| The EWI
has played an integral part of my musical life, and career in Los
Angeles, CA. It was one summer day in LA, 1981, when I was working
on a TV score at Evergreen recording studios. Next door was a man
demonstrating this new fangled contraption that looked like an insect
sprayer. I heard different sounds he played and just shrugged it off
as some oddball thing. Little did I know that person was the inventor
of the EWI, and EVI Nyle Steiner, and how that instrument would change
my musical life forever. A couple of months later a close friend of
mine Judd Miller was interested in going up to Nyle's house to see
this EVI, which once was in production and made by Crumar, Italy.
I made the drive up
to Nyle's house and watched another demonstration, and was really
impressed with all of the sound capabilities it had. At that time
this instrument was analog and very limited in its sounds, but still
very expressive and melodic. Judd ordered his EVI, but at that time
I had to wait for a prototype EWI, to be handmade by Nyle (how
frustrating)! Judd was already learning this new axe and I was
waiting for him to build it (which was painfully slow). In the
meantime I knew that keyboardist Ian Underwood had a prototype, and
I borrowed that for a while, and then used one that saxophonist Tom
Scott had. When my unit was finished I was ready to jump right into
the new Electronic Scene.
My good friend, composer
Joseph Conlan was scoring a new Paramount TV show and he was
already heavy into electronic music ideas, hired Judd and me to
play our new EWI's. I remember us sharing a Roland space echo and
every time I made a mistake changing octaves with my thumb rollers,
it would make a blip sound and repeat over and over. That was the
beginning of my career as a EWI player. Soon afterwards I had my own
instrument and it was hooked up to and old Moog Prodigy, then I
linked it up with a SMS synth module. I started to acquire a really
fast technique and rapid tonguing and was always inspired by Judd
Miller's cutting edge approach for new sounds and new synths.
By 1985, I was doing
a lot of TV, and Films, even records (Rick Springfield, "Hard
To Hold"). My equipment list grew larger as I always wanted
more stuff. By now Nyle had made about 20 EWI's, and was getting
tired of all the people calling him for new units. When Nyle
converted the JL Cooper midi box and interfaced this with the EWI,
it really exploded into another dimension. Midi was the new thing,
so we all could hook up to samplers, Oberheim Xpanders, etc. I was
able to play like a guitar, or mallets, flutes and you name
it. It
was really fun and my career blossomed in the LA studio scene.
Now that I was set up
with all of this equipment and was in love with this instrument, I
wanted to start a business venture with inventor Nyle Steiner, and
longtime friend, Bassist Andy Muson, and go into the manufacturing
of the EWI and EVI. We had many meetings and met with inventor Bill
Putnam (who holds patents of UREI, JBL eq. etc.) and wanted to mass
produce these instruments. He warned us that it would be very costly
and difficult to make and said we would be better off making a
licensing deal with a major musical instrument company and just
sit back an collect a royalty. It just so happened that Andy Muson
had an old friend named Mike Matthews from NYC, an inventor who had
a company called Electro Harmonix and thought he would be helpful
with our venture. It just so happened that Mike Matthews was already
dealing with AKAI Professional, helping to develop their first
Digital Sampler. In 1986 Mike arranged for me and Andy to fly to the
Palmer House in Chicago to demonstrate the EWI for AKAI
Professional's President Jack Sugino and Koh Suzuki and Jerry Freed, who
was the President of International Music Corp. musical instruments.
They were very impressed, and
were interested in making a licensing deal with us, "THE EWI
GROUP". After we negotiated a deal it was up to Nyle to send
AKAI two prototypes, one each of the EWI and EVI with MIDI and all of the
inventor's bells and whistles added on. At that point AKAI's R&D
dept. refined the package and got it ready for mass production. This
was very exciting for me, indeed. Soon they had a model ready for
production, it was very buggy at first, but soon it was all worked
out. This first model was the EWI1000, and EVI1000, along with the
EWV2000 sound module. In 1987, Nyle and I flew over
to the Frankfurt Music show and demonstrated the instruments, but
had to play on the original prototypes, because the new models were not
working yet. It was a big hit.
 Soon
afterwards I wrote and co-produced a music performance video for AKAI,
entitled SWEET FOR C.P, which showcased an EVI performance
by Nyle Steiner (playing a cello and oboe improv), an EWI
performance by Michael Brecker, (Xpander chordal improvs, and power
elec. guitar), and myself (Harmon Mute and Brass&Sax section
improv). These were all set to a funky beat and filmed in NYC, for
AKAI ELECTRIC. CO, JAPAN. Soon after I did a demonstration video
with Nyle for the purpose of teaching the basic techniques of the
instrument.
By 1988
this new instrument was selling in the thousands. Now with
Midi we were playing
sound modules like the Oberheim Xpander, Prophet 2002, Akai S1000,
Roland Samplers, and anything else we could get our hands on. The
EWI was great at copying the nuances of any instrument like a
cello, trumpet, brass, sax, pan pipes, harmonica and these were all
used by producers and composers. I used the EWI on a series of 17
nature CD's I produced for Metacom, Inc., on which all of the
aftertouch information was recorded on to the Performer sequencing
program, and played directly into the computer, and then the sounds
were replayed by the computer, back to the Roland SP700 sample
player. This was how I was able to access a great library of sounds,
including my own samples made on the S1000, and then converted to
the Roland format. This enabled me to keep all of the music in the
digital domain. One album I did for Metacom was a Xmas CD, entitled
Top Brass, where I played all Brass patches featured as a lead on
pop style rhythm tracks. I sounded like a Trombone, Harmon Mute,
Bones and Saxes, Latin Brass Section, and legit Brass Choir, its
still amazes me how real this all sounds. A lot of the trick is to
capture the style and nuances of the real players.. It's Like being
a musical MIME......
At
present Akai has been working on their third EWI model and has sold
at least 15,000 units worldwide.
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