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Some of my favorite EWI videos. Enjoy!
Jeff Kashiwa explains and demonstrates the Akai EWI4000s to an appreciative audience. A little loopstation fun, with some Telemann and then a smooth-jazz tune.
British saxophonist and EWI player Alistair Parnell provides some nice instructional videos. I found this one particularly useful, but you really should check out the whole series.
“Wergythu,” aka Seth Block, takes it easy on the couch with his EWI and a looper. (This video doesn’t allow embedding, so you’ll have to click through to YouTube to watch.)
And of course we have to finish with Michael Brecker, who, unsurprisingly, does some mind-blowing stuff and makes it look easy. Trust me, you need to watch this one beginning to end.
That wraps up the first quarter of 2015 with no clarinet posts featured yet. Clarinet bloggers, let me know you’re out there. Also, all of this month’s featured bloggers are repeats, some several times over. If you have a woodwind blog that you think I may not be following yet, send me a link!
Sam Sadigursky explains why saxophonists should play the flute. (I would add to his list of reasons that the flute is a lovely instrument and playing it is a rewarding pursuit on its own merits.)
The new The Clarinet: Online blog, the digital companion to the International Clarinet Association’s print journal, did some coverage of this year’s ClarinetFest® in Madrid, Spain. Here is day one.
The Adventures in Woodwindland blog examines the old question about “how many” instruments doublers play [update: link dead]. (Here’s my take from the early days of this blog.)
The Akai EWI series’ “EWI” fingering mode is powerful and flexible. It bears a resemblance to basic saxophone fingerings (while wisely eschewing saxophoney compromises like rollers and palm keys). But with a little imagination EWI players can “borrow” a number of useful fingerings from other woodwinds, too.
For clarity, I’m considering any fingering that appears in the EWI 4000s’s Reference Manual under “EWI Fingerings” as a basic, non-borrowed fingering. Some of the fingerings I’m listing do appear in the manual for other fingering modes (saxophone, flute, and oboe). Some of the fingerings aren’t great-sounding fingerings on the “real” (non-electric) woodwind instruments, but work beautifully on the EWI, which of course isn’t subject to the acoustical problems of air-filled tubes.
And of course these fingerings work in any octave, which is not always the case with “real” woodwinds. I have arranged them octave-wise here in ways that will mostly look familiar to woodwind players.
Right C-sharp Borrowed from: oboe, clarinet Provides a useful alternative in left-hand-pinky-heavy passages.
Left E-flat Borrowed from: oboe, some clarinets In the example, prevents having to “jump” the right pinky from one key, over another, to another.
Side F-sharp Borrowed from: saxophone, clarinet Similar to using the saxophone’s side F-sharp key or clarinet’s side F-sharp(/B-natural) key (shown here in the wrong octave for clarinet), except using the right pinky rather than the ring finger. Useful for avoiding the right index-middle flip-flop.
Right G-sharp Borrowed from: oboe Provides a useful alternative in left-hand-pinky-heavy passages.
1+1 B-flat Borrowed from: flute, saxophone, clarinet Similar to a standard flute fingering, or to a problematic saxophone or clarinet alternate fingering (shown here in the wrong octave for clarinet). Of course on the EWI there are no pitch, timbre, or response issues with this (or any) fingering.
1+2 B-flat Borrowed from: saxophone A slightly lesser-known alternate fingering for saxophone (which, on saxophones, often sounds better than 1+1). Useful for transitions such as F-sharp to B-flat.
Right B Borrowed from: clarinet Similar to the sensation of using the clarinet’s right B(/E) key, but in this case you must use the right pinky to press two keys at once. In the example, this allows you to keep the movement in one hand, rather than having to coordinate both pinkies.
Side C Borrowed from: saxophone Useful in chromatic passages and trills for avoiding the left index-middle flip-flop.
These fingerings of course only scratch the surface of what’s possible with the EWI-mode fingering system. But because of their familiarity and time-tested usefulness to players of “real” woodwinds, they can be adapted easily and fruitfully to EWI playing.
The Internet Music Score Library Project is an online library of public-domain sheet music. Most of the available music is in PDF format and can be freely downloaded. The files are uploaded by users, mostly scanned from published sheet music that falls into the public domain. This means mostly compositions that are old enough to be public domain, in published editions that are also old enough to be public domain.
Saxophonist Ben Britton explores the connection between tone and intonation. He also gives a nice introduction to the desperately under-taught art of swing articulation.
Woodwind doubler Ed Joffe compares “part” players and true musical artists.
John Reeks examines the history surrounding the use of clarinets in the Beatles song “When I’m Sixty-Four.”
Oboist Stephen Caplan discusses staying comfortable and healthy while sitting for extended periods of playing music.
It’s really an amazing series of videos. I’m just a beginner on the EWI and I really love what you can do with it.
BTW, does anybody know, which sound Jeff is using for his funky looping part in the first video? It might be a patchman sound or something like that. I’d really like to know how to build this sound, it is absolutely awesome!
“Wergythu,” aka Seth Block, takes it easy on the couch with his EWI and a looper. (This video doesn’t allow embedding, so you’ll have to click through to YouTube to watch.)
Awesome series of videos! I have an old WX7 which I had more time to mess with.
Thanks for sharing.
It’s really an amazing series of videos. I’m just a beginner on the EWI and I really love what you can do with it.
BTW, does anybody know, which sound Jeff is using for his funky looping part in the first video? It might be a patchman sound or something like that. I’d really like to know how to build this sound, it is absolutely awesome!
And many thanks for the video list ;-)