We're we're we're we're not we're not flute players, but we have both found that this is an instrument that even non-flute players can pick up and get pretty proficient on fairly quickly. You again you're hearing some of our demos as we play, as we go through the the podcast. And the one thing I find, Matt, is just for me a little more difficult to get used to. The on the Aerophone and of course on the Akai's on most of the wind synths, you have some kind of thumb control, either a lever or a plate where you're going to lean on. On the Brisa, there's a there's a button on the right hand, and you can kind of do pitch bend on that. I just find that slightly limiting compared to something like the aerophone, where you have a a kind of roller, a lever that you can move. And I'm I'm finding it's I'm slightly less comfortable with the with the thumb button on the right hand.

Matt Traum: 34:13

Yeah, I would agree. I guess we're kind of limited with the form factor of a flute. It's just so small. There's only so much you can do. I mean, I exactly. I'm not sure. I guess you could use a pressure sensing mechanism maybe under the thumb. That would be an option. I don't know. It's it's difficult and you kind of have to deal with the form factor of that small instrument.

Alistair Parnell: 34:33

Yeah. I think with all these things, Matt, it's very easy. You know, it's easy for us to say, oh, I wish it was this, I wish it was that. You know, and I do have a lot of people online that say to me, Oh, you know, we I can't do this, this button's in the wrong place or whatever. and you know, very often what I want to say to them is go practice, because ultimately that is what we have to do. I know we want an instrument that we can pick up and play easily, but sometimes you're just gonna have to practice a bit more and get used to it. And that's what I feel I need to do with the Brisa to get used to the pitch bend with the roll, and just like you said, to get it set up really nicely, which is perfectly possible, but it's gonna take a little bit of time and experimentation to get used to it. So, you know, it's okay to say this isn't quite to our liking, but practice will get you there.

Matt Traum: 35:28

Yep, it's really powerful. And I find for me the octave buttons, I just need to think about it more on this instrument. And like when I'm in the lowest octave, I tend to roll my thumb to the right to let go of the button. And really all you have to do is let let the pressure off. You don't have to move the thumb. So as habit, you know, as an EVI player, I'm I'm always trying to roll off that button. And I suppose I don't have to do that. So I'm I need to train myself a little bit better. Sure. I will say that when you're calibrating the motion tilt and the motion roll sensors on the Brisa, that it might be useful. Roland might consider when you're on those pages, when you're setting the thresholds of the position, like I was just talking about, to maybe have a little graphic on the screen that kind of just shows, you know, where when you're hitting the zero point and you can make that adjustment. because right now it's kind of hit and miss. You're just kind of trying numbers until you get something that's working. And also, I found when adjusting those, it helps to have a MIDI monitor on your computer running. You can there's free MIDI monitors that you can download and it'll show you what's what data is coming into the computer, and that way you can see, hey, I'm too far, it's always sending this controller, and I need to back off on the threshold a little bit or whatever. so it's a good idea to MIDI monitors are really useful when you're dealing with wind controllers and you're trying to sort out problems and things like that.

Alistair Parnell: 36:54

On that score, Matt, I don't know if you're aware, but I believe the guys that make Digibrass, I believe they have made a little web app that you can connect pretty much any wind controller to. And I've not tried this yet, but I believe you can get some pretty good visual feedback of what your instrument is putting out. It's a free web app. I believe you've got to use something like Chrome or Microsoft Edge because those web browsers will allow MIDI to go through. But it's something we maybe ought to look into. So it you in real time you can basically play your wind synth into this web app and it gives you various forms of visual feedback as to what's happening, a bit like you were just talking about, Matt.

Matt Traum: 37:51

And there's one there's one for the Mac by a company called Snoize. It's S N O I Z E. It's called MIDI Monitor. It's free. You can download on the Mac, and that'll show you all the data coming in. There's another one that's called Graphical MIDI Monitor V two Zero Zero. I use that a lot too. It's more of a visual one. Yeah, but yeah, it's just really useful to see what's going on instead of guessing.

Matt Traum: 38:15

Absolutely, yeah.

Alistair Parnell: 39:38

They're kind of positioned between the the left-hand stack of keys and the right hand stack of keys on the just where the keys and pads are. So they feel pretty good to get to. And just like you can on something like an aerophone, you can select what you want those to do for you. Even that can either be as a kind of global level or a patch level. So all sorts of things. You I think the basic setup for that, it you can change the sounds with the S1 and S2 button, but all sorts of things that you could select that, even things like the harmony mat, I think is that you could select harmony from there. I've seen that on the app anyway.

Matt Traum: 40:24

Yeah, you can get in there and they're they're programmable, like you say. some of the things you can do, like patch up and patch down, or maybe add an octave below or above where you're playing. You can add an interval. you can even have intelligent harmony like on the AE30, where you can say, you know, I want to play in major or minor keys, and maybe others now. I think there's it's a two-step process. You would have on one of the buttons, you would have an you press it, and then you play a note like C. Then you press the other, like the S2 button, and then that would turn on the harmony, and it would be in, let's say, a major key. So at the moment we can't find anything in the manual that kind of explains exactly how it does it, but I know it does it because I can go from major to minor type harmonies using those two buttons in relation. So the the one button you would tell it what key you're playing in or what type of scale you're playing in, and then the other button turns the feature on and off.

Alistair Parnell: 41:17

Is that correct? That's the way it works on the aerophone, and I believe it does pretty similar. Yes, you can select the the root note of the key, and then as far as we understand, you can select from a few different scale types on the Brisa itself. So I think there's you know, there's obviously a lot of potential there for being very creative. Oh, the other thing, Matt, that I don't know if we've mentioned before, but you do get two handy little LEDs on the side of the Aerophone to tell you whether those S1 and S2 keys have been pressed or they're currently on or off, which is a very useful addition as well. So, all in all, you know, you've got a tremendous amount of controls and options there that you can experiment with.

Matt Traum: 42:13

And the right hand button also, I noticed if I press that, both of the LEDs on the side light up in green instead of red for the S1 and S2. So there's another indication there. And I believe that button, I know it can be either toggled or momentary. Yes. So it and I like to use the harmony on the right-hand thumb. I I have a toggle harmony on and off that's really useful. So you've been hearing throughout this episode some additional sound demos that both Alistair and I have just quickly put together so you could hear what the Brisa sounds like. And they've been sprinkled throughout the episode. Alistair, you worked on some more that are more a little more produced where you have some backing tracks and stuff. You have a couple of those. Would you like to talk about some of those?

Alistair Parnell: 44:45

Sure. I'll I'll introduce those. So you remember in the last episode, Matt, I was kind of very deep into trying to get the final parts of my latest course at the iSax Academy, what I call Beyond the Basics. Now, Beyond the Basics is really for any wind synthesizer. It's really a course devoted to improving your technique, so really getting comfortable with things like the octave keys, the alternative fingerings that you can get on wind synths, and then there's a whole section as well on how you would best play a flute sound, or how you would best play a violin sound or a harmonica. And there are lots of little kind of exercises and things of how you would embellish in an appropriate way for each one of those instruments. And what I've done at the same time, I've actually written quite a few tunes for that as well, and some of them I did in fact demonstrate on the Brisa for that course. So if you think you might be interested in in that beyond the basics course, whatever type of wind synth you play, it'll have plenty of music and material in there for you to really improve your playing. So here, for instance, I did a very short piece. This is really one that I chose to demonstrate the the French accordion sound La Senne. And you might remember from previous conversations my parents were both accordion players, so it was very natural for me to have a little French accordion. It sounds like this on the Brisa. This is something I used the warm sore lead on the on the aerophone Brisa. demonstration I did for YouTube. this is actually a lovely piece play written by a composer called Rutter, John Rutter. And you might know him, he's written some lovely choir pieces as well. This is just a short extract from his sweet antique by John Rutter. video. You might have seen it there. this is a piece that's a loop, and what I've done here, I've started off with a little bit of a piano loop that's going on, and then all the other sounds are played on the Brisa. So there's kind of a bass synth, there's a little bit of marimba sound going on, and then a couple of sort of lead sounds as well. But everything besides the piano here is played on the Brisa.

Matt Traum: 53:27

You make that instrument sound so wonderfully expressive as you always do. So congratulations, Alistair. Thank you. In addition to the sounds that you've heard throughout this podcast, we there was another thing we wanted to touch on, the possibility of incorporating a microphone on the Brisa as you play it. Like the old flute players used to use where they would put a mic up there and they would play the flute, but they'd also g get that breath sound that the attack coming out of the mouth, the air, and also singing too, you know, as they sing and play the same note together or in harmony with their with their flute playing. So here's here are a couple demos exploring that possibility and maybe at some point there would be a way to even build that into the firmware of the BRISA where you have a parameter that is you're using the breath sensor basically as a microphone and in instead of only as a breath sensor. So the breath sensors picking up the noise of the air and it's going and being mixed into the sound of the breeze synth engine and then coming out the headphone jack. I think that would be a really interesting feature to explore. So hopefully the Roland engineers will think about considering that. So here are some examples that I put together kind of quickly to kind of give that idea a try. this is the concert flute on the Brisa with varying levels of the microphone mixed in with the sound. some there's some parts where there's no mic mixed in, and then there's some where there's just breath at a lower level, some at a higher level, and then also some singing examples as well.

Alistair Parnell: 56:04

You know, when I did some of my video with the Brisa, I had a couple of times when I'd left the microphone open, didn't intend to, but I noticed how it gave it a very sort of realistic, natural organic sound, Matt. That works really well. I that's definitely something they should try and incorporate.

Matt Traum: 56:27

Yeah, I think it adds to the immediacy of the attack and also just the randomness of the noise. You know, if you sample noise in a synthesizer, it's always gonna- it's not gonna ever sound like real noise coming out of a you know, a breath sound. So having that organic sound, like you say, mixed in with the synthesizer. if it's at all possible with the synth engine and the circuitry in there, I think that would be really cool, don't you think?

Alistair Parnell: 56:53

Absolutely. What a great idea.

Speaker 2: 56:55

Yeah, yeah. Every single sound, so wholesome and rich from lush pads to leads, he's the one that you picked up. Got the world buzzing like bees on a train with Patchman’s in the mix, just the poppin' the keys. Synthesizer royalty, they vouch for his craft and every masterpiece. You feel that patchman's five.

Alistair Parnell: 58:18

I think I had some sounds from you for the is it called an XV 2020? That was a little Roland box that worked very well, and of course, your sounds that you did for the Akai 4000, I felt were were absolutely the the the go-to sounds, and so many people I think realized that they were the very best sounds that you could get for the Akai 4000. Now, you kind of implied a little earlier in the week when we were having a chat that you might be kind of readdressing some of that in a in a different way. I'm not sure you're gonna reveal everything yet, but am I on the right lines?

Matt Traum: 59:01

Yeah, and thank you for the compliments. I really appreciate that. Coming from you, it means a lot to me. yeah, I'm working on some sounds finally. I haven't been very prolific in that sense lately, well for the last few years really, with all these developments and helping do some other things too. but I'm I am working on a new let's say a port. It's a port of a hardware synth sound bank wind controller into a soft synth version of a hardware device. And I don't want to announce it yet, but probably will have that ready and shipping by the next podcast. So Wow. Some exciting things are coming, and there will be more after that too. So I'm really pressing now for this.

Alistair Parnell: 59:42

Well, that will be great. I will be first in the queue, I can tell you that. Awesome.

Matt Traum: 59:47

Thanks, Alistair. Great.

Alistair Parnell: 59:53

Well, as always, Matt, it's been a pleasure to chat with you and thank you to all the listeners for your support. As we've said earlier in this podcast, things are really taking off here. The the amount of downloads has really shot through the roof recently. So we are very, very grateful for all of you listeners out there for joining us in our WindSynth chat. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do. And just a little tip, we may well be looking for our next podcast. We thought we might talk about different ways that you can use your wind synthesizer, perhaps to add some additional income. So if you're a sax player or or or a brass player, are there ways that you can use a wind synthesizer to give yourself even more leverage out there in the workplace, be it live or in recorded sound? This is something that Matt and I do quite regularly, so we thought we would pass on some of that information to you as well. So, once again, Matt, thank you so much for your time and your expertise, and we wish you well, Matt. We'll see you in the next episode.

Matt Traum: 1:01:15

Thanks, Alistair, and thank you everybody for listening to the podcast, and we will see you in the next one. Bye bye.