Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
EWI Users
I just made a deal trading my Roli Lightpad Block for an EWI USB! Of course I have to pay some extra but finally I'll be a proud owner of an EWI! I had been looking on eBay for quite some time and was never able to score one for an affordable price until today. So now I'd like to discuss EWIs and how people on here tend to use them etc. I know (edit: thought I knew ErrkaPetti but confused him with) @Enkerli mentioned he plays one. Any insights for a newb? And anyone else playing one of these?
Comments
iOS synths have been somewhat of a disappointment for me and my EWI4000s since I like to control filter cutoff with breath CC (CC#2) and almost all of them alias/crackle, especially on higher notes (most are okay below middle C). The one bright exception is GMS synth in FL Mobile 3 (IAP, but you can try it out without purchasing the IAP), which is odd since the other filters on its other synths crackle with breath control.
Using volume control can work, but that varies from synth to synth and I never really enjoy playing with just volume control.
Interesting. I don't have FLM unfortunately. Have you tried Thor, Sunrizer, Model 15?
Hmmm... This must be an misunderstanding... I have never heard about EWI before...?
What is it?
It is probably some else...
I got rid of my VL-70m last year, which was a very nice mono physical yodelling synth. I didn't use it with breath control (I did have a little breath blow-ey thing for it) but used it with the guitar midi interface to do a superb saxophone, where the bend translates as the raspberry-ing lip thing, whatever its called.
I also was reminded this weekend (looking through analogue heaven archives from the mid 90s, I had a pair of Akai EWV2000 wind synths. I'd say I wish I hadn't got rid of them (I think cheaply, too) but in all honesty at the time I found their sound quite sterile and boring, even though an analogue signal path (CEM devices from memory).
I play the EWI4000s since many years, but never really used it on synths or samplers. This, of course, is just my personal opinion. A wind controller (or breath controller) is a fantastic input device, but with synths/samplers you generally just influence loudness and filter with CC2 (breath). Which is not very interesting, and often cannot be set right without the help of additional MIDI filters. Of course it's worth experimenting with that, especially when you are new to this controller, but I find the results not very attractive. When I watch videos where people play a subtractive synth with an EWI I often find these videos a bit ridiculous. Such an expressive controller, and such a boring sound.
Where the EWI shines is when you play Samplemodeling instruments (PC/Mac). These virtual instruments (advanced rompler with dynamic sample layers after note on command) sound great. Actually the only virtual instruments I can recommend for the EWI.
For synths a breath controller might be better, as an additional input device next to the keyboard. Just like an expression pedal. This gives polyphonic control with the keyboard, and additional breath control. With the EWI you have monophonic notes.
However, some good EWI patches can be achieved with physical modeling synths, where CC2 is mapped to physical properties. This is something that can be done with iOS apps as well, so when you have hooked up your EWI to an iPad, that's probably the most interesting thing you can start with. Control timbre, FM amount, such things. But you still may need to insert a MIDI effect between, to set min/max values, response, etc. Well, the same applies to 'normal' subtractive synths too of course. With the right settings it can sound good, but it's a bit of a trial-error thing to find these settings.
Thor, yes. Sunrizer and Model 15, no. There's a guy who did a bunch of videos on YouTube about EWIs and iOS. That was a few years ago, but I think Thor was one he covered and his goals might have been different than mine. Do experiment with whatever you have since results will vary depending on what sounds/effects you're trying to achieve. There's a guy who sells wind controller patches for iM1, but they're $70 per volume, plus the cost of iM1, of course. I haven't bought those patches (kind of pricey considering the bargain of iOS synths), but have iM1 from a sale, though I have yet to dig into it for wind controller patch programming.
Further to FLM3, the cutoff filter is amazing, but trying to record MIDI (notes and CC stream) bogs it down. Welcome to iOS music making with wind controllers.
and have fun with your EWI. You know, this controller somehow brought me back to music production which I was about to abandon 10 years ago. At last, and for the first time, I could express musical ideas by myself. Never could do it with a bass or guitar, never could do it with a keyboard. With the EWI everything came back to me, and much more, like creating entire brass sections, all by myself!.
Never learned to play guitar/piano, but I was not too bad with the recorder. The EWI is a MIDI controller made for people like me. I hope it will serve you well, too.
Alina vintage strings is an emulation of old Pink Floyd type electronic strings, but it responds to aftertouch so my EWI works very well with it. Sampletank (although no aftertouch) is a great way to use EWI with iOS.
You should have one
Sorry, I guess I confused you with @Enkerli
Thanks everyone for your advice! I'll keep you posted about my experiences. Probably will have to wait at least until Saturday for it to arrive.
Magellan, and Magellan Jr. have a very comprehensive cc section. Sounds good too. Oh, and Bernie Kenerson has a library of Thor patches for EWI for sale on his website. That site is a good resource for EWI related stuff. Patchman Music's forum is a good site for learning all about EWI's as well.
I concur with the recommendation for samplemodeling patches on the PC/Mac with the EWI. They are fantastic! A few tips for EWI/USB with iPad - I use the camera connection kit with it. You can't just directly plug into the CCK with USB though - it complains about lack of power - here is the interesting part. I have a powered hub that I plug the EWI into and then into the iPad and it works EVEN WHEN NOT POWERED. As long as the EWI goes to the hub and then into the iPad - pretty weird, but it works. There are some great pre-sets for the Korg M1 that were made at http://www.patchmanmusic.com/ and I'm happy to say that they work just fine with the iPad iM1 as well.
You must have heard of the EWI
Oh no wait, I'm thinking of the Wii-U
Just in case. I made this to help clarify.
Everything I know about Kung Fu, I learned from this movie.
Honest mistake, though. Weird names starting with an E and ending with an I. Mine is my last name, though. First name’s Alex.
So, my wind controller is a Yamaha WX-11. Like the EWI-USB, it requires a sound generator of some kind. Been using multiple iOS apps with varying results, partly depending on how much you can do with CC (and pitchbend, velocity, etc.). Sunrizer has been fun to use, for instance, especially since you can drive multiple modulations with velocity. Wish it didn’t require CC#1 for “Morph A-B”, but MIDI flow should help with that.
Thor is the one iOS app which has its own (commercial) soundbank made specifically for wind controllers by Patchman Music. Haven’t purchased it, but it does sound like an interesting selection of breath-controllable sounds.
Been enjoying several iWavestation sounds, to be honest. Including some which are meant to reproduce wind instruments. Typically, analogue and FM synthesis methods can work pretty well for brassy sounds, and that can be fun in some contexts. But even the woodwind sounds in iWavestation are to my tastes, which is rarely if ever the case with other synthesis methods.
Agreed that physical modelling can produce very neat results and was recently asking about those. They’re actually not supposed to be romplers, as they’re based on mathematical models of what happens on the physical instruments. The Synthesis ToolKit (STK) from Stanford and McGill allows for the design of quite sophisticated and flexible instruments. For instance, you could design a “Flute” with such things as “Jet Delay” and “Jet Reflection”. The Karplus-Strong model is perhaps the best known one (used in MainStage and Logic Pro’s Structure instrument). It models what happens when an impulse travels along a string or other physical body.
Technically, as a C++ toolkit, the STK allows one to build iOS apps. Haven’t noticed any of them for a wind instrument.
But it all depends what you want to do. If you want to emulate the kind of expressiveness and timbre you get with an actual woodwind, it can be quite hard. But if you’re using a wind controller to expand your horizons or because you’re a better wind player than keyboardist, there’s a whole lot of possibilities. Including Animoog and Thumbjam.
Oh? Haven’t had that experience. Been driving cutoff frequency with CC#2 on a few synths, including some Gadgets and including in the high range, but didn’t notice any aliasing. Might be that my perception is faulty. Would you happen to have an example?
Really good to know. Might get me to dive into FLSM3. How much is the GMS IAP?
Sounds like Patchman music. My sense is that, though he carefully designs his patches to work well with wind controllers, anyone could achieve pretty decent results by tweaking a few presets to do something neat with CC#2.
Well, iM1 is currently on sale, so that might motivate me to get it.
Had a fun session of SIN, last night (Self-Indulgent Noodling), using my WX-11 and a Gadget (probably Berlin). Didn’t record the MIDI, this time around, but haven’t had any issue in the past. Will try that, very specifically.
Yep!
Which is why a chorder/harmonizer can be so cool. Had a lot of fun with mucoder tonespace and i-yanase ewiVoicing, on the desktop. Even created a little Pure Data patch to create rotating chords (as in the ewiVoicing app and Johan Looijenga’s Realtime MIDI Harmonizer). It’s something like the “Michael Brecker Effect”, based on the harmonic expansion Robby Kilgore created for the well-known sax player on the Oberheim Xpander, a while ago.
Agreed. Which ones do you use?
Precisely the reason those MIDI filters by @JohannesD are so exciting.
Agreed. But even when CC#2 is merely used to control cutoff or to drive some aspect of Animoog, it’s great fun.
Related to the fact that it’s a monodic instrument, my experience has been that a wind controller often works best with patches which were designed for mono/legato mode. Have been eliminating patches with a very strong attack (and no obvious way to control the attack without fiddling too much). But many “Synth Lead” presets sound pretty cool with just volume control from CC#2. Playing with filter cutoff or something deeper in the timbre can add a whole dimension, of course. But my recent experience with using “brassy analog leads” for SINs (Self-Indulgent Noodling) has reconciled me with analog synthesis as a whole.
Nice testimonial!
My experience is kind of the reverse. Bought my WX-11 in 1995 or so, a few years after doing some limited music production in college. Tried the wind controller on multiple occasions, including with a T81Z synth. But never got the hang of it. Wasn’t really able to tweak presets or create patches which would suit my needs. My expertise on the saxophone didn’t translate that well to the WX-11, though it’s the same fingerings and pretty much the same embouchure technique. Kept the device, but rarely if ever used it.
In the meantime, maintained an interest in computer/electronic musicking, but didn’t spend much time on it until iOS came out. Took to iOS music creation apps, though most of them are based on keyboarding skills.
Then, a couple of years ago, was able to plug the WX-11 into ThumbJam. That one was a real ear-opener. Not that it produced the best sounds ever. But it did respond well to CC#2. Was since able to use the controller with iOS and desktop apps, which did give me a lot more inspiration for musicking on those platforms. But it’s only after investigating other parts of those environments that the wind controller really started to make sense.
Wonder what you use on the desktop, @Phil999. My two main sound banks are Air Xpand!2 (which came bundled with my Alesis Vmini keyboard) and MainStage, which was just updated today. Been thinking about the Native Instruments stuff, but those are way too expensive for me, at this point. Would like to increase my coding skills in Pure Data and ChucK to create a complete wind-friendly synthesizer, with chordal effects and a large amount of flexibility from CC#2. Even been dreaming about creating a kind of breath/wind controller using some sensors on a Raspberry Pi. Then, it should be easy to send MIDI/OSC data over Bluetooth and/or WiFi.
One can dream, can’t one?
Oh, nice! Either you mentioned it in the woodwinds thread or somebody else did. Makes more sense, now.
It’s only 6USD and 100MB. Some of the big romplers take so much space that it’s hard to fit them on my devices.
Finally bit the bullet and got iM1. Can hear how it could work with a wind controller. Interestingly, presets accept CC#2 but for modulation. @oldlibmike, would you be able to tell us how breath control is used in those M1 patches from Patchman? Doesn’t it control “expression”?
Now that there’s a few of us on this forum who are using wind controllers, maybe we could list a few patches we like, including factory presets and some of our own custom creations.
Here's a quick example. The first three notes have unwanted aliasing, the second three are smooth (GMS). Admittedly, these are very bare sounds.
FLM3 is $15, GMS is $4 (but I'm having an issue with the MIDI, as I stated before, but it plays live very well).
yes this is something I know, too. I got my EWI by accident. Just walked into a shop (around 2009) and asked if there was a MIDI contoller of some kind I read about in a keyboard magazine in the mid 80's. The reply was yes, there is one. Here it is. Ok I buy it. I was in some kind of trance, not in control. When I walked out the shop I realised that I have spent all the money I had left for the next month. Needless to say that the next weeks have been quite difficult financially, but that's not what I want to tell.
At home, with my new aquisition, I searched for software. I found none. Couldn't believe it. There had to be some software designed for a controller that existed since the 80's. No. Nothing. I still couldn't believe it. I held my dream controller in my hands, without virtual instrument to play! Incredible but true. So I started to invent the wheel by myself and created elaborate Kontakt patches, tweaking lots of parameters, envelopes, and what not. The result was ... mediocre. I got some sounds working but knew that this was not the real deal. So I put the EWI aside.
Soon later there were two new releases, the Wallander physical modeling instruments, and the Samplemodeling instruments. I chose the latter, and boom! At last I found the virtual instrument that fitted to my controller. So there have been two coincidences that took place in a short time span. The way I got my EWI, and the release of the Samplemodeling instruments.
This is what I wanted to tell, like your experience:
Of course there are other options, I own a modular synthesiser system since long time, and a MIDI-CV interface. With that system I experimented a bit, but didn't find specially good patches, due to my limited knowledge in synthesis at that time. My musical, meaningful expression with the EWI depended on Samplemodeling instruments.
So that's my story. Now, about Physical Modeling synthesisers, I must admit that I didn't use them much with the EWI. I created a couple of patches but I'm not sure where they are. They've been created some time ago, and I don't even remember which software. On iOS there was Thor and Mersenne for sure, maybe Sunrizer, and on PC it was Aalto, Reaktor, Kontakt of course, and probably Kaivo. I think it's no use to search for those patches, much easier to create new ones. And as we know, the important and equally difficult thing is the limiting of MIDI commands.
That's how it goes. If a patch is good, but not specially good, it doesn't survive. The next attempt will be equally good if not better. I have, in my whole career, collected only very few patches/presets. Mostly because they've gone lost after computer changes, and because of lazyness, lack of discipline. Stupidity.
But I will remember this discussion and post patches when I have some. For Mersenne, iVCS3, Model15, Animoog, Thor, etc. Which could also be interesting for breath control and expression pedal.
Thanks for the example! Really useful. Can certainly hear the difference. Probably did hear it while noodling with filter cutoff but, for some reason, it doesn’t distract me that much.
And this might finally push me into the Fruity Loops universe. Since it’s less expensive than, say, Cubasis, and it’s iOS Universal, it can be a reasonable purchase.
Before you pull the trigger on FLM3, here's an example of the MIDI overload I mentioned above. I'm playing steady quarter notes on the synth along with the bass drum but in measure 8 the synth comes to a grinding halt. I need to post a bug report on their forum, which I intend to do today (they were so overwhelmed with getting the basic functionality back when it first released that I thought my request would get lost).
My EWI4000s sends constant flat pitchbend messages and if I filter those out then I can get double the measures before the slow down, but MIDI input still comes to a crashing halt eventually.
Thanks a lot for sharing, @Phil999! Can relate to much of it. Helps me make sense of how others use wind controllers.
Noticed the Samplemodelling synths but never purchased them. (And, in this thread, kind of confused them with physical modelling, which is a very different thing, of course.) They do sound quite good but they’re quite expensive and wouldn’t fit so well in a compact setup.
One of my projects is to design a Pure Data synth to run on a (headless) Raspberry Pi. Might do something based on wavetables, as in this one. Should allow for a whole lot of flexibility, including by adding external controllers (like a dancemat). That’d be almost as compact as an iPhone-based setup. Maybe the resulting sound won’t be amazing, but a lot of fun can be had.
Something which has happened, to me, is a change in my expectations. Almost suddenly, something like driving a simple saw “lead” modulating the filter cutoff and volume through breath feels good enough for quite a bit of experimentation. And, for some reason, many of the presets in iWavestation give me enough pleasure. Can then focus on the playing. In other words, my quest for the best patches continues, but much of my playing time is disconnected from that quest. Chorders certainly helped.
One of my original goals in getting a wind controller was to “practice with headphones”: play the sax without bothering anyone and without feeling like people are judging. Hence the SIN, Self-Indulgent Noodling. Really satisfying. And it does help me appropriate the instrument. Yet, somehow, the sound itself matters a bit less.
But another part of my wind controller use is in terms of “laying down tracks” or performing live. Still not ready for primetime, but it’s getting there. Might require more fiddling with effects and such, but there’s something there already.
By the by, let’s not forget that Onyx Ashanti began a key part of his journey with a Wind Controller and an iPhone…
I'm getting closer and closer to finally be in control of my winds. Parcel could arrive on friday
Can’t wait to hear it!