I’ve mentioned Chris Vollstadt and EWI Reason Sounds before.  I’ve been using Chris’s sounds for my virtual EWI rig for pretty much as long as I’ve been using a virtual rig.  I decided to make Reason the main engine for my virtual rig in no small part because of Chris’s patches and wonderful website.  I had bought all of his Refills (a bank of patches for Reason) but then he came out with a new concept – a mini Refill for only $9.99.  I had to get it and I’m glad I did.

Analog Dreams is a collection of 20 original “Dragon.fly” Combinator patches utilizing samples of vintage synthesizers in the NN19 sampler that is included with Reason.  It also includes 30 NN19 patches (used to make the Combinators), some effects patches, and a comprehensive user guide in pdf format.  It has sounds reminiscent of old analog synths from Moog, Roland, Oberheim, Sequential Circuits, and others.

I’ve been playing EWI and other wind synths for many years and I have done a lot of acoustic instrument emulations over the years but I’ve always preferred synth sounds for leads and solos because it’s really hard to be super creative and emulative at the same time.  Synth patches free me up to just play.  Because of that I am really happy with this collection of sounds.  Chris’s patches are always very expressive and easy to play and these sounds take that concept to a new level.

Another great thing about the package is that all of the patches are “tweakable” whether it’s changing the filters, adding effects, or adjusting the relative brightness of the patch.  Chris sets up each Combinator with knobs and buttons that are readily available and easy to understand.  See the picture at the top of the post for an example of what can be tweaked in real time.  You can even assign controllers to the knobs and buttons to make it easier to do while playing.

All of the sounds are very usable and there are no “clunkers” in the bunch.  Of course, I have some favorites and I made a little recording with 8 or 9 of them below.  Chris also has a cool audio demo on the Analog Dreams page of his website.  My demo is just a quick and dirty sampling of the sounds with no tweaking at all…the sounds are how they sound as soon as you call them up but there’s a lot of variation available to you.  I just used breath swells and other performance controls available on the EWI USB itself for this recording.

If you’re playing a wind synth and using a virtual rig then it’s likely you already have Reason.  If not, it’s something you might want to consider because it’s a very powerful engine for both the EWI and for recording in general.  If you have Reason then you really owe it to yourself to pick up Analog Dreams.  The price is amazing for what you get and there’s tools there to let you create even more sounds on your own.  Of course, if you already have Reason you should also check out Chris’s other products like Cyclone and his Rotators.  You won’t be sorry.

http://barrycaudill.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Analog-Dreams-Demo.mp3

I’m not quite ready to do a full review on my new Cannonball Big Bell Stone Series tenor but early reports are really good.  I would never want to do a full review without first playing it on the gig since for me nothing I do in the practice room is quite like the way I play live.  I do have a big band gig this weekend and I have a couple of louder concerts later in the month so I will definitely have some opportunities to put it through it’s paces.  I played it in a rehearsal for the big band this past weekend and I tried both necks – fat neck for the first have and the regular neck in the second half.  I tend to like the fat neck better but my wife came to my room to listen and she instantly said she liked the regular neck better…we’ll see how this plays out.

I’ve also been playing on Rigotti Gold reeds for a couple months now and I really like them so far.  The problem is I’ve only tried one box because of the way I break them in and my rotation system.  I would definitely want to check a couple more boxes before being sure about a full review.  I was playing Van Doren Java 3 1/2 and I switched to RG 3 1/2 M…so far I think that was the best choice…I got the comparison from a RG reed chart I think.  One interesting effect of switching reeds is I’m now firmly back on my Phil-Tone Eclipse HR mouthpiece rather than the Phil Barone Super New York I had been playing for the last year or so.

On the EWI front, I just bought a new Refill from Chris Vollstadt at EWI Reason Sounds called Analog Dreams.  I’ve been playing them for a few hours and I’m pretty happy with them so far.  The entire Refill (for Propellerhead’s Reason) is comprised of some emulations of vintage synths and they’re all very tweakable.  This Refill is also a new approach for Chris containing less sounds at a very reasonable price.

Finally, I just took delivery of a mouthpiece to try from Pete Thomas of “Taming the Saxophone”.  It’s a new metal mouthpiece called the PPT he’s been working on and I received it as part of a passaround through Sax on the Web Forum.  I’ve signed up for several passarounds in the past and this is the first time I actually got to play the mouthpiece in question…usually the passaround seems to fall apart I guess because someone buys the mouthpiece and that shuts everything down.  Since this is a first I’m kind of excited to actually get to try something new and comment on it.

Look for these and other reviews along with some audio recordings in the near future.

I’m using the EWI 4000s as my main controller even though my EWI USB is very capable and MUCH lighter.  The primary reason for this is the extra octaves available on the 4000s since I end up making a lot of splits (assigning different patches to different ranges for quick transitions in songs or also useful for layering multiple sounds to play on the same key) for different songs.  In addition, all of the octave rollers are connected whereas the USB version uses a software trick for the highest and lowest octaves.  I have both EWI set up so they feel very comfortable and I generally use the USB version when I’m practicing or learning songs at home.  One more thing, it’s also great to be able to take the 4000s back to the dressing room with a pair of headphones and play the internal synth without having to have anything else.

The rest of the hardware starts with a 2010 MacBook Pro (i7 processor).  I’ve never been a  big fan of the whole Mac/PC feud because I feel both are very capable.  In my day job I make video and computer games so I could easily say without a shadow of a doubt that gamers should have a PC but everything else is pretty much equal in my experience…except for music stuff.  I spent many years doing music stuff on my PC before getting this MB Pro and I can say categorically that things are just easier with a Mac.  You can definitely get a PC to do all the same things but sometimes you have to jump through some serious hoops to make it happen.  For this purpose a Mac is just the better choice and that’s that for me.  Your results may vary.

Finally I use an M-Audio Fast Track Ultra as an audio and MIDI interface.  It has very powerful hardware routing capabilities built in as well as a virtual mixer on the computer.  That allows me to submix all of my microphones for my acoustic gear (Shure Beta 98 for saxes and a Countryman ISO Max for flute) with the internal synths and give one mix to the main board rather than taking up 3 channels.  It’s a great interface for a home studio as well because it has decent routing for separate headphone mixes built in.  For home use and for other, less intense situations I have either an M-Audio Ozone keyboard/audio/MIDI interface and an Audio Technica AT2020 USB microphone.

For sounds I am using Reason 6.5 from Propellerheads Software, Sample Tank (as well as several other software instruments) from IK Multimedia, and Garage Band when I need a VST host.  Reason is an amazingly versatile DAW (digital audio workstation) with robust audio recording/mixing/mastering tools and several world class virtual synths.  It’s an incredibly complete package with sampling, granular synthesis, subtractive synthesis, FM, and a HUGE powerhouse called Thor that is nearly a fully modular synth.

There are a couple extra things that really make Reason powerful – one is something called a Combinator (a holding container for synths and effects that makes it easy to create powerful splits and layers with tons of real-time control options.  The other is CV (control voltage).   Before MIDI, most synths that could “talk” to each other used control voltage and the original Lyricon made excellent expressive use of it.  CV in Reason allows many things to control other things without the “steppiness” of MIDI.  The concept seems simple (like you could have the LFO (low frequency oscillator) of one synth change the frequency cutoff of another but once you start patching the virtual wires you see how amazingly powerful and flexible the system really is.

If there’s one thing that Reason is slightly lacking in, it’s in the area of “real” sounds – emulations of real instruments.  Out of the box, Reason is great at synth stuff – it’s used for dance music a LOT – but when you’re used to having the VL-70m or the Roland XV 5050 (or even my old Kurzweil K2000r) this software feels pretty light in this department although there are packages available that add more sounds.  That’s why I purchased Sample Tank…it has thousands of sounds and has WAY more “real” instruments although it has some great synth stuff as well.  If you only had the money to buy one piece of software, though, I would easily recommend Reason for all of your EWI uses.

It’s pretty easy to make your own patches once you know what you’re doing but there are two guys you should definitely check out: Bernie Kenerson and Chris Vollstadt.  Bernie has been playing EWI (and Lyricon before that) for many years and has achieved an extremely high level of proficiency on it.  He’s also a prolific and talented creator of wind control patches.  You can buy several Refills (packaged banks of sounds in Reason) on his website including combinators, three sets of Thor patches and an entire bank of Sample Tank patches that you can use with the free version of Sample Tank so you are only out the cost of the patches.  These run the gamut from simple to incredibly complex and you can even learn from the patches so you can make better ones yourself.  His website also contains a ton of helpful tips, exercises, and sound examples.  Bernie even teaches EWI lessons via Skype.  I own pretty much everything Bernie makes patch-wise.

Chris Vollstadt has a website called EWI Reason Sounds and not only does he have sounds for sale, he’s also very good at writing EWI and Reason tutorials.  You can learn a lot from Chris and he makes even complex concepts seem easy and understandable.  Chris also has several Refills available for sale and they are also quite good.  First, he has a windcontroller bank (you could just as easily use a Yamaha WX controller as an EWI) called Cyclone that has 56 patches, 14 custom effects, and a user guide to explain everything.  He also has two Refills of some very advanced “Rotator” patches based on things Michael Brecker used to do on the Oberheim Expander…non-static chords with a variety of sounds.  One Refill is more synth sounds and the other is more sample based (orchestral or big band for example).  As with Bernie, I own everything Chris makes because the price is reasonable and the value is excellent.  Even without the refills, though, Chris’s site is a must as he provides those excellent tutorials and lots of free downloads.  Some of the free stuff I’ve gotten from him has become part of my “go to” sounds.

All in all, I love my virtual rig and don’t see myself going back to a hardware rig any time soon.  It’s lighter, more flexible, and just as easy to set up.