A Breath in an Electronic World: Experiments in Musical Expression using a Midi Wind Controller Matthew Ahrens Mentor: Dr. James Bohn Bridgewater State University

Overview What is a wind controller? Use as an electronic midi instrument. Sample based synthesis. Issues with commercially available voices. Applied Results – composed work ◦ Blend: duet for EWI and Guitar

What is a Wind Controller? Played like an acoustic wind instrument. ◦ Breath ◦ Keys Sends midi data to modules. Modules generate sounds according to midi instructions.

How does it work? Midi Keyboard vs. Wind Controller.

MIDI Continuous Control #2 Breath Velocity controls initial volume and timbre. Breath controls: ◦ Initial and sustained volume (dynamics). ◦ Onset (attack) ◦ Cutoff (Articulation).

Other Midi CC#s Portamento. Glide (Glissando). Hold and Octave (Polyphony). Pitch Bend

Pitch System Keyed fingering systems.

Pitch System Valved fingering system

Systems on a Wind Controller Differences and similarities to acoustic instruments.

YamahaWX5

EWI4000s

Sound Modules

Wind Controller ◦ Sends midi messages to the Sound Module ◦ (Hardware or software) which  Interprets data as instructions to manipulate a  Sample or sound algorithm (additive synthesis).  Sound is then output to a Speaker or Amplifier

Flow Chart

Samples Small recorded segments of tone Manipulated by Module according to midi messages Example: Nylon Guitar String Sample

Parts of a Sample Four Basic Parts: ◦ Attack ◦ Resonance ◦ Decay ◦ Cutoff

Triggering Parts of a Sample CC#2 Breath used to trigger parts on and off. ◦ Breath on sends initial volume and timbre for onset. ◦ Sustained breath value maps to loops resonance part. ◦ Breath off signals decay. ◦ Finalized with cutoff.

Hardware for this Exploration Roland Fantom-XR ◦ Four different samples uniquely controlled simultaneously ◦ Large variety of effects and timbre controls that can be mapped to wind controller parameters ◦ High quality of sample manipulation and output.

Fantom-XR Images

Fantom-XR Interface Images

Issues with Wind Synthesis Today Used as an emulation device ◦ Approximately 90% of commercial patches available are emulations (Patchman Music). ◦ The rest are synthetic timbres modeled after steandard electronic voices  E.g. Popcorn.

Issues with Wind Synthesis Today Acoustic wind instruments: ◦ Multiple timbre across registers. ◦ Expression achieved through techniques Commercial wind controller voices: ◦ Unmapped expressive controllers (CC#s) ◦ One Sample (single timbre) across eight octave register ◦ Simple changing from velocity driven (keyboards) to breath driven.

Solution with Experimentation Goal: Create and Use a custom sample that addresses these issues. Attempt: A voice that used classical and acoustic guitar samples. ◦ Samples were chosen from the Fantom-XR’s built in collection. ◦ Timbres were chosen to blend – or compliment – a classical guitar.

Making the Patch Samples were cross faded to create artificial registers. Acoustic guitar sample is only voiced in the classical guitar’s harmonics timbre. Centroid – jargon term for average brightness of a sound – was used as the determinant for matching the samples. Result: a voice with a timbre and feel unique to both guitar and wind emulation.

Composition and Recording Blend: For EWI and Guitar ◦ Cuente el Arroz  Chromatically heavy to show dissonance and resolution between an acoustic instrument and an electronic one.  Interweaving lines to show both parts as supporting to each other. ◦ Ping!  Guitar part only uses natural harmonics.  Shows timbre differences capable with a expressively programmed voice.