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VI review Akai Pro EWI 400s Electric Wind Instrument, $1000 list (street price about $700) www.Akaipro.com Akai EWI 4000s Electric Wind Instrument Do you play a wind or brass instrument? The Electric Wind Instrument is a wonderful controller for playing synths. and the latest incarnation of this fabulous instrument now includes a built-in synth and some new MIDI control features. Review by Nick Batzdorf 40 VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTS It’s hard to believe that the EWI (Electric Wind Instrument) has been around for a quarter of a century, and its EVI (Electric Valve Instrument) brass counterpart even longer. What’s more, it’s hard to believe—and really great—that Akai has come out with a new EWI model about eleven years after the introduction of the previous 3020 model. The big thing about this new EWI, the 4000s, is that it’s self-contained—there’s no separate rack unit. It has its own built-in modeled analog digital synth, effects processing, and MIDI I/O. You can use an optional external power transformer, but it’s normally powered by four AA batteries. It even has a builtin 1/8” headphone output so you can just walk around and play. The 4000s maintains the identical high quality feel of the previous model, but it adds a lot of features and has a street price not much more than half the price. While there were reportedly 15,000 EWIs and EVIs floating around as of 1998, hopefully everything will converge with this new model to bring wind controllers more to the forefront. They certainly deserve it. It would also be great if more people learned to play the EWI, because it’s really not a difficult instrument to pick up. Anyone who plays a wind instrument can pretty much play it already, brass players aren’t all that far Fig. 1: The EWI 4000s is now self-contained with no rack unit. It has a built-in modeled analog synth, and MIDI out for controlling other instruments. While it’s considerably thicker than its model 3020 predecessor, cutouts on both sides (like the one above where it says EWI 4000s) make it feel just the same when you play it. The basic design has been around for 25 years, and it’s a mature, solid instrument. Anyone who plays a wind instrument can just about pick it up and play, brass players can adapt pretty easily, and it’s not a difficult instrument for beginners either. behind, and like everything else in music it pays back ten times what you put in. The most mundane synth patches can come to life when you play them with a wind controller. History and overview For those of you not familiar with this wonderful instrument, we’ll start with some background. The original EVIs and then EWIs were built by inventor (and virtuoso trumpet player) Nyle Steiner starting in the pre-MIDI mid- ’70s—Steinerphones. Early versions of these instruments became popular in sessions around the early ’80s, in fact Steiner himself used to play EVI in the studios. If you remem-
Fig. 2: Fingerings are the same in every one of the instrument’s seven octaves, so once you know one you know them all. Then you select which octave you’re playing in by putting your thumb between two of these rollers—a very natural and intuitive interface. The bar at the tip of the thumb is the Glide strip, one of the instrument’s continuous controllers. Normally the Glide strip turns portmento on and off, but the more thumb it feels—the harder you squeeze—the higher the value it sends out. ber the St. Elsewhere TV series, for example, Nyle’s EVI playing was a big part of the sound of JAC Redford’s terrific scores. Since then many big-name jazz musicians have adopted the instrument, including Michael Brecker. The original EWI/EVI sent out control voltages to an analog synth that was part and parcel of the system, in fact even the 3020m synth, which was part of the rack brain of the EWI 3020, is digitally-controlled analog. (Akai later came out with a 3030m module that used samples.) Originally, MIDI’s 128-step resolution seemed to be a problem for synthesizers under wind control, but that got sorted out and MIDI was added pretty early on so you could use it as a controller. A lot of professional wind players would use the EWI with an Oberheim Matrix-1000 synthesizer in the early days—an experience we can now duplicate using softsynths (arguments about software models aside). Later (around 1994) the Yamaha VL1 Acoustic Modeling synth came along, and it and its lesser relatives became very popular as sound sources for wind controllers. Akai took over manufacturing and distributing the EWI and EVI about 20 years ago, and sometime around the same time Yamaha came out with the first of their more sax-centric WX series of wind controllers; other companies have introduced trumpet-like controllers more recently. There have been several iterations of the EWI, and I understand that Nyle Steiner was still involved with the design of the 4000s. Steiner himself makes a custom instrument called the MIDI EVI, but as a widespread instrument it seems to be in limbo. However, a lot of EVI players are reportedly flocking to the 4000s. So the EWI has been a mature, solid instrument for a long time, and I personally have had a longstanding and passionate love affair with it. Why wind control? The obvious answer to that question is Because it allows someone who plays a wind or brass instrument to use his or her technique to play synths and samplers. But there’s more to it than that. When you trigger a note on a keyboard controller, it follows its programmed envelope; you use a slider or other physical controller like the mod wheel to modify the sound after the initial attack—a playing/programming technique that’s obviously 100% valid. Wind controllers augment keyboards in V.I. studios rather than replacing them, for many reasons, most notably that the vast majority of sample libraries are set up for keyboard control… never mind that only keyboards let you play independent notes with each of your ten fingers. However, wind controllers have some great advantages. When you play a note with a wind controller, it follows your breath (if programmed to do so, of course). Innately that’s a very physical, human connection, and it gives you continuous and total control over the sound without even thinking about it— just like an acoustic instrument. Blow progressively harder and the sound shadows your performance, getting louder, brighter, and possibly more distorted with louder overtones. Tongue the note (“ta”) and it has a sharper attack; play connected notes VI review in the same breath without tonguing them and they’re automatically connected; play successive notes and they all sound different because your breath pressure and attack will be different. Put another way, wind controllers are extremely expressive instruments. That’s what always overwhelms anyone who tries one for the first time. Fingers Because of its maturity, it’s hardly surprising that the basics of the EWI 4000s haven’t changed. While a lot is new, its essential feel is pretty much identical to its predecessor. Rather than the mechanical keys most woodwind instruments have, the EWI uses capacitance-sensitive buttons like the ones you find on some elevators—you just touch them and they’re “on.” The instrument comes with a neck strap, and you also support it by resting its grounding strip on your right thumb. Some wind players find the lack of keys to depress a difficult adjustment, so much so that at one point Akai offered add-on faux keys. Coming from a background playing recorder, I didn’t even notice it, in fact after a couple of days I actually felt more comfortable on EWI than on recorder. The instrument can use the Boehm fingering system used by clarinets and saxes, or you can use a simplified recorder fingering in which each finger is only responsible for one key—it never moves to cover other ones. This fingering is really easy, for example all fingers on gives you a C, and then you step up the major scale by lifting successive fingers in order. Then you determine the octave you’re playing by placing your left thumb between any two of a series of eight rollers (see Fig. 2), giving the instrument a 7-octave range (plus pitch-shifting). Every octave is fingered the Fig. 3: The EWI 4000s next to the 3020, the previous model. (Normally the 3020 is white—this particular one has been painted black.) Not shown: the 16” deep 2U rack unit you need to operate the 3020. Cool-looking instrument, eh? VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTS 41
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