Physical modeling redux - Wind instruments

[tapper mike]

THe Ewi USB can be used as a breath controller with a keyboard. All you have to do is disable all note messages for the ewi with a midi filter. All the cc's pass through then put your keyboard on the same mid channel. It actually is more responsive works with less latency and smoother breath control than the BCA3 from yamaha.

Check the freebie post on how to easily non destructively modify the ewi USB to be a breath controller. It costs the same as a BCA3 and midi solution box and connects through high speed usb port. The amount of CC messages coming out of the ewi usb is triple that of the BCA3 through a midi solutions converter. This translates to smoother breath response and dynamics.

Hope this helps.

and glue it to your chest?
I've got two hands and a ztar. I would much rather have both hands available for the ztar then to support the ewi.

[oldlibmike]

Yeah the Wivi for iOS is crap but that really was a toy - it doesn't have anything in common with their plug-in technology which is excellent. The iOS thing is sample based - and bad ones at that. The plugin is software modelled. Just wondering if they are as good as it gets for wind modeling or if overall, samples are still the way to go for trumpets and sax (assuming, correctly in this case, that I cannot play the REAL ones!).

Just a self-update. I got the 15 day trial of Arturia Brass and all I can say is.... Wow, The Wivi band AU plugin is awesome (in comparison), but Arturia sounds like crap even after fiddling and configuring the EWI for Arturia and trying every variation on what passes for a trumpet.

Glad they have the free demo. At $250, it would be a colossal waste of money.

[David Carpenter Wind Core]

I just strap the ewi usb to my keyboard stand and route the tube up to my mouth and hold it with my teeth.

Alternately you could strap it to the back of your keytar.

Really the idea of using a breath controller is to be able to play wind instrument emulations more accurately. What this has to do with a keytar I don't know.

[David Carpenter Wind Core]

Sample modeling is good but fairly expensive per instrument. However the trumpet is probably the best solo trumpet available. Wivi is really good for creating sections midi one note to chord plugins do a great job of making this possible. PIZ midichord is great for creating sections or playing cords from one note.