This company started out making a converter box for BC controllers to make them compatible with non-Yamaha instruments, but now they make their own breath sensors, too, filling the vacuum–so to speak–that Yamaha left behind.)Īnd that brings us to the topic at hand three new items for introducing breath control into your MIDI system. (Musicians who pine for a BC3, but who baulk at the $300+ price it fetches on eBay, should look into a Turkish company called MRTaudio. The last model, the BC3, went out of production in 2011. It was followed by later models with more features, such as a headband, and adjustable threshold and slope controls. The first, the BC1, was introduced in 1983 along with the DX7, which had a ⅛" input jack for it. Yamaha also made breath controllers that were not instruments themselves but were air-pressure sensors designed to be used with keyboards. All of them can be played either in EWI or EVI mode.Ī few other companies have dipped their toes into the breath-controller stream–Casio with its not-quite-a-toy DH series, and the impressive but short-lived Synthophone, which was an actual alto sax packed with sensors and electronics–though none were able to achieve any market longevity. Today Akai makes one model that is just a controller, the EWI USB, and two that have built-in synths.
Akai first licensed his designs in 1987 and sold complete controller and synthesizer systems. Steiner, a trumpet player, started with the Electronic Valve Instrument (EVI), which used an interface based on a trumpet, and followed it with the Electronic Woodwind Instrument (EWI). I also found this video which gives a pretty good idea about it and was amazingly posted like a month ago - complete coincidence.Akai makes instruments designed by Nyle Steiner, whose first electronic wind instruments date back before MIDI. The module is cool too because it's a real standalone analog synth! I already have some similar stuff though and could live without it. There appear to be exactly zero on the market right now, but there are some sold listings like this one so they really do exist! I'd love to get just the controller for cheap and experiment with it. It has some sort of connector with a bunch of pins, but I'm sure I could build a breakout for the control voltages. The thing that interests me about it is that it outputs analog control voltages! There are some really cool possibilities for using it with modular and semi-modular synths. Here's one of the only descriptions I've seen: I was reading about the options and came across the EWI-3020 which seems to be something of an obscure model. I play sax and synthesizers and have had some interest in getting a wind controller of some sort, but never pulled the trigger.
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