Re: New ambient live improvisation "The art of life"

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 9:53 PM, Sjaak <tcplugin@scarlet.be> wrote:
> What midi parameters are you
> actually controlling with the EWI?

On all patches I modify for EWI playing I take away all velocity
sensibility and replace it with breath (CC#2). I assign breath (CC#2)
to both volume and filter cutoff. I also take away all LFO control of
"vibrato" and play the vibrato manually by micro pitch adjustment with
my lips (MIDI Pitch Bend). For specific patches I also adjust this
Pitch Bend to a small percentage of filter cut-off to give a timbre
change to vibrato, so it won't just happen as a pitch variation.

Then I assign CC#5 to "portamento/glide on/off". This works
brilliantly with Logic's sampler EXS24 and the ES2 synth. It makes it
possible to play fast runs where you hit the notes directly but throw
in a bit of "inertia" or "whammy dives/rises" with full control.

When creating a multi layer patch in the sampler I assign breath
(CC#2) to the balance between the two layers. For keyboard this is
usually handled by velocity.

When playing through Guitar Amp Pro (Logic/MainiStage's guitar
amp/speaker simulator) I usually assign breath (CC#2) also to the
preamp level - so blowing harder adds more distortion to the sound.
Sometimes I can also assign breath to tremolo speed (having the
tremolo sweep musically valid values as "16th/dotted/tripled" etc.

On "spookey dub step" sounds I assign breath (CC#2) negatively to
Feedback of the Tape Delay in a way that the "tape delay" is almost
left self oscillating between phrases, but when playing a note the
feedbacking loop is backing off to let new audio into the circle. My
default for EQ in the "Tape Loop" is to cut out bass to have the self
oscillating loop slowly climb upwards (until it becomes just noise
after one or two minutes, because of the "tape hiss and flutter"
simulation in the TapeDelay plug-in).

The point on all tweaks for me is to make the patch more playable,
simpler. I use vibrato a lot to imply rhythm, often a counter rhythm
to the songs main tempo,  and I like to morph the vibrato speed
between different grooves while playing melodies or just long notes.
Banning velocity makes sense because the EWI is a breath instrument.
What I meant by saying "keyboard-ish" is actually a certain percussive
quality that relies on velocity, but since velocity happens just once
- when you attack a note - it doesn't make sense to control
continuously (as when blowing).

(For NI Kontakt 2, the sampler, I use slightly different settings. But
I don't use Kontakt with Logic/MainStage, only in Bidule setups)

Per