EWI4000s Compared with Real Sax?

3 thoughts on “EWI4000s Compared with Real Sax?”

1. The EWI isn’t going to sound like a saxophone. You are not going to get anywhere near what a real saxophone sounds like. Same for the EWI5000. You could midi it to a computer and spend some money to get a sound library that has a good sax….but why?

   I think your best bet would be to just enjoy the analogue sounds you can get out of the EWI4000 (ala Michael Brecker).

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2. The EWI4000s comes with a built in analog synthesizer that cannot reproduce real sounding acoustic instruments.
   You would have to use an external sound module or software synth to play sampled acoustic instruments like saxophones, etc.

   In this case any EWI / EVI (or most other wind controllers) will do the same thing.

   Here’s an example that compares my acoustic alto sax with my EWI alto sound played on my DynaSample XPression (which is a Selmer Mark VI that I sampled myself for the XPression):

   http://www.dynasample.com/demos/XPression_Alto-Sax-Test.mp3

   One side is the sax – the other side is the EWI.
   (You can guess which is which …)

   Besides the sound itself (which is pretty close although it was a different horn) I can get pretty much the same dynamics, phrasing, vibrato, etc.

   This needs practicing the EWI seriously in order to have a control that is similar to the control that you can get on a real sax! (The EWI does not do any kind of musical inflections on its own.)

   Don’t use any sound modules or software synths that were made for keyboards instead of wind controllers. Those will not give you any reasonable response to your playing!!!

   Ingo

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   1. Hi, I just started using my new Ewi.
      Can you tell me please what number did you use (in sounds settings) to be as close as possible to Saxophone’s sound?
      Thanks!!

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