Breath or Wind Controllers

[Scott Cairns]

Just curious after reading the "editing samples" thread... Who is using a breath or wind controller on a regular basis?

If so, what libs are you mostly using the controller with and what midi data do you typically manipulate?

Ive been curious about them for a long time.

Thanks,

Scott.

[Ned Bouhalassa]

I'm also interested in this - thanks for bringing it up, Scott!

[Rich Pell]

Me too , my keyboard has a BC in and i always imagined some of the QLSO Woodwind DFX programs (assigning the BC to the CC#1) could be really smooth for swells etc..also what would be a good BC to get ? Rich

[Nick Batzdorf]

I use an EWI, but it's all but hardwired to a Yamaha VL1 - not sample libs.

[josejherring]

I know a guy in LA who successfully uses breath controller on his samples exotic flute collection. I think he mostly patches it over to control the expression. There use to be an interface that you can place between the controller and a synth or sampler. I don't know whatever happen to it though.

I'll do some research.

The guy's name is Fred Seldon if you're interested in looking him up. He's a LA session ww guy who specializes this.

Cheers,

Jose

[Chip_Buckner]

In addition to asking here about windcontroller use, you might ask a windcontroller group (groups.yahoo.com/groups/windcontroller) about sample use.

I, by the way, use a Yamaha WX5 with a Yamaha VL70m (the VL1's little brother).

CHIP

[josejherring]

Found this article on windcontrollers. Biggest draw back I see is the inability to play different velocity layers. Apparently, you set velocity sensitivity to 0 so that it's always a maximum then you adjust the amp envelopes to respond to a continous volume control data. So it's like playing a f or ff patch, but the volume can go from 0 to 127.

Pretty confusing. Can anybody else make any sense out of it?



http://www.ibiblio.org/emusic-l/info-docs-FAQs/wind-controllers-FAQ.html

[Bruce A. Richardson]

It all depends upon how you want to set it up, Jose. It's different for every case. VSL legatos, for instance, work well. They're one velocity. The wind controller is no panacea for samples. In Reaktor, on the other hand, you can get just stupid with a Wind Controller. Sky's the limit, there.

You would probably do well with one. They are great for strings and winds. It's amazing what putting your innate (and highly trained in your case) wind into the mix as an expressive component. It changes everything. But you do have to dig into the samples and the programming, and customize them, if you want to really get a lot out of a wind controller.

I am hot and cold with mine. Sometimes I can't be bothered, others, I just sit and waste hours on the thing. I'm a trumpet player, so my chops on it are always under construction. Still, it's just amazing how wonderful it is for a horn player to hear expression that sounds like he actually played it. It really makes a huge difference.

[josejherring]

It all depends upon how you want to set it up, Jose. It's different for every case. VSL legatos, for instance, work well. They're one velocity. The wind controller is no panacea for samples. In Reaktor, on the other hand, you can get just stupid with a Wind Controller. Sky's the limit, there.

You would probably do well with one. They are great for strings and winds. It's amazing what putting your innate (and highly trained in your case) wind into the mix as an expressive component. It changes everything. But you do have to dig into the samples and the programming, and customize them, if you want to really get a lot out of a wind controller.

I am hot and cold with mine. Sometimes I can't be bothered, others, I just sit and waste hours on the thing. I'm a trumpet player, so my chops on it are always under construction. Still, it's just amazing how wonderful it is for a horn player to hear expression that sounds like he actually played it. It really makes a huge difference.

:cool: man, really :cool:

[Scott Cairns]

Thanks guys, what about a breath controller? No one using one? I remember reading that Jeremy Soule uses (or used) one.

Thanks for the link Jose.

[thesoundsmith]

I use a Yamaha BC3 for my VL70m, and occasionally on some of the Giga libs, but mostly for breath swells. Not much else to do, it's just CC2 - but a huge difference between that and a mod wheel or midi volume pedal.

[JT3_Jon]

I'm a sax player and own a Yamaha WX5 and VL-70m. I'm still new to my sample lib (VSL Opus1 in EXS and EWQLSO Silver in Kontakt) and dont even know where to begin to get it to work with my samples! Is there anyone or anything out there that explains the process in layman's terms?

I thank you in advance for any and all help.

[Bruce A. Richardson]

Thanks guys, what about a breath controller?

They're a little tougher to use well, because they don't have the same logic as wind controllers.

The problems are always in the editing, because CC2 information doesn't move around with the notes. So, you generally have to go to your sequencer's top-level view, and cut up separate notes into clips when you want to move them around.

In that way, it really becomes a kind of tool which is most easily used by a musician who can knock out the track the way he wants to hear it. I wouldn't suggest using wind/breath control if you're not a player, because it will give you fits in the editing process.

[Nick Batzdorf]

Jose, at one point Akai was selling a software update that allowed the EWI to send different velocities. But velocity isn't all it's cracked up to be with wind controllers, since the whole point is continuous control over the sound rather than just initial attack.

One "controller" the VL1 uses is the rate of change, which is really important.

[Rich Pell]

I use a Yamaha BC3 for my VL70m, and occasionally on some of the Giga libs, but mostly for breath swells. Not much else to do, it's just CC2 - but a huge difference between that and a mod wheel or midi volume pedal.
That sounds useful (but i guess sort of limited) to me..I might look into that..Thanks,Rich

[SteveHanlon]

My wife, who's a flutist, has the Yamaha WX-5. And she gets that controller to make some very convincing expression.

I'd say don't worry about the velocities and go for that natural volume swell. Later you can change velocities.

It's always harder to draw in volume or epxression and have it sound natural (without spenind loads of time editing the curve).

But being able to play it in....that's as close to the real potatoes as it comes with controllers.

You can even play the right notes in with a keyboard then use the wind controller to just add CC 11 that's convincing.

[Scott Cairns]

They're a little tougher to use well, because they don't have the same logic as wind controllers.

The problems are always in the editing, because CC2 information doesn't move around with the notes. So, you generally have to go to your sequencer's top-level view, and cut up separate notes into clips when you want to move them around.

In that way, it really becomes a kind of tool which is most easily used by a musician who can knock out the track the way he wants to hear it. I wouldn't suggest using wind/breath control if you're not a player, because it will give you fits in the editing process.

Thanks Bruce. Thats what I find a little confusing, I thought you could use a breath controller to manipulate say CC11 or CC1 for more natural envelopes. If its only inputting CC2 how does it even change the timbre of a sound in a lib like VSL or EWQLSO? I wouldnt think they would even recognise that data.

[Nick Batzdorf]

You have to map it to something they understand, Scott - cc11 would be the obvious choice.

[Scott Cairns]

Thanks Nick, that makes sense! :)

[Bruce A. Richardson]

Yes, the WX-5 will map breath to CC2 (breath control) or CC11 (expression). It might even map to CC7, I'm not remembering right now. But you can also program the sampler to "hear" what it's putting out. That's why Reaktor is so fun with a breath controller...anything goes.

[Chris Hein]

Hi,
at the moment I try to create a realistc Saxophon Sample library.
It uses a lot of realtimecontrollers. This video demonstrates it a little bit:
http://www.wizardmedia.de/altsax/Alto%20Sax%20Video%20D_Large.swf
http://www.wizardmedia.de/altsax/Alto%20Sax%20Video%20Demo_Large.mov
The Saxophonplayer played a complete set of just windsounds.
I put it on a seperat keygroup with volumecotrol via cc2.
Some other controllers are: add growl by blending to layers via cc.
add keyssound, Breath on Note off, TopKicks to add more attack and
maybe the most important: A realistic vibrato by blending to presets.
non vb to vib.

Would be great to here this sound controlled by a breathcontroller like the
Yamaha BC3 or WX5.

Chris Hein

[Nick Batzdorf]

Sehr geehrter Besucher,


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Das ist nicht gut. :)

[Chris Hein]

ups, just edited

Chris Hein

[josejherring]

Chris,

I don't know if advertising here is against forum rules or not. I think that it is for developers to advertise here without prior permission, but......I think that you really have something and that you should approach East/West with your product and start talking distribution deal.

Very, very, very impressive and clever.

Cheers,

Jose
edit: Oh, I should mention that it was pretty easy to get to the sight and find the link. Where there's a will....

[Chris Hein]

I don't know if advertising here is against forum rules or not.
You are right, sorry.
As soon as I have something to sell (could be April 2005)
I will advertise here to let you know.

It all started with my warwick bass.
http://www.wizardmedia.de/WarwickBass/WarwickBassDemo01.mp3
I wanted to play my bass for a production
but my playing was too bad because I didn't play bass for years.
But the song needed exactly this sound of my 20 year old warwick bass.
So I sampled my bass with 320 Samples and discovered how easy it is
to create a good instrument.
Next I was looking for a sax but did not find a good sax sample.
So I made it myself and now Im thinking about doing more and selling it.

Chris Hein

[josejherring]

You are right, sorry.
As soon as I have something to sell (could be April 2005)
I will advertise here to let you know.

It all started with my warwick bass.
http://www.wizardmedia.de/WarwickBass/WarwickBassDemo01.mp3
I wanted to play my bass for a production
but my playing was too bad because I didn't play bass for years.
But the song needed exactly this sound of my 20 year old warwick bass.
So I sampled my bass with 320 Samples and discovered how easy it is
to create a good instrument.
Next I was looking for a sax but did not find a good sax sample.
So I made it myself and now Im thinking about doing more and selling it.

Chris Hein

Beautiful.

[Brady Ellis]

Breath controllers work great. I programed the BC on my keyboard (K2600) to control the modutation. Alot of samples in the giga world use the mod wheel to control different samples. By using a BC, I can be more realistic than using a mod wheel. It is easy also to program samples that have velocity switching (so p, mp, mf, and f samples) into a cross fade enviroment that is controlled by a BC.

[Bruce A. Richardson]

The GOS mod-wheel crossfades are an example of an instrument which works great with breath control. You just have to go into the sampler editor, and reassign the controller to CC2 rather than CC1.

That's the basic scoop on how to adapt anything to breath control. Figure out what aspect of the programming is most appropriate for breath control, assign that aspect to CC2, then eliminate other volume-controlling assignments (like velocity--in Giga you'd set it to linear/low in order to eliminate velocity's effect out output).

If there was an easy 1-2-3 recipe I'd post it, but essentially, once you've gotten into advanced controllers, you need to jump in and understand sampler/synth programming to get the most out of them. It's not that complex, much like learning how to use a mixer. There's 1000 knobs, but once you learn one set, you realize that they're not so complex.

[Hawkes]

Not trying to hijack this thread or anything... but, do any of you use anything like this?
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/EXP-main.html

I was thinking about picking one up to free up my left hand instead of always having it on the MW or a fader.

[Chris Hein]

Here is a good midicontroller overview.
Midi controlled by brain, dancing, light...

http://www.synthzone.com/ctrlr.htm

Chris Hein

[Bruce A. Richardson]

Not trying to hijack this thread or anything... but, do any of you use anything like this?
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/EXP-main.html

I was thinking about picking one up to free up my left hand instead of always having it on the MW or a fader.

I use one now and then, mostly for live performance...simple volume control. In the studio, I personally find them not worth the trouble. The BOSS pedals are nicer than the one from the link. You can define a minimum controller value on those, which gives you a lot more control between the min and max values.

[Hawkes]

Thanks for the info. It does seem like it would be worth paying a little more to have that min. value knob. I was hoping that I could re-assign one of these to control volume or MW... guess that's not an option though?


I use one now and then, mostly for live performance...simple volume control. In the studio, I personally find them not worth the trouble. The BOSS pedals are nicer than the one from the link. You can define a minimum controller value on those, which gives you a lot more control between the min and max values.

[IOComposer]

I started playing a WX5 about 5 years ago and I'm pretty good at it now. I use a vl70m physical modeling synth which is the obvious choice for this instrument. I don't trigger samples with it though because I've never gotten it to sound any better than I can make it by just drawing cc data with a pentool. Though, it's sorta become my main instrument in that I now pick it up first when I'm flushing out melodic ideas. In general, it gives more expressiveness to my music where I have limited bugetary options and it helps get the emotional point across in my demos but most importantly, it's just a fun thing to play and it makes the process of making music just that much more enjoyable. I highly recommend buying one and experimenting!
-Jamey

http://dramaticmusic.com

[jcn7]

Jose wrote..."I know a guy in LA who successfully uses breath controller on his samples exotic flute collection. I think he mostly patches it over to control the expression. There use to be an interface that you can place between the controller and a synth or sampler. I don't know whatever happen to it though.

I'll do some research.

The guy's name is Fred Seldon if you're interested in looking him up. He's a LA session ww guy who specializes this."
I'm wondering if this is the same "Fred Seldon" who used to play saxophone in the Don Ellis Orchestra???
I too use a Yamaha BC1 and BC2 on several Yamaha VL70m's and Korg Oasys Physical Modeling PCI. I for one wish that all developers would include BC programs for all "wind" and "Bowed String" libraries. Although, I must admit that I'm liking Physical Modeling better than working with sample libraries.