AKAI PROFESSIONAL EWI4000s

Jun 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Scott Wilkinson

           

FIG. 1: The Akai EWI4000s includes a built-in analog-style synth, MIDI In and Out ports, and more user-definable messages than ever.

As far back as I can remember, I've had a natural ability to pick up just about any wind instrument and get a reasonable sound out of it, even if it's an instrument I've never seen before. But my brain balks at anything with keys or strings. Thus, I've always considered wind-instrument synth controllers to be my ticket to electronic-music performance. I've owned a Lyricon, all three models of Yamaha's WX controllers, and the Akai EWI 1000, the first commercial generation of Nile Steiner's Electronic Wind Instrument.

Akai has continued to refine the EWI since the 1000, introducing several models with new features and refinements. Now comes the EWI4000s, which promises to be the best EWI yet (see Fig. 1).

Warming Up

The EWI4000s implements a number of useful refinements over previous generations. For example, there is now a Glide Strip running alongside the octave rollers. By default, touching the strip sends Portamento On, but it can be assigned to send any Control Change message from 0 to 99.

Speaking of MIDI messages, the EWI4000s provides more user-definable messages than ever before. You can enable several different messages to be sent simultaneously in response to breath pressure and bite pressure on the mouthpiece. Continuous controllers 0 to 99 can be assigned to the Octave and Hold buttons (sent with a preset value) as well as the Pitch Bend Up and Down plates, which can send varying values depending on how much of your right thumb is in contact with the plates. You can even send Program Change messages by fingering different notes, a feature that Michael Brecker put to good use.

The EWI4000s offers several different fingering modes, including the regular EWI mode and a saxophone mode that more closely mimics a normal sax. In fact, this mode even lets you rest your left pinkie on the G-sharp key just like many sax players do; in this case, the only notes affected by the G-sharp key are G and C.

Also provided are two EVI (Electronic Valve Instrument) fingering modes, which let you finger the main right-hand keys like a valve instrument (such as a trumpet or tuba), shifting registers with the left index finger. I play many brass instruments as well as woodwinds, but I've never been able to wrap my brain around EVI fingering, so I opted to use the EWI and sax modes.

Pièce de Résistance

Without question, the most important new feature in the EWI4000s is its internal synthesizer. With all previous models, the synth was an external unit that connected to the instrument with a special cable. This was like an anchor, tying the player to a relatively small area on the stage.

With a self-contained internal synth and AA battery power, the EWI4000s is finally free to roam. Of course, you must still connect its ¼-inch audio output to a sound system, but with a wireless transmitter on your belt and a receiver near the mixer or amp, you can move anywhere within the system's RF range. (If you want to control another synth via MIDI, you'll have to connect a cable from the EWI's MIDI Out to the synth's MIDI In, but this can be done wirelessly as well.)

FIG. 2: UniQuest’s well-organized editor window provides access to all synth controls.

As in previous generations, the synth is a 2-oscillator subtractive design — quaint by today's megasynth standards, but refreshing in its simplicity. Each oscillator can produce sawtooth, triangle, and/or pulse waveforms with independent level controls, and the pulse width can be modulated at a user-specified frequency and depth. Breath-controlled functions include level and pitch modulation as well as oscillator onset, and a crossfade function follows breath pressure to crossfade between the two oscillators.

The oscillators are mixed before being sent to the dual filter. The multimode filter can be modulated by breath, LFO, and/or a sweep function, and the filters can be linked to double the cutoff slope. A separate formant filter can apply woodwind or string formants, and a noise generator has its own pair of multimode filters with the same parameters as the oscillator filters.

The synth also includes three effects: delay, reverb, and chorus, the last of which provides separate controls for each oscillator. Rounding out the synth are several global parameters, including key trigger, bend range, and vibrato amount for both pitch and amplitude.

With two voices, the synth can play two notes at a time. This allows the EWI to hold one note while playing others or to play two parallel lines separated by any interval.

Ed-Lib Vibe

The older outboard synth module did have one advantage: all of its parameter controls were on the front panel and immediately available. Now the only way to program the synth is with the included editor-librarian from Sound Quest. Dubbed UniQuest for Akai EWI4000s, the software comes on a CD-ROM with versions for Windows XP and Mac OS X.

To use the editor-librarian, you connect MIDI In and Out from the EWI to your computer's MIDI interface and launch the program. As with most such programs, this one has a library window that displays all 100 presets in a given bank. Clicking on a sound in the bank activates that sound for playing on the EWI, which is very convenient when browsing for sounds. In addition, individual sounds can be dragged-and-dropped between banks.

The editor window is a well-organized, onscreen control panel for the synth (see Fig. 2), and you can hear the results of any tweaks immediately. However, the controls are slow to respond to dragging with the mouse, making it difficult to fine-tune your adjustments.

Also available is a basic 16-track MIDI sequencer (see Fig. 3) and a MIDI monitor, which displays all MIDI messages passing between the EWI and the program.

Unfortunately, I had some problems using the software. First, getting the factory bank from the EWI into the program failed due to SysEx errors. Also, the program wouldn't recognize the bank of sounds I got from Patchman Music (see the sidebar “Patchman to the Rescue”). I was finally able to get those sounds into the EWI using a function that sends SysEx data directly from a disk to the instrument, after which getting a bank from the instrument into the program started to work. Obviously, there are some bugs in the software that Sound Quest should iron out.