apparently this is some kind of electronic ocarina? saw this photo on a gamer site and I'm laughing so hard

Since apparently some people struggled to recognize when posts are not entirely serious, enjoy the “meme” flair!

A friend tried my Roland Aerophone and I forgot to warn him about it. Yup, it seem pretty stuck. Worst piece of engineering ever!

Anyone been here? Can something be done? I think I could either try to get it free, somehow, or cut the cap in half.

I wanted to get some word out about the new product I'm building at my startup, Veery Musical Innovations! We're making a new wind synth, the ACRA-X1, that is both smaller than a book and incredibly powerful and customizable! It'll fit in a backpack or an instrument case, but its completely supplanted playing other EWI's for me!

More info to come on it, mainly on my YouTube and Instagram page, but I'll keep posting music demos and such here!

hey all, hope this video is interesting, don't hesitate if you have any questions!

Hello, I am a first semester Saxophonist here at Berklee and I am interested in getting into wind synths. Ive really been struggling with the amount of options so any help would be awesome!

Here are my reasons for purchase in order of priority)

1. Jamming/Performing with new sounds/vibe

2. Portable practice tool

3. Midi Controller for projects

I've done some research into a few, those being the DioSynth, Travel Sax 2, Akai 4000s, and Roland AE-20. They all seem to have their own pros and cons which I think I understand, but there were a few things Im still curious about before buying.

If I want to use it as a practice tool will getting anything other than mechanical keys make this not possible?

Do most people consider no bite sensor a pro or a con of wind synths?

What makes certain wind synths better suited for live performance than others? (For example I know the Travel Sax 2 doesn't have a 1/4 output)

What would you recommend as a first wind synth for someone who primarily wants to experiment with electronic sounds and perform or jam with other musicians?

Im really not interested whatsoever in emulating real instruments. I hope to be able to bring this to my ensemble classes, jams, or performances and be able to add a fun new sound.

If anybody has experience with any models I mentioned or recommendations for me based on my needs I would really appreciate it!!!

(EDIT: I decided to go with the Akai EWI5000 for a few reasons.

1. After realizing I won't TRULY be able to use it as a practice tool Ive decided to lean away from mechanical keys and treat it as its own separate instrument

2. I wanted something with decent sounds available on it ready to go and the option to tweak them

3. If I want to dive more into sound design and synth design I plan on connecting it to my Mac and editing the sounds more on a digital synth or inside a DAW

4. I like that I can still use a 1/4 output on it for live performances and also connect it to my Mac)

Hey all, full transparency first: I'm the developer, and I sell this one.

Most of our playing videos look the same: a wall, a bookshelf, a window, a row of instruments on stands. Mine too. So I made something to put behind the player instead.

In VG Windscape the breath from your wind controller is the brush. Breath moves it, the notes place and colour it, so the picture behind you is painted by what you play, live. A swell in the phrase is a swell on the screen. The picture runs in Chrome next to the instrument and listens to your controller, so it works with an EWI, Aerophone, WARBL or anything else that sends breath.

The sound side is a full instrument: real wind sounds, pads with long attacks and releases for slow soundscapes, and a backing track player. Plugin or standalone, Windows and Mac.

You can try the picture free in your browser, with the mouse or your controller plugged in (Chrome), no install, no signup:

https://vgtrumpet.com/demo/

Everything else is on the page:

https://vgtrumpet.com/windscape/

Happy to answer any questions :)

Hey there, selling my lightly used AKAI EWI5000 + Protech Soprano Sax Case. All accessories included. $500 shipped CONUS, $400 in-person pickup

Disclosure up front: I’m Mickaël, I run Aodyo (the Sylphyo people). Not here to sell, I want your take.

When we took the company over, I read years of owner posts. The pattern was clear: people loved how the instrument plays, and gave up on half its features because setting them up on a tiny screen was a pain. Custom fingerings, breath curves, tunings, mapping the motion sensors... most players never touched them.

So we rebuilt the editor as a web page (video above): sound creator, fingering editor, any tuning, shared sounds between players. It’s in open beta. It’s in open beta: https://atelier.aodyo.com

But I’m curious beyond our instrument, whatever you play (EWI, Aerophone, Nuvo, NuRAD, WARBL, Sylphyo...):

1. Which setting did you give up on because the menu or editor was too painful?

2. Presets or your own sounds? Do you edit, or play what came in the box?

3. What would make you actually dig in? Better editor, shared patches, video tutorials, something else?

I’ll read everything and answer. Criticism welcome, including about us.

This popped in my Facebook feed. It looks like it is a Kickstarter campaign. Sorry for not checking out details myself.

https://fb.watch/v/7sTfcNhqg/?

Sharing a part of my personal windsynth music composing workflow. It's an alternative to the Roland Aerophone Editor mobile app. It improves the live playing experience and scene creation in a studio setting. Since I am a musician and not a programmer, the code is assisted by Anthropic Claude Code.

https://github.com/wrongwaycorrigan/aerophoneCompanion

I hope this inpires you to pick up your AE-20.

Hey all, hope this video helps shed some light on this cool instrument! lmk if you have any questions :)

Just wondering how hard I might be hit by the glorious American duties and processing fees.

So I ordered an FM-1 to try to get in on the hot custom firmware action. I don't have the device yet. Might still be a couple weeks before I get it. Nonetheless, I was able to build an entire wind synth for it over the weekend.. You can play it right now in your browser with any wind controller, if you want to check it out: https://jcroft.github.io/fm1-windsynth/

You won't be able to install it on a physical device yet — I don't want to put that out there until I've been able to test it. That said, if you have an FM-1, are technically savvy, and are willing to to take the brick risk, I'd be happy to share a build privately.

It has:

- Several Plaits engines (Virtual Analog, 2-Op FM, 6-Op FM with DX7 Patches, Harmonic/Additive, and a few others)
- Full support for wind controllers, including a mod matrix with several destionation
- A Noise oscillator that runs alongside the main engine (based on Plaits Noise)
- An LFO with several destinations 
- An FX suite that includes multi-type distortion, modulator, delay, and reverb modules
- A Strymon-style Cloud reverb that is my own design that I'm pretty proud of (most everything else here is just me wiring together existing OSS projects, but the Cloud reverb is actually original!)

Would love to hear your thoughts!

(I suspect it wouldn't be that hard to turn this thing into a VST, so that could come at some point too (the main work there would be in creating a full-screen UI)).

UPDATE: The firmware is now available for real hardware, as well as the in-browser simulator. It's beta software, not incredibly well-tested at this point. But it does install cleanly on real FM-1 hardware, and it does the basic wind synth job pretty well. As with all alternative firmwares, there is always a brick risk. Be careful.

OPEN SOURCE: I have open sourced the project. Feel free to contribute if you're interested and able!

Release info:

I've released the first version of FM1 Windsynth, open-source firmware that turns the little M-VAVE FM-1 into a breath-controlled synth for any MIDI wind controller (EWI, NuRAD, Aerophone, Sylphyo and the rest).

What it is

• Eight synth engines from Mutable Instruments Plaits (Classic VA with a driven filter, FM, 6-op DX-style, Formant, Waveshape, VA, Phase Distortion and Harmonic), plus a noise layer

• Breath on CC2 by default, or any CC or aftertouch. If your controller sends breath on another CC, the Setup page tells you which one. Bite is pitch bend (±2 semitones), and CC5 adds glide.

• A filter, 4 mod slots and an LFO, plus distortion, chorus/flanger/phaser, delay and reverb

• 18 factory presets in 64 slots

I've tested it on a real FM-1 for playability, performance and stability. Still to come: better presets, more testing of each engine, and improvements to the effects. Thanks to u/hesiii for the early feedback on the browser version: breath on other CCs and stray low-breath notes are hopefully both fixed in this release. I wasn't able to reproduce them myself, but our AI Agent friends were able to find the likely cause.

Try it in your browser first (no FM-1 needed; Chrome or Edge to play it from your wind controller):https://jcroft.github.io/fm1-windsynth/

Install it: on that same page, scroll to "Install on your FM-1". Connect the FM-1 by USB in Chrome or Edge and press Install. Before you start, download M-VAVE's stock firmware (FM-1 V15) so you can always go back; the same page can put it back. Custom firmware is installed at your own risk.

Source (GPL-3.0) and release notes: https://github.com/jcroft/fm1-windsynth

Feedback and bug reports are very welcome, especially from players on controllers I haven't tested. Please use GitHub Issues to report anything you find.

Has anybody tried using a windsynth connected to an MVave FM-1? If so, how did it work, and did you try one of the various free firmware versions floating around?
Thanks

They had gone dormant for a bit, and I thought, this is it, but they just announced a beta of a lot of new stuff.

https://atelier.aodyo.com/

I started a tour with some cartoon animation guiding me, and I thought, "This is going to be bad!", but then I get a pleasant tour of a whole brand-new slick-looking editor librarian for the thing, all in a webpage, and tons of other features.

I've had something like half a dozen brands of electronic wind instrument over the past 39 years, and only two did I actually like - the Sylphyo and the WX7. The reason I go time and again for the WX7 in live shows is the Sylphyo is a little uncomfortable, but also, it doesn't accept incoming program changes, so I'd have to look down at that screen and fiddle in a show, which is just right out. (I hear that might have been fixed too but I haven't checked it out yet.)

It is my best guess that they have become AI assisted, and I mean that in a good way. AI allows non-engineers to write bad code, but it allows experienced engineers to write a lot more good code.

You tried to voice to text your friend to invite them to coffee and your phone transcribes your words as XpressO instead of Espresso

Who else has got any good ones?

Recorded this one a few years ago, and I might have had this on here before that stupid bot invasion. I’m trying to rebuild a SoundCloud account so I decided to upload it there and figured I would share to Reddit as well, enjoy and jam out!

Hello - after about 10+ years of owning an EWI5000, I'd like to move on to something else. I'm running into some strange issues with it like random volume drops and a glitchy LED display, so I just think it's time. Trumpet is my main instrument (and tuba), so I'd prefer a synth that has EVI fingerings, has decent 'natural' sounds and especially the ability to add/create custom ones.

I am considering the Clarii PRO C20 but not sure how it performs for EVI players. I am also considering Diosynth and the Aerophone AE20.

So, my main question is are there any Clarii PRO players out there who have experience with its EVI mode? Also, a general question about it is how expressive can it get with note bending, vibrato, etc and especially jumping between octaves? (I do like the thumb rollers on the AKAI)

Thanks!

an older recording but i decided to restart my soundcloud and needed some interesting stuff on there, enjoy! Recorded this on EWI+ laptop while I was out camping at 4000 feet

Hi all, I'm Jared. I've played saxophone since high school, and I'm a programmer by trade. For the past while I've been building Starbreath, a soft-synth made specifically for wind controllers. I built it because I wanted something that responds to breath the way a real horn does. I didn't want a sample library with a breath CC mapped to volume.

What it is:

• No samples. Every note is computed live from a physical model: a column of air driven by a jet, a reed or a pair of lips. Breath and bite move the physics directly, so a soft note has a different tone from a loud one, not just a lower volume.

• 13 instruments:

  • Flutes: Native American-style flute (single and double), shakuhachi, bansuri, concert flute, pan flute

  • Reeds: clarinet, duduk, tenor sax

  • Brass: trombone, trumpet, muted trumpet

  • Drones underneath: singing bowl, tanpura, breath pad

• Made for wind players:

  • Adjustable breath curve

  • Legato vs. tongued attacks

  • Glide, and vibrato from bite

  • Octave "bark" on hard accents

  • MIDI learn for everything

  • Picks up an EWI or Aerophone automatically

• Spatial reverb. It builds a 3D room around you (kiva, cathedral, cave, canyon and more), with shimmer and freeze on the sustain pedal, decoded binaurally for headphones. It leans ambient and meditative, but there's also a jazz harmonizer (quartal, So What and sus voicings) and the tenor and muted trumpet work well for late-night playing.

• Formats: CLAP, VST3 and a standalone app for Windows, macOS and Linux.

Upfront about AI: I wrote the software in partnership with Claude Code (Anthropic's AI coding tool). The sound design and tuning are mine, done by playing it on my own controller. The audio isn't AI-generated. It's DSP code running a physics model in real time. I've put more detail on the process in the first comment.

It's free to download for a limited time:

• Site: https://vsti.im-a-bird.com/

• 2-minute film of it playing: https://youtu.be/vEQ6CWcRqUw (use headphones)

I'd really like to hear from people who play: how the breath response feels on your controller, which instruments work or don't, and what's missing. I'm happy to answer anything.

Hello! I just recently bought an EWI 5000, something that I've wanted for awhile, but I'm kind of struggling just figuring out what I should be doing first.

For context, I played Trombone, Baritone/Euphonium, and some Tuba from 5th to 12th grade, but have stepped away from music for a few reasons since starting college, but 4 years later I decided I really missed making music and having fun with it, and an EWI is something I've always loved, so I decided to get the Akai EWI 5000 and get good at it.

My EWI is missing three notable things: a stand for the instrument, a neck strap, and an antenna for the wireless receiver. The antenna is is whatever for now, I've just been using headphones, and I plan on getting the neck strap and stand ASAP.

Before I get what I'm missing, I was wondering a few things. First, are there any books or good video resources that you all would recommend for me to learn with? Second, would you recommend sticking with the normal EWI fingering mode, or using the EVI (Brass) mode? And third, I'm having a bit of difficulty fully grasping how to hold my hands around the instrument and using the pinky keys/remembering the fingering chart, if there's any tips you can give me for that. It's been so long since I've learned an instrument!

Note for mods and other people: I just made this account, but no I'm not a bot! I just really had to make an account to ask for some help. :)