The Woodwind and the Brasswind has a little subsection on their site that they call “What The Pros Play”. And they have an article with multi-instrumentalist Jeff Kashiwa (of the Rippingtons). It starts with what he plays on and subsequent links to those instruments on the wwbw.com site. Towards the end, there are some fabulous insights on his EWI setup.
His EWI is no exception. Jeff used to travel with the EWI 4000s, wireless audio and midi, with a laptop and interface. Today Jeff uses the Akai 4000s with Patchman sounds, and has moved to an iPhone 4s set up attached to the side of the EWI with velcro.
He is using custom Logic EXS24 Multisamples which have been converted to Garageband for the iPhone app. Garageband is also generating the stereo delay and reverb. The internal audio and sampler outputs are routed with an iRig adapter in and out of the iPhone 4s with an inexpensive Radio Shack 1/8″ stereo headphone extension cable is used as the main output to the house sound system. He is stuck to a cable and not able to roam around on EWI thru the audience, BUT, how cool is that?? The entire system he once drug around on the road is pretty much just an iPhone now. I was impressed.
If you haven’t used iRig (or similar adapter) and Garageband with your EWI, you are missing out. For about $50 you can add a whole world of guitar amps and effects to your EWI. I am not sure why he’d have Logic samples in it though, as the iRig is purely an audio thing, and samples I would think would be controlled via Midi. That is not to say that he couldn’t also have one of the many Midi things available for iOS, like the iRig MIDI and a small little midi cable to the iPhone. Also, why he doesn’t pipe the sounds out of his iPhone into a wireless? Seems like you should be able to do it.
Anyhow, it’s an interesting little tidbit.
