The new EWI consists of two pieces: the thing you blow into and finger (the 3000) and a
specially designed analog synthesizer module (the 3000m). the module contains MIDI In and
Out ports and connects to the controller via a custom cable. The 3000 is an attractive and
sturdy-feeling, elongated box of metal and plastic. As set of non-moving, chrome-plated rings
and bars are arranged like woodwind keys along one side. Opposite those, a set of chrome
rollers under the left thumb give the EWI a 7-octave range, and two bend plates above and
below the right thumb-rest provide pitch bend. At one end is a slotted, rubbery mouthpiece
that resembles an extra-large and chewy Chiclet with an opening along the top edge. Hook
the 3000 to the 3000m with the supplied cable, blow into the Chiclet, and move your fingers
on and off the rings and bars to produce pitched, synthesized sounds in an electronic
simulacrum of playing an acoustic wind instrument.
CONTROLLER
The EWI 3000 has a few new features. While the EWI 1000 did not allow air to flow
through it, which forced you to let air escape between your lips and the mouthpiece, the new
model has an air-escape tube. Unfortunately, the 3000 vents so little air we had to resort to
the leaky-gasket routine anyhow. And we found no reference in the manual for adjusting the
air flow. While double-reed player normally need to exhale regularly - and may feel
comfortable with this situation on the EWI - sax/clarinet players may find it distracting.
Akai significantly improved the mouthpiece. The opening sits horizontally in your mouth,
feeling much more familiar than the 1000's nipple-like device. It also feels more substantial
than the soft original and responds well to a good bite, which is what the manual recommends
for producing vibrato.
Because the keys respond electrically to touch and do not move, you must keep your fingers
completely off the keys you don't want down or you get wrong notes. This was fairly
bothersome on the 1000, where the slightest brush of a key would trigger it. A small pot on
the 3000 allows you to adjust the amount of touch the keys need to trigger a note. After
setting it up, we had much less trouble with false notes. Players of open-hole instruments
normally keep their fingers off open holes and will feel more at home with the EWI than sax
players, who usually rest their fingers lightly on open keys. To ameliorate the situation, Akai
offers a snap-on finger-rest, the EWI-FR ($29.95), that provides three spring-loaded keys for
each hand.
Touching the rail along the right side of the octave rollers with your left thumb activates the
instrument's portamento ("glide"), a fairly easy technique to learn. To bend the pitch of any
note, roll your tight thumb up or down onto the instrument's bend plates. The amount of
bend this creates is programmable from a quarter-tone up to a minor third in either direction.
While the bend plates are straight-forward, the implementation of vibrato is idiosyncratic, to
say the least. Biting the EWI 1000 mouthpiece produced an LFO-driven vibrato. You could
only control its depth and speed by setting these parameters in the synth program. After some
experimentation, we determined the new setup is different. However, it's still no analogous to
acoustic instruments, where biting bends the pitch up and relaxing bends it down. biting the
EWI 3000 mouthpiece produces a full half-cycle of vibrato, that is, the pitch bends up, then
automatically returns back into tune. Releasing the bite produces the other half cycle: It
drives the pitch flat, then immediately back to normal. By editing the synth module, you can
set the depth of the bend, but not the rate of change. If you want to control vibrato speed and
depth in real time as you play, you must use the bend plates.
In general, it's easy to get used to the controller. It's responsive enough to make double-
tonguing and R&B-style flutter-tonguing easy. Slurring from one octave to another had been
difficult on most wind controllers. Their response is typically so fast they generate false notes
if all your fingers don't move at exactly the same time. The new EWI is fairly forgiving of
human timing,however. With a bit of practice, we managed to get smooth slurs across
octaves.
THE 3000M SYNTHESIZER MODULE
The synthesizer consists of two independent, analog, 2-oscillator "sources," mixed with a
single line amplifier (for a total of four oscillators). Each oscillator can generate
sawtooth,
triangle, and pulse waves. In each source Oscillator A can be both synched to and modulated
by, the frequency of Oscillator B. When combined, the oscillators share an LFO, digitally
controlled analog amplifier (DCA). The filter has a resonance control and A/B balance, and
its envelope depth can be modulated by Velocity. Both the amplifier and filter can be
programmed to respond to either an ADSR envelope generator, or to breath pressure. You
even can set up one source to be controlled by the ADSR envelope and the other to breath,
allowing you to program some complex expressiveness. For example, you can have the EG
trigger a fast-decaying, percussive sound from Source 1 that gets louder with velocity and set
Source 2 to respond only to breath, to simulate certain acoustic wind-instrument responses.
In general, you can elicit a good range of breath-driven expressiveness from the sounds that
come with the EWI3000m. The module sounds very much the classic, "brappy" analog
synth,
complete with low-pass filters and hard sync between oscillators. Because breath intensity
can control DCF and DCA levels, pulse width, filter resonance, and oscillator balance, you
have breath control over more sound parameters than most synths allow. Even better, the
range of the breath control over each parameter feels and sounds quite wide, so you can play
form ppp to fff, from dull to bright, and so on.
While there's good control, the variation form one sound to the next didn't impress us.
Nevertheless, in light of all the different synth technologies we've grown used to since the
heyday of analog synthesis - FM, additive, L/A, and so on - this is probably spoiled-brat
hindsight.
the EWI synth is monophonic, but you can play chords with it if you connect it to another
MIDI instrument. You can set up sixteen two- to four-note chord patterns in the 3000m, then
assign any pattern to any note in the chromatic scale. Each note in a pattern can be set from
-12 to +12 half-steps. When you play a pitch to which the pattern is assigned, the EWI plays
the note you finger and your second MIDI instrument plays the notes in the
patten, offset as
programmed from the note you play. This way, you can set the EWI so that, for instance,
every G# you play produces a third-inversion G#m9 chord. the application that immediately
comes to mind is to set the instrument up to play the chords of a diatonic scale, allowing a
wind player to comp like a pianist. The voicings remain fixed until you reprogram them -
and they sometimes get a little monotonous - but you get more than simple parallel
harmonies, and certainly more polyphony than a sax.
the synth also gives you two modes designed particularly for wind instruments. In Single
mode, a sound's envelope won't trigger when you play legato, only when you tongue. This
gives you a good range of expression. Multi mode simply lacks this differentiation: The
envelopes trigger each time you finger a new note, letting you play a fast line without having
to tongue each note and still get clean triggering.
The Transpose function lets you transpose the entire instrument, not just an individual patch,
in a way familiar to horn players. In the same way a trumpet is in B flat, an alto sax is in E
flat, and so forth, if you put the EWI into any key, the LCD reads out the name of the key:
C, C#, and so on.
Despite the small, 16 character LCD, the synth's architecture is straightforward. Nine real
hardware buttons provide solid visual orientation for their associated editing pages. Anyone
familiar with analog synthesis can get up to speed pretty quickly editing the 3000m.
MIDI AND THE OUTSIDE WORLD
If you run a MIDI cable from the EWI 3000m to another MIDI instrument, you can, of
course, play that instrument with the EWI controller. While other MIDI wind controllers
have this power, the 3000 has an edge. Playing a MIDI instrument that hasn't been designed
specifically for wind control requires tedious setup at best and con be profoundly frustrating
at worst.
If, however, you at least defeat the envelope generators of an instrument and have it blast out
its sounds full-bore at the presence of a MIDI Note-On message, the EWI can help. Route
the audio out of the second instrument into the EWI's mono external input, and the second
instrument's sound will be modulated by the EWI's DCA and DCF and hence your breath.
This gives you the same kind of dynamic breath control over and external signal as you have
over the EWI's DCO A. Because of the relation to dynamic control, this function is
typically more appropriate for a sampler than a synth. For one thing, samplers' dynamic
controls tend to be less complex; for another, simply loading an mapping patch's worth of
samples, then blowing them with the EWI would save you programming time rather than add
it to your schedule.
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Product Summary
PRODUCT:
EWI 3000 Electronic Wind Instrument
and EWI 3000m sound module
PRICE: $1,400
MANUFACTURER:
Akai/International Music
1316 E. Lancaster
Fort Worth, TX 76102
tel. (800) 433-5627
or (817) 336-5114 |
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While the above scenario is great for live performance and recording to tape, it's no help
when sequencing. In fact, MIDI recording in general is not the EWI's strength. The 3000m
features a MIDI In port that lets you play it from a sequencer or other MIDI device. But if
you want to play a second instrument with a sequence performed on the EWI, the EWI's
external input is no help: You must program the second axe to respond to the breath-derived
controller data you record with the EWI. This requires, at least, a learning curve and
investment of time.In addition, to play back a sequence on the 3000m, you must disconnect the cable connecting the 3000 and 3000m. Sequencing usually means repeatedly recording and playing back, so
this can be a serious hinderance. We also experienced an unusual number of stuck notes
when se played the EWI back from the sequencer, which forced us to turn the instrument off
and on again in order to get back to work. |
It's easy to blame this on MIDI as well as on the EWI. MIDI was designed to start and stop
notes with Note-on and Note-off messages, not by Breath or other Continuous Controllers.
To get the expressiveness a player wants from a MIDI wind instrument, however, necessitates
using Breath, Aftertouch, or some other controller to trigger notes continuously form zero to
maximum volume. If you don't get the Breath Control back to zero at the end of each note,
or if you stop sequencer playback before it sends a controller value of zero, stuck notes can
occur. While this is understandable, it doesn't help when you're recording. It also happened
more often with the 3000 than with other wind controllers we have used, including the
original EWI.
MANUAL
There is no nice way to say this. The two manuals - one for the 3000 and one for the 3000m
- are abominable. They constitute as uninformative an example of Japanese "translated" into
English as I recall, and I still recall the Casio CZ-101.
In most cases selling equipment accompanied by a manual that confuses and inconveniences
customers is understandable in the face of a great market demand; people will buy VCRs
anyhow. Where a product is new and a demand needs to be established, one can only wonder
why Akai fails to take this small step to draw English-speaking horn players to the EWI.
If you get a hold of a new EWI, before you develop an embolism over the enclosed manuals,
learn the analog synthesis and MIDI from other sources. Especially if you're unfamiliar with
electronic music, it could easily mean the difference between frustration and a rewarding
expansion of your musical tool kit.
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EM
Meters
Rating
products from 1 to 5 Features
3.5
Ease of Use 2.5
Documentation .5
Value 3.5 |
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CONCLUSION
The extent to which the EWI gives you a wind-player's interface to electronic music depends
on what you know, what you won, what you can dope out on your own, and what you want.
The worst news is undoubtedly on the last front. If you want something that feels exactly
like a sax, clarinet, oboe, or whatever your main axe is, forget it. The EWI is its own
instrument, with its own learning curve, as well it should be. However, to whatever extent
you know woodwind fingerings and how to produce tones with your breath, that curve will
flatten out - up to a point. Beyond that, you're still learning a new instrument. I felt it
significantly easier, for example, to get comfortable on the EWI than I did when first learning
soprano sax with experience only on alto.
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The important issue is the other end of the spectrum. How far can you take the instrument?
Listen to Michael Brecker play the original EWI and you'll discover that in the right hands, it
fires off simply awe-inspiring solos. But if you want to either experience an electronic
version of a saxophone's immediate, speech-like expressiveness, or make your axe snarl,
sneer, laugh, and cry - if you want to preach - you should probably stick to the brass and
leave the silicone alone.
On the other hand, if you want to expand your tonal palette and learn some new techniques
and concepts, or if the electronic side of things intrigues you enough to shell out $1400 for a
piece of that action, the EWI could be your ticket.
Tim Tully is a MIDI consultant and multimedia composer in the San Francisco Bay Area. He
once again knows the joy and pain of playing tenor in a little known R&B band. Paul
McCandless has played oboe for Oregon for 21 years and also plays English horn, bass
clarinet, soprano sax, sopranino, Lyricon, and WX7. At present, he is recording a solo album
with Windham Hill.
This article contained some inaccuracies. The original
article kept referring to the "EWI2000" of which there never was one. I've changed this
throughout to read "EWI1000" which of course refers to the original
EWI1000/EWV2000
set up. The references to stuck notes while sequencing has a bit of absurdity in it as it
describes this phenomenon as being worse than with the original EWI. As the original EWI had
no MIDI in port, it would have been impossible to send sequencing messages to it altogether. Lastly,
the article was co-written by a WX7 player and I can hear his bias in the writing.
Nonetheless there is some valuable information in this article, particularly regarding the
structure and programming of the 3000 and 3020. -Ed.
This article was originally published in Electronic Musician Magazine, December, 1991 and is © Electronic Musician Magazine. It is reprinted here by the permission of the Editors of
EM. Any republication is prohibited. -Ed. |
