Wind Instruments

Wind Instruments

EWI USB is an electronic wind instrument for musicians looking for an easy-to-play, easy-to-use controller. Akai Professional’s decades of experience in wind and electronic music instruments are rolled into our most user friendly — and most lowcost — EWI ever. PREMIUM PEDIGREE Akai Professional is the introductory name in electronic wind instruments. For over 20 years, Akai Professional has studied the art of playing saxophone, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, and other conventional winds, and devised electronic wind instruments that enable wind players to take pleasure in the same expressive control as in an acoustic instrument. We designed EWI USB to give wind players the expressive musical capablenesses antecedently found only in much more highpriced instruments. PROFESSIONAL PERFORMANCE EWIs are the only choice for severe wind players looking to make music electronically. While EWI USB is easy and fun to use, it’s likewise powerful, flexible, and most significantly authenti sufficient for use on stage and in the studio by professional musicians. COMPUTER CONTROL EWI USB is the most flexible EWI because it harnesses your computer to generate it is sounds. Its USB interface means that all you need is almost any Mac or PC and the included EWI USB software, and you’re ready to practice, perform, create, and record with a full collection of wind instrument sounds. Aria Player software was devised distinctively for use with EWI USB, supplying wind players with an unexampled level of expressive control. LARGE SOUND PALETTE You get over 75 dissimilar orchestral, concert band, jazz band, and synthesizer sound sets expertly recorded and programmed by Garritan, famous for it is ultra-realistic instrument sound libraries. MULTI MODE EWI USB offers multiple fingering modes including sax, conventional EWI, flute, oboe, and EVI (brass), so whether you’re just starting out as a woodwind student or an old pro wind player, you’ll find EWI USB easy to play. EWI USB is designed for you to spend your time playing music; not learning technology. SURPRISING AFFORDABILITY Historically, electronic wind instruments have fallen into two dissimilar categories: high-end, professional instruments and toys. EWI USB breaks the price barrier, bringing professional quality, expressive control, and a studio-ready sound library to a price the professional-wind-instrument world has never seen. Discover the world of expression that only wind instruments may offer with EWI USB.

Having a good sense of pitch is very crucial for a wind instrument player. It’s fantastically discouraging and hindering to play with somebody that can’t match pitch or an individual that plays with an inconsistent pitch center. Not only is it frustrating, but the overall performance will suffer because of it.

I was blessed with a comparatively good ear, but having a tuner has helped immensely over the years. When I primary started playing the trumpet, the intermediate person did not own a tuner. They were just too expensive, and they were too big to carry around easily. The ones that were prevalent at the time used a series of lights and dials that spun. If you were in tune, you would stop the spinning dial for the note you were playing. These tuners are still produced, but they are ordinarily owned by organizations because of the cost.

A few years later, a manufacturer brought out a tuner that you could carry around easily, but it cost a couple hundred dollars at the time. For a high school student, that was a little high. I did get one when I went to college, but it was a major buy for a college student. Today, you may buy credit-card sized tuners for around twenty dollars that work well. Things have surely changed for the better.

You may buy a simple tuner that only measures pitch or you may buy one that likewise plays the pitch for you. For deafening instruments, you might need to attach a speaker to listen it while you play. You may also buy ones that have built-in metronomes. I commend ones that measure the pitch and play it. I also commend the ones that have metronomes built into them.

One addition you would be wise to consider is a pick-up microphone. It allows you to measure your own pitch while playing with other players. Having a tuner will unquestionably aid to improve your sense of pitch if you use it regularly. Do yourself a favor and get one.

Wind Instruments Picture

Wind Instruments Image

Wind Instruments Picture

Wind Instruments Photo

Most helpful client reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful.
Another Opinion
By D. Baker
After seeing an exceedingly negative review on the Akai EWI USB I had to chime in. I’ve been composing for years with a Yamaha WX5 and have grown accustomed to scoring with wind controllers – there’s not one thing like the performance you may get from them. After dealing with waning help on older wind controllers and specialized accessaries and dead batteries all the time I at long last jumped onto the Akai mainly to simplify things thru USB and up to date software support. I don’t regret it one bit. The keys lack action which takes a little getting used to, but this is now my go to instrument. For the price I wholly commend it for any person with wind instrument experience looking to get a more natural sounding performance out of their digital work.

And of note – I mainly work in Cubase and have never had any software issues with this. It’s treated as a usual USB keyboard with the wind info plainly sending extra controller information.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Incredible wind controller!
By Dan S. Tong
I have employed the Yamaha WX7, WX5, EWI-3020, EWI-4000s and this most recent instrument, the EWI-USB. Not only is this instrument an unbelievable bargain at under $300 but it is much less complicated to setup and use than all of the other wind controllers.

You do not have to mess around with 6 or 7 little knobs or screw adjusted controls in order to get this instrument set up to play properly.

In my opinion the EWI-USB has better dynamic range than the other wind controllers, plus it does not require an further and added cable to connect with an optional power supply nor, because it gets it is power by way of the USB connection, does it need batteries.

It includes a very nice selection of acoustic intrument samples (software synthesizer sounds) from the Garritan “Jazz and Big Band”, and the Garritan Personal Orchestra package (it has a subset of sounds from these packages).

Some people prefer the Yamaha WX5 wind controller because it has mechanical keys which move, not similar to the EWI-USB (or 4000s) whose keys do not move but work plainly through touch (capacitive sensing). I would surely agree that it takes a bit more time get employed to the static touch action of the EWI-USB than for the mechanical keys of the Yamaha, particularly if you are a student of the clarinet or saxophone. The action of the EWI-USB is more like playing the alto recorder -there is no key movement. My experience of having played recorder, flute,saxophone and then a Yamaha WX7 (mechanical keys) before moving to the static touch action of the EWI instruments was rather positive. I adjusted somewhat speedily and found that I much preferent the responsiveness of the EWI instrument, but people’s experience varies.

I may think of only one negative aspect of the EWI-USB and that is the cramped spacing of the upper and lower end of the octave controllers (4 rollers). The roller at the upper and lower end are not free to rotate and the walls of the instrument are spaced too close to the up-most and bottom-most rollers making it occasionally more difficult to play very, very high and very, very low notes. Akai genuinely ought to have designed this percentage better. The much more highpriced EWI-4000s has 8 rollers so you are never cramped at either end.

If you are mesmerized in playing lots of instruments including the trumpet, trombone, tuba, french horn, flute, oboe, bassoon, saxophone, clarinet, and even violin, viola or cello without having the time, cash or sufficient talent to learn all of these, then this is the way to do it. Once you learn the fingering (much like the flute, recorder or saxophone), you may play any of the instruments listed above, provided you get good samples (synthesizer samples).

Not all synthesizers have in truth good samples of acoustic instruments (as opposed to poor imitations of acoustic instruments sounds or plainly “electronic sounds”), and not all that do, are made to work particularly well with wind controllers.

After a good deal of years of searching and re-searching I may commend the “Ketron SD2 Orchestral Wizard” as the best hardware synthesizer for in truth good acoustic sounds. It’s likewise one of the least expensive.

However if you want the sheer best trumpet sound then you need to get the “samplemodeling Mr. Trumpet”. It’s exclusively incredible. Sounds just like a real trumpet with all of the complex tonal variations that modify with loudness and attack and nearly all of the subtlety of the real instrument. It is the most responsive of any virtual instrument and has been particularly designed to work with wind controllers. If you already play flute, oboe, saxophone, or clarinet, then you will find it rather easy to learn to play a wind controller. In fact the EWI-USB has a trumpet valve fingering mode for brass players (which I have not tested), so it’s even more versatile.

If you would like to listen some audio samples find 2010Jazz on the kara-moon website where I’ve uploaded a large total of songs.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
Fantastic Instrument
By Vincent Cirelli
I was apprehensive in regards to buying a wind controller, as I’ve played good old fashioned woodwinds and brass all my life. However, I was shocked to find how expressive and emotive one could be using an electronic controller like this. The EWI comes with a nice library of sounds out of the box, some are better and more natural than others. My experience with the set up and software was great, it worked flawlessly on my MacBook (2.5 Intel Core 2 Duo). I installed the software and plugged in the EWI, restarted and was up and playing in minutes.

The most difficult aspect for me to adjust to was the octave scroller. If you go to the Akai internetlocation and look at the images, you’ll see metal rollers that grant you to switch among multiple octaves. It took a few days to be competent to run through material without without intention shifting octaves, and at times was exceedingly frustrating. But now, it’s no longer an issue.

The other issue, is that the EWI’s mouthpiece has a very restrictive airflow. By permitting air to escape as I play, I was competent to attain a breathing pattern that works well.

I don’t want to mislead anyone, as I have not tried the other wind controllers on the market. But, given the price point, this was the right buy for me. Do you’re homework, there is a lot of outstanding info and opinionated pieces (like this one) on the web. I in truth receive pleasure from this instrument alongside all my lacquered ones and hope you have as much fun as I’m having.

Side note: When paired with ‘Sample Modeling Mr.Sax or Sample Modeling Trumpet’ the results are genuinely fantastic in my opinion.

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