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Reviews (2)
15 Jun, 2018
Good product
This is a good product, reasonably priced and high quality, delivered on time.
My only nitpick is the choice of bags. They are very flimsy. One broke in transit spilling part of the perlite in the box.
Not a major thing, but if you order keep a few large sacks handy to double bag them right away.
06 Apr, 2020
Good deal, but it is an instrument in its own right, so it requires practise and specific tecnique.
1 of 1 found this helpful It is a very good instrument, and I would highlight "instrument", in the sense that it does require practise to get good, but it does reward a musician with good expressivity.
Some technical skills are required though to have it all run smoothly and the sound banks which come with it are not great. They can be tweaked, but compared to expensive sound banks and models, like SampleModeling and similar, there is simply no comparison.
I use it on Windows 10 with Reaper, and I strongly suggest downloading a free program called EwiUSB, which allows to change all parameters and a free virtual midi interface such as LoopMIDI, which is required to use EwiUSB.
I was uncertain about getting this or the more expensive models which allow for playing without a computer and have direct midi ports.
I am quite happy with my choice. The only thing I miss from the more expensive options are an additional expression control, which would come useful, and perhaps the various toggles to change sensitivity and so forth.
Given there are several recurring questions about this online, here is my take:
- It is not a relacement for a saxophone, or a way to practise saxophone embochure. The fingering can be set to be somewhat similar to a sax, but it certainly does not feel the same and honestly there are millions of fingering combiantions which would not work on a sax and are very useful on this instrument.
- A main difficulty with the instrument is that the octave rollers is tricky to operate when moving between octaves. The keys are touch sensitive, so you cannot rest your fingers on them like you would on a sax. However, because of the way the ewi fingering works, there are sometimes ways around that, just, not with a conventional woodwind fingering. Also, one need sto get used not to touch the side keys accidentally.
For these reasons, even if the instrument is very light, using the provided neck strap is quite necessary to avoid straning.
In terms of tecnique, probably the most useful resurces are recorder related, because in the end it is more similar to a recorder than to brass or reed instruments.
Tonguing is possible, but in it's own way, I am not an expert but I do not think that it is as responsive to that as an actual woodwind.
Vibrato can be achieved biting lightly, by breath control for amplitude vibrato, or even through the pitch bending controls. But it requires setting things exactly and for the moment I am not achieving the ability to control it the way I can on string and wind instruments.
The usual breathing exercises raccomended for wind instruments are beneficial, as it is practising scales and arpeggios across the break.
I have to say that using it with a good virtual instrument, better than the provided ones, is quite necessary to sound expressive. I would like that akai provided at least one excellent instrument with it, instead of a ton of so and so samples.
Also, using this with instruments designed for keyboard will require some technical change to make them behave with a wind controller.
As for the specific refurbished instrument I received, it is as good as new, only the box was a bit tattered, it comes with all the accessories.