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Akai EWI1000 & EWV2000 MIDI WIND CONTROLLER & SYNTH MODULE

by Freff

Rite of passage #17A in the life of the American elementary school student: joining the school band. We remember this ritual s a time of great wrangling between the oft-contradictory preferences of parent ("A starter instrument costs what?"), music teacher) "Somebody's got to play the tuba!"), and the fourth grader ("Gimme something loud").

Once all that was settled, we found that we loved the clarinet. Woodwinds are the finest, most emotionally expressive instruments ever built by human hands. Second only to the human voice, woodwinds, directly convey to an audience the heart and soul of a performing musician. The clarinet is remarkably expressive, sensual, and flexible, suitable for music from Brahms to bebop and beyond. It's the standard of comparison against which we must judge any MIDI wind controller. Maybe we're being overly demanding, but that fourth-grade clarinetist in our heart is a tough little bugger to satisfy.

Akai EWI1000 Wind Controller & EWV2000 Synth Module

Description: Electronic wind instrument controller and analog synth module

Controller Features: 13 non-moving resistance-sensitive keys and eight octave rollers for eight-octave range. Mouthpiece senses air pressure and lip pressure. Touch plates under right thumb control bend up, bend down, and glide. Controller is sealed; breath does not pass through from mouthpiece.

Synth Features: Two monophonic analog synth chains with one VCO, VCF and VCA per chain; synth parameters optimized for control from either EWI or EVI (Electronic Valve Instrument). Global adjustments for controller sensitivity and response. Memory for 64 synth programs and 16 assignable MIDI chord patterns of up to four notes each. Conversion of controller signals into MIDI out data for driving external MIDI synths. Processing of external audio signal through synth chain #1. Cassette data storage. Headphone jack.

Interfacing: Controller connects only to module. Module has MIDI out only, no MIDI in. External audio in, program advance footswitch in, data tape cassette in and out.

List Price $1299.95 complete (wind controller, synth, cables, case).

Contact Akai/IMC, Box 2344, Ft. Worth, TX 76113. (817) 336-5114.

We bring up this early emotional relationship because it is clearly relevant to the twin subjects of this review, Akai's EWI1000 Electronic Wind Instrument and associated EWV2000 analog synthesizer module. Like all woodwind players, we have our own collection of personal biases, which are likely different from the biases of every other woodwind player alive. (If you're a woodwind player, you'll understand.) Recognizing that our evaluation of the EWI would necessarily be subjective, we spent some time collecting the comments of other musicians who have been working with it. You'll find their perspectives laced throughout this review.

The EWI Controller.

The EWI and its familial relation, the EVI, or Electronic Valve Instrument, are the creations of a classically trained brass player and inventor named Nyle Steiner. His first serious foray into musical electronics was a brass-style synth controller, the Electronic Valve Instrument. Eventually some of the woodwind players he was playing sessions with asked him to design something for them, and the Electronic Wind Instrument (EWI) was born. This was eight years ago, in pre-MIDI days. Over the years a small but dedicated fraternity of professional EWI players developed, mostly in Los Angeles.

When Akai picked the design up and made plans to manufacture what Nyle had been building by hand, they opted to change relatively little in the controller itself. Their EWI, like Nyle's, is essentially two rectangular tubes that have been attached together at a point close to one end. The longer, deeper tube has a place on the underside to rest the right thumb, and 13 metal "keys" that are fixed firmly to the tube's upper surface. The fingering system is basically that of a sax or clarinet. The keys don't move (woodwind player surprise #1).

The smaller, shallower tube contains the breath sensing mechanism, and is tipped on one end with a flexible black rubber mouthpiece. This mouthpiece - we can't think of any other way to put it - looks like something out of a gift catalog for oral fetishists. You don't blow through it, but into it, maintaining no more air pressure than necessary to achieve desired volume (woodwind player surprise #2). Vibrato, pitch bend, and other programmable effects are controlled by bending the mouthpiece as a whole (woodwind player surprise #3). At the bottom end of the sealed tube, where the air comes out of a normal woodwind, there is a custom cable that connects the EWI to the EWV synth module.

The first time we saw and EWI we jumped to the conclusion that its final design had more to do with engineering and cost considerations than with ergonomic or musical ones. That wasn't entirely the case, we later learned, but the technologies involved certainly make the EWI unique.

The Keys.

Nyle's first prototypes didn't use keys at all, but off-the-shelf electronic switches. These were big and clunky and clearly not the way to go. On the other hand, the kind of moving keys that woodwind players are used to meant tooling costs well beyond Nyle's limited operation. The short-term solution, which had been retained in the Akai EWI with only minor modifications in the shapes and positions of some keys, was to use non-moving, resistance-sensitive pieces of metal in place of the keys. This turned out to offer a number of advantages. Not only were they cheap to manufacture, but they couldn't go out of adjustment short of being broken off. They were easy to fiddle with while designing: You could slap one down anywhere you wanted and not worry about the interactions with the rest of the hardware. Much more important from the standpoint of the player, they offered speed. A key that closes the instant you touch it is simply faster than any keys that has to move. When the resistance-sensing keys are under the hands of a practiced player that are incredibly fast.

The down side of this design is that the player has to climb a steep learning curve. In a resistance-sensing system the player literally becomes part of the instrument's sensing circuitry, and players are not exactly the most standardized of components. We found the EWI to be a demanding instrument: If the environment had a lot of static electricity, or if our hands were either too dirty or too dry, or if we simply didn't finger with sufficient precision (perhaps touching two keys with the same finger or not touching a key firmly enough) we wound up playing less or more then intended. All the players we talked to had faced these problems and, with practice, gotten past them to realize the EWI's real potential. The universal problem they reported was learning to touch only the keys that were needed. (We felt that the simplicity and similarity of the key shapes, and their flat planar positioning, are something of a drawback here. A design that offered more tactile feedback would have been easer to learn.)

For successful playing, old habits must be unlearned. On standard instruments, most wind players use shortcuts such as lightly resting the fingers on the keys without closing them, but on the EWI this simply won't work. You r do learn to deal with it over time: Nyle never did have to implement the fix he came up with back in the prototype days, which was to render half of each key unresponsive with a layer of nail polish.

We were to pleased to find that the problem of glitches caused by not enough contact, as opposed to too much, had simple solution: Dampening the fingers. Some player will never encounter the problem. As one of them told us, "My fingers tend to get a little damp anyway, especially after I get a look a what some arrangers think passes for a char." For people with especially dry fingers, Nyle Steiner recommends rubbing a couple of drops of glycerin into the fingertips. You can get glycerin at any drug store; a small bottle will last of years.

The most interesting aspect of the EWI keying scheme is the plethora of alternate fingerings. These are not documented worth a damn in the Akai manual, which is a shame, because they are fertile ground for exploration. In these fingerings, you deliberately press keys that an acoustic player never would. Learning the useful alternatives will be crucial to smooth playing through the EWI's seven-octave range, especially if you like to play ornaments and trills.

EWI vs. WX7

Comedian Danny Kaye (or was it Burl Ives?) once referred to the oboe as an ill wind that nobody blows good. The question is, now that we�ve got electronics going for us, are things any better? Well, they�re different, that�s for sure. But which MIDI wind controller is better, Akai�s EWI1000 or Yamaha�s WX7? We admit up front that brief trade show contacts with the two instruments left us leaning toward the WX7, but now that we�ve had a chance to ply extensively with both, we realize that, as usual, matters are not as simple as they appear. The real issue here is not which controller is �better�. It�s �better at what?�

Comfort & Esthetics

No contest. We vote for the WX7, and doubt anyone would seriously debate our conclusion. The less radical, more familiar design of the WX7 fits comfortably in both hands and mouth, while its moving keys, reed-style mouthpiece, and blow-through design allow a trained sax or clarinet player to directly transfer a lot of hard-earned skills.

By contrast, the EWI�s resistance-sensing keys, octave rollers, rubber tube mouthpiece, and sealed body are not terribly comfortable and require that the player learn new techniques (or severely modify some old ones). The WX7 looks as if it was designed; the EWI looks as if it was assembled. But good looks aren�t all that matter. Familiarity and relative comfort do not necessarily translate into functional playability, and in that realm we find rather a gulf between the two devices.

Expressive Playing.

Also no contest � as long as you agree with us that expressive playing means the capability to control subtle nuances of sound. To us the winner is clearly the EWI/EWV combination, simply because the direct connection between the tow units offers gradations and shadings of volume and timbre that are much finer than any available over MIDI. Add to that the fact that external audio signals can be routed through the synth module and then shaped with equal precision and you have a lot of playing power. The WX7 can come close if connected to an analog synth via a MIDI-to-CV (control voltage) converter like the Roland MPU-101. But close is not the same as being there.

MIDI Control.

The two devices struggle valiantly here, and in the end we call it a draw. Yamaha has pulled more expression out of MIDI�s limited range than Akai, but Akai lets you route another MIDI instrument�s output through that wonderful EWV VCA control. Fortunately for the player, this is the part of both instruments where software reigns, and in software today�s loser can be tomorrow�s king of the heap. Frankly, we hope that Akai turns some demon programmers loose and proceeds to blow the WX7�s MIDI implementation away � and that Yamaha then retaliates in kind. Us woodwind-playing types can only benefit from a radical escalation in the MIDI wind controller wars.

The Right Thumbplate.

To work accurately, a resistance-sensing system requires that you and it share a common ground. The EWI drafts the right thumb for this task, requiring it to be in constant contact with a grounding metal thumbplate. We found the constant contact part easy enough - it's about the same as having to support a sax or clarinet's weight. But we discovered another learning curve in the form of three other thumb touchplates that control glide, pitch-bend up, and pitch-bend down. Suddenly our right thumb was not just a stationary post to hang an instrument on, but a moving participant in the game. We did get used to this eventually, but it was tough, in part because we had to learn to touch the other plates without ever getting off of the one for ground, but mostly because a mobile thumb meant that we didn't have a stationary reference point for the rest of our right-hand fingering. When we stared to experiment with right-thumb pitch-bends, our hard-won accuracy on the other keys went to hell. (The professionals we talked to had averaged six months of private practice on their EWIs before daring to use them on a session.)

A technical tip: The three controller touchplates are actually capacitance-sensitive, not resistance-sensitive. According to Nyle Steiner, if the player's thumb is too damp the plates will respond unevenly. Because of this, Nyle put pieces of tape over the thumbplates on the EWIs that he built. Akai didn't do this-"For cosmetic reasons or something, I've never been able to get them to put any on," says Nyle- but you can. Scotch tape works fine, as do stock-on floppy disk labels.

The Octave Rollers.

The playable range a woodwind instrument is determined by laws of acoustic physics that synthesizers and wind controllers are not hampered by. But greater range brings with it additional difficulties of control, and here the EWI's seven octave rollers offer a uniquely love-it-or-hate-it solution. The theory behind their design is that they allow the left thumb to shift over the range of available octaves smoothly and with maximum speed. Speed we'll grant them. Smoothness too, perhaps, even too much. We found it difficult at first to stay in any single octave, let alone prevent ourselves from sliding past the one we wanted, because it wasn't clear from the documentation that we were supposed to stay between the rollers, not on them.

As with the keys and thumbplates, we got better with practice. But we never did feel completely comfortable with the arrangement, for a couple of reasons. First, the rollers are in a straight line, while the natural movement of the thumb is along an arc. This meant that moving up the rollers involved pinching the hand, so that tin higher octaves our left hand fingering became cramped. Second, the use of textured surfaces to make the "home" position rollers obvious to the touch seems to us a nifty idea that ultimately fails. Why? Because it doesn't take into account how our sense of touch actually works. Research into tactile sensing for robots has revealed that human fingertips are remarkable sensitive to texture when moved laterally against a surface-slide your finger along any tabletop to find this out for yourself-but feel little or nothing when pressed directly against something, as they are when moving along the EWI's rollers. We could feel little useful difference between the textured rollers and the smooth ones. In the end we had to rely on not on the texture but on spatial relationships to find our way back home again. Among the players we talked to, some said they had no problem with this, while others said they still routinely look down to check their thumb position before playing the first note of a cue. One offered us a useful tip: Learning to use the thumb rollers becomes easier if you take the time to make sure that all the voices on your instruments are set to the same octave. After you've got the rollers "under your thumb," as it were, you can start experimenting with tracking harmonies and octave stacks.

The Mouthpiece.

Depending on which part of the manual you read, to play the EWI you must either bite down on the mouthpiece or never bite down on the mouthpiece. Confused? So were we. Since stern admonitions against biting down out-numbered the positive indicators, we tried at first to stay toothless, but eventually gave up. It would take crueler lips than ours (Arnold Schwarzenegger's?) to bend the EWI mouthpiece without a little helpful jaw action. In the end we compromised and held it lightly between our teeth. This worked, and turned out to be what the EWI mouthpiece was designed for all along. The manual's contrary suggestions, we were told, were mistakes that got past proofreading and into print.
The manual was also insistent that we blow into the mouthpiece but never suck on it, though it never explains why. This imperative was surprisingly hard to obey. Fortunately for us, whatever dire but unnamed mouthpiece-sucking disaster the manual was warning us against never occurred. Not that we were aware of, anyway. The players we talked to thought it might have something to do with accidentally damaging the wind pressure sensor, but they weren't sure.

Unlike an acoustic woodwind, the EWI works with breath pressure, not breath flow. This approach offers some powerful advantages, chief among them the ability to play endless phrases. Want to solo for one solid uninterrupted hour? Just set the EWI's breath sensitivity low, make with chipmunk cheeks to create pressure on the sensor, and then maintain that pressure while breathing through your nose. Easy, if somewhat unattractive (the Dizzy Gillespie look?). A little more difficult but a lot more effective is to learn the trick of circular breathing, which is much easier on the EWI than on an acoustic woodwind.

Okay. Blatant personal bias. We didn't like not having to blow. The players we talked to were converts-they said they loved it (though more than one admitted that a sax which was also a good controller would be their dream instrument).

Of course, it could just be that the EWI we reviewed was not properly adjusted. Every player we explained our problems to thought that that must be the case. Our problems centered around a sluggish response that was fine for legato passages but pretty useless when it came to tonguing our way through staccato passages. In a normal woodwind, sharp attacks are caused by snapping the flow of air on and off with your tongue. In a pressure-sensitive system, however, where there is no airflow to interrupt, we found that we couldn't tongue the way we were accustomed to. We tried to compensate for this with adjustments discussed in the manual, but never got satisfactory results. The results are certainly there to be found; we've heard them on record. But in the time available for doing our review , they eluded us. Our recommendation to EWI purchasers is that they play their units before taking them out of the store, if possible, and buy only from dealers who are also authorized service centers. We're told that Akai/IMC is preparing a video manual, free to dealers and available to customers at a nominal const, that will cover adjustments and playing techniques.

As for the buildup of saliva, that natural plague on every woodwind player, the EWI is neither more nor less annoying than any acoustic instrument, just different. Since you don't blow through the EWI, the saliva collects in your mouth instead of running on through the instrument. This frees you from having to swab the bore afterward, but means you have to swallow more often while playing. Keep your eye out for convenient whole-note rests, and swallow then.

The Scorecard, Part One.

In terms of our three standards of comparison, the EWI rates high in expression and flexibility but earns zero for sensuality. After a month of effort we could play it with reasonable speed and accuracy, great expression, and good flexibility - aside from our inability to really nail a tight staccato, which we will blame on poor adjustment. But we never enjoyed our playing on a purely sensual level. Nyle Steiner had the excuses of minuscule budget to justify things like building this EWI out of square tubing. (It's easier to mount circuit boards in a square tube, and never mind the ergonomics of the human hand.) But we wish Akai had brought their vaster resources to bear and made the EWI into something more than a cleaned-up prototype.
Speaking metaphorically, though we gave the unit every chance to join our instrumental family, it insisted on remaining a useful, if demanding, houseguest. The players we talked to confirmed our impression. They love what the EWI can do, but they don't love the instrument itself on the same emotional level that they love their saxophones, clarinets, and flutes. A couple of them confided that they still prefer to play the original units that they bought directly from Nyle, and only turn to their Akai EWIs when they need something portable for a stage gig.

The EWV Analog Synth.

Dedicated, that's what we call the EWV2000. How dedicated? Would you believe it doesn't have a MIDI in, and can therefore only be played with either an EWI or EVI? This is a shame, because it means that if you record a part into a sequencer from an EWI/EWV combination, the EWV can't play it back! Also, there is no way to save EWV patches in a sys-ex data dump, only on data cassettes, which are slower and require an extra piece of equipment.

Ah, well. Cost considerations again, we suspect, augmented by the mistaken design assumption that because MIDI playback of the EWV would be coarser in resolution than the original performance, players wouldn't be interested. Benefit-of-the-doubt reaction: Maybe they're right. Cynical, demanding customer reaction: Haven't they ever heard of interpolating between the incoming controller values in software?

We get exercised about this because the EWV is a simple but pleasing example of an increasingly rare breed, the analog synthesizer, and we dislike seeing the hamstrung. The unit - which has been adroitly designed for either rack or tabletop use - has two independent monophonic synth chains, each with its own VCO, VCF, VCA, and two envelope generators. The two lines can be set in unison for a thicker sound, but we found our favorite results came from a blend of different tones. In general, the sound of the EWV was much better than its simple architecture initially led us to expect. Some of this is due to quality components, but more important are the inclusion of a number of interesting cross-routings, (modulation of VCO1 by the output of VCO2 as modified by VCF2 and the VCF2 envelope generator, for example), and the fact that crucial voice parameters have been optimized for control by subtle changes in the EWI's breath and pressure signals. The result is a synth that is easy to program, highly expressive, and lots of fun to play.

The EWV serves three other roles in addition to directly generating sound. First, it sets the sensitivity levels that determine the playability and usefulness of the EWI itself. Second it can process and external audio input. And third, it translates what is played on the EWI into a stream of MIDI data that can be used to control other devices.

EWI Adjustments.

On the EWV's front panel are four knobs marked Vibrate, Bend, Glide, and Breath. The first of these is a single knob; the others are dual, with both inner and outer components. The Vibrate knob controls how much effect the EWI's lip sensor will have on a program's VCO (vibrato) pulse width modulation, VCF (growl and wow), or VCA (tremolo), depending on whether or not the EWI control of these parameters is turned on in the patch. The Bend knob controls the pitch-bend, but for the touchplates rather than the mouthpiece. The inside knob sets the sensitivity of the plates, allowing you to partially adjust for vagaries in capacitance-sensing, and the outer knob calibrates the center point of the bend. It should be turned so that the LED next to the knob is off, and may require adjustment from time to time. The Glide and Breath knobs work much the same way. Glide adjusts the Glide touchplate; if it's set carefully, the EWI can be played with a portamento effect. Breath meanwhile, determines how much effect air pressure will have on various synth voice parameters. It also affects how velocity is transmitted over MIDI, part of a bigger subject that we'll discuss below.

Controlling An External Input.

Hearing a synth rise and fall with your breath is extraordinary, especially when the control resolution is as fine as in the EWI/EWV combination. MIDI transmission, sadly, is more restricted, so the EWV includes an external audio input, which partially circumvents the problem. Simply put, any audio source can be plugged into the external input jack on the EWV's front panel, from which it is routed down the circuit chain that generates the EWV's first synth voice. According to the players we talked to, this is especially useful for making samplers sound realistic. We had a dandy time playing around with the external input, and not only in the obvious way (controlling an external synth's notes via MIDI and its volume, routing its audio through the EWV). What gave us the biggest thrill was running a taped vocal line through the jack and using the EWI to "re-perform" it, adding loudness contours and filter growls that were not originally there. Brownie points to Akai for including a separate input balance control, allowing the external signal to be processed solo or mixed in some proportion with the synth sound being generated by the chain.

MIDI Translation.

Though happy with how effectively the EWI played the EWV, we were disappointed by what we found when we experimented with playing other instruments over MIDI. Everything that's in place works fine - with the possible exception of velocity transmission, which we'll get to - but there just isn't all that much there. Notes are sent, of course, on your choice of transmission channel. Program changes 1-64 can be sent from the EWV's front panel, or disabled. A trigger threshold for breath pressure can be set, and the EWI's pressure signal can be translated into velocity, aftertouch, breath controller, or MIDI volume data. (The current fave among players is the Korg M1; they tell us it's highly expressive under MIDI volume control.) Portamento is sent if you use the glide touchplate, pitch-bends are transmitted when you touch the bend touchplates, and modulation when you bite down on the mouthpiece. But with the exception of a set of 16 programmable MIDI chords that can be stored in memory and assigned to your choice of keys, that's the lot. There is no access to the complete range of continuous controllers, no MIDI transposition, no sending of useful sys-ex data, and no sending over multiple channels (which would b radically enhance the chord function). There is also no provision for capturing chords "on the fly." They must be tediously programmed from the EWV's front panel.

Frankly, we think there's room for improvement here. We see some evidence that Akai understands this and is addressing the problem, but they may find themselves limited by earlier hardware and software choices. Consider, for example, velocity data: Velocity transmission is controlled by an interaction of the player's breathing technique and EWV settings for breath threshold, capture time, and breath sensitivity. Since the perfect balance of settings for one style of playing is not necessarily appropriate for another, we found ourselves stopping more often than we liked to tweak and re-tweak the system. Workable, yes. Likeable? No. Making breath response settings part of each programmable patch would have been far more practical.

Conclusions.

Torn, that's us. Our intense long-term woodwind lust makes us hunger for some ultimate killer instrument that will sound great in its own right and over MIDI, while our understanding of the difficulties involved disposes us to forgive what small flaws we encounter in the meantime. A wind controller is a new device, not a real woodwind, and must be learned on its own terms, even when some of those terms are unfamiliar.

In the end such determinations come down to a matter of personal preference. That's why we laid out our standards back at the very beginning. Expression, sensuality, flexibility: Those are what we judge a woodwind by. Are the EWI and EWV expressive and flexible enough to satisfy us? On their own, yes, and when controlling external audio sources, but not yet over MIDI. Where MIDI is concerned, we want much more.

If those were our only criteria we would cheerfully use the paired units, happy about their strengths. But there is another important consideration, and it influences the final vote. Is the EWI sensual enough? Not for us. Others may feel differently, but we found ourselves thinking of it as an engineering prototype with lots of good ideas but not enough attention to feel. Interesting and useful though it is, we'd be a lot happier if it was as much fun to play as it is to listen to.

This review is perhaps one of the worst I've ever read about the EWI1000. Not only is it poorly written, but it's inaccurate in parts and highly subjective. What exactly is "sensual" when it applies to a wind instrument anyway? It's included here as a piece of historical reference. I don't believe it is useful for someone considering purchasing an EWI. -ed