Akai EWI 4000m Electric Wind Instrument Akai EWI 4000m Electric ...

Now when you load the Rack preset into a
different song, you’ll only have to make one
modulation routing—mod wheel to the
Macro knob.
Also note that individual envelope segments
can be modulated using MIDI or a
Macro knob. This lets you do tricks like
changing the sound of the note attacks from
a MIDI slider in subtle and highly controllable
ways.
Additive synthesis. Load four
Operators into an Instrument Rack, choose
algorithm 11 (four carriers) for each of them,
and tune the oscillators to Coarse values of 1,
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and so on up to 16. Leave the
waveforms all set to sine waves. Now you
have a 16-sine-wave additive synthesizer.
Give some of the operators envelopes that
decay quickly to zero, and give others slow
attacks so that the tone swells. Adjust the
Level of each oscillator to get a pleasing
blend. Try detuning some of your additive
overtones slightly.
FM with a low-frequency carrier.
When you click the Fixed button on an
oscillator, it no longer tracks the keyboard.
This feature has at least three important uses.
First, if you tune a modulator to a high, fixed
frequency (above 2kHz or so) and keep it at a
low level, it will mimic the sound of a fixedfrequency
formant filter. Second, percussive
attack transients, such as the sound of a mallet
hitting a xylophone, are pretty much fixed
in frequency no matter what note you play,
so using a couple of fixed-frequency operators
to produce mallet attacks works well.
The third use of fixed frequencies is less
obvious. If you tune a carrier to a low, fixed
frequency, perhaps a Freq setting of between
30 and 70Hz and a Multi (multiplier) knob
setting of 0.01, it will add a chorused quality
to the tone of the modulator. This sound is a
Fig. 4: An Instrument Rack with four Operators
in parallel. Several parameters have been assigned
to Macro knob 1, which I’ve renamed Mod Wheel.
Note the small pink dot next to the Level knob for
operator C; this indicates that it is now under the
control of a Macro knob.
Francis Preve’s Quick Tips
• When using the filter with FM sounds, program the FM section first, before turning
on the filter. In other words, use the filter to enhance a sound that’s already good,
not to fix problems.
• The Spread knob in the pitch section doubles the CPU load of a patch. If your CPU is
hitting the wall, turn the Spread down to zero.
• When starting work on a new FM sound, choose algorithm 8 (two carrier/modulator
pairs). It’s a good basic choice, and you can later change if you need something special.
When you add the second modulator to a carrier, it’s easy to end up with too
many overtones.
• The pitch envelope can be routed to some oscillators but not others, which makes it
useful for subtle detuning effects and adding accents in envelope loop patches.
• Unless you know what you’re doing, do not tune a carrier to any Coarse value
except 0.5, 1, 2, 4, or 8. Those are the octaves of the fundamental. If you tune a carrier
to 7 and a modulator to 14, for instance, you’ll get a tone that’s difficult to
retune to concert pitch even with the aid of the Transpose knob.
• If you’re using Operator with an arpeggiator, check to make sure the R button is
switched on. If it’s off, the arpeggio will chew up your polyphony while adding CPU
load.
• In an FM patch, apply the mod wheel to one or more modulators’ Coarse tuning
knobs to create PPG-style stepped wave sweeps.
• Using two Operators in an Instrument Rack will give you 8-operator FM. When
doing this, choose complementary algorithms to make the most of the composite
sound.
• If you need an extra modulator, use the LFO. Set it to a high frequency range, set its
Rate