WE SAY

'Wind synthesists do it with both thumbs' — what about that for a snappy car window sticker?

Both the Yamaha and Akai demand a degree of digital dexterity not required by ordinary woodwinds or saxes. The player's right thumb, so busy on a drummer, strummer or keyboards person, has hitherto been regarded as a handy, immobile bracket on which to support flutes and reed instruments. But no longer!

The EWI player's right thumb controls pitch bend through touch-sensitive contact plates mounted above and below. In addition to the mechanical pitch-bend 'rocker', WX7 player's hard working digit has a 'hold' switch and a program change button to handle.

But if that's the bad news, the good is that wind synthesizer embouchure is much less difficult to develop and maintain than that of a conventional instrument. In the words of Lauren Bacall 'you just put your lips together and blow'.

Akai have taken over Nyle Steiner's hand-made Electronic Wind Instrument, the EWI (say it to rhyme with Kiwi) and called it the EWI 1000. It is an eccentric-looking horn — a metal table leg with washers and little tags screwed on to its boxy barrel.

The more obviously 'styled' and designer-black WX7 comes in a matt-black carrying case complete with leads, sling and MIDI 'hip flask' — a power pack which can be used with batteries to avoid trailing more than the main MIDI lead.

Neither would be out of place in the Star Wars' bar-band scene. No bad thing in my view.

The fingering for both instruments is based largely on the Boehm system developed in the last century for flutes and later saxophones. Both have 13 front keys. The extraordinary range permitted by extra octave keys makes some side keys and cross-fingering unnecessary. While the WX7 has five octave switches around a centre 'null' position, the EWI has a seven-position octave 'roller' for the left thumb which I found easier to handle. Yamaha suggest smearing wax on the octave buttons.

They both rely on some kind of wind transducer. You blow, and when you hit a particular threshold a note sounds. And in all but the crudest voices, continued blowing gives you constant control over the sound via velocity and/or breath control or after-touch.

At one end of the EWI is a curious and apparently indestructible rubber mouthpiece which is like no other musical instrument. Forget about saxes, oboes or flutes — just blow down it like a breathalyser and you'll soon get the idea. The 'vibrate' control is activated by biting hard on the teat; it felt as if air enclosed by another tube in the mouthpiece was squeezed down to trigger. Another new technique to practice. This control is independent of breath and can be routed to other synthesizer functions.

Think that's weird? Try playing the keys. They don't budge. Let your fingers rest on the Boehm shape for A, say, and blow the note. Let your ring finger touch the next key, however lightly, and you'll get a G. Saxophone players will find this tricky — playing the EWI feels more like playing an open-holed flute or a clarinet. And don't let your little fingers dangle lazily around the side keys — one glancing touch and you're a semitone away from the desired note. A screwdriver adjustment enables you to angle them differently to suit.

The WX7 invites immediate comparison with the Lyricon. There's a smallish conventional mouthpiece, like a cut down clarinet one, but the clear plastic reed doesn't vibrate. It is there to cover and move the metal spring which also governs pitch-bend.

Yamaha know that wind players love to fiddle with and personalise their horns. The mouthpiece bore or shape may not make much difference, but you can chose between two different types of 'drain plugs', or not have one at all to let maximum air through the instrument, and you have a choice of three different heights for each of the 14 finger keys which operate tiny contact switches like a much smoother and lighter version of the Lyricon.

Just below the mouthpiece are a bewildering array of tiny switches and screwdriver pots. Among other things you can turn the WX7 into a Bb or Eb transposing instrument and adjust the dynamic response and 'embouchure' to taste. If you blow in 'loose lip' mode you can bend notes up by closing the reed. In 'tight lip' mode you have to hold the reed in a central position from which you can bend down by relaxing the lower jaw, and bend up by tightening even further. Tricky.

The EWI acts as the 'keyboard' for a monophonic, two-oscillator analogue synthesizer which Akai have named the EWV2000 sound module. The trumpetlike EVI employs the same unit.

I like analogue sounds, and the EWV has two separate oscillators, each with its complement of VCF and VCA envelope generators. There's 'sync' mode, four different waveforms, wave envelope FM and so on, and a choice of three filter slopes.

The modular synth design of the EWV, is admirably simple — one 'value' slider sets all the amounts while you punch through the parameter buttons. Most importantly, you can modulate most of the vital parameters from the breath or 'vibrate' control. Few of the 64 presets used this feature, but many of them come to life when you route breath intensity to cut-off frequency, pulsewidth modulation or resonance in addition to the more obvious VCA levels.

The non-programmable performance controls are set by four easily accessible blue double knobs on the EWI unit: the controls govern 'vibrate', 'bend', 'glide' and 'breath'. And you can have more dynamic and timbral control over another MIDI-controled synthesized or sampled sound by routing it through the input and output sockets of the EWV.

Yamaha are recommending that WX7 players drive a DX7II or the cheaper TX81Z module, for which they already have a batch of sounds programmed by Sal Gallina, the WX7 co-designer who created such a good inpression at the BMF. These are primarily imitative guitar, brass, woodwind and string sounds, whose responsiveness to breath control varies quite widely.

Sal's book, 'Expressive FM Applications', ushers in a new era of personalized synthesizer voice design. It should be possible for three different wind synth players to use the same patch and produce wildly differing sounds.

The EWV module can be set to send pre-programmed four note chords over MIDI and Yamaha encourage you to use the TX81Z hook-up in a similar way. The WX7 hold feature allows you to blow a chord, switch MIDI channels and solo over it.

The WX7 I saw is a prototype, and the dealers won't have any for a month or so, but Yamaha already have a readable English-language 23-page manual. The final version of the EWI, road-tested by Michael Brecker and others, hit the shops a couple of weeks ago but their 50-page sound module manual has only just arrived.

Be warned, wind synths don't feel like any other kind of instrument. The sax or wind player who picks one of these up for the first time will be like a piano player playing his first Minimoog back in the early seventies. They are both so much lighter to play and to hold and you can fly around the octaves to spectacular effect. They defeat many assumptions we have about wind instruments: you don't need extra force to hit high notes, nor huge lungs to sustain low ones.

DECISION

Some people will like the WX7 because it's more like a woodwind instrument with moving keys and a mouthpiece, or they'll love the new life it injects into FM synthesis. Others will relish the EWI for its analogue sound; or because it looks and feels so different and can 'resynthesize' sounds that are less sensitive via MIDI.

My immediate reaction is that I like them both. I'm excited by the feel, the new sounds, the sci-fi look of the horns and the idea of wind players finally catching up with the world of synthesis. Thumbs up!

AKAI EWI
EWI: £699
EWV: £599

YAMAHA WX7
WX7: £750

Yamaha: (Contact Details)
Akai: Haslemere Industrial Estate, (Contact Details)