Prism EWI screenshots now in user library documents

I have posted to the User LIbrary my complete screenshot set of the modifications I made to Prism, to make it work with the AKAI EWI. I play a 4000s.

I've essentially fitted it out with my breath curve/threshold/xfade macro, and used an FM synth for the exciter 'impulse'. It's a breathy impulse, with absolutely no mallet!

Anyway. I can't post the ensemble itself, so anyone interested will have to follow the screenshots and plug in my breath macro. If you like EWI but not the sounds, I strongly suggest you try this.

The condor patch especially, with it's handling of partials, is worth it alone.

Portamento
Legato
Independent Breath resistance/ease on all macro matrix parameters
Breath controlledFM exciter signal.


There is a detailed description on the document download page in the UL.

 

I suspect it's overkill to use a whole FM4 for the exciter. It could be reduced later.

The Prism breath synth does produce some 'unpredictable' dynamics. But it is vastly more expressive for the EWI now I think.

The mixer sum and the modal decay needs adjusting on most of the presets.

 

Josh,

Kind Thanks for your upload!
Looking forward to trying it out over the Xmas holy days.

 

That's great, any improvements, let me know. It needs something to regulate the feedback volume I think, other wise you have to use one of the macro controls to turn down the mixer a bit with breath intensity.

I've stopped modifying for a while though, because I've got the condor patching working very nicely. Back to practicing.
I got Prism Effects for christmas from NI, which looks like it's going to answer these technical issues, haven't downloaded yet.

Btw leave out the keyboard scaling macro that I have on the screen, and also the threshold on the macro amount bipolar sliders is misbehaving. Works fine without it. I've left mine attached but I leave them at 0 threshold, it's an expressive thing though, so I intend to fix that. It works fine on the FM4 bit. If I figure it out I'll let you know.

There's a tiny amount of core editting in FM4 too. very simple though.

 

There's an mp3 of me auditioning a modified condor patch on EWI. I'm new to playing EWI but listen just for the tone colours etc. Condor also sounds good morphed with cleaner sounds.

Any tips on controlling the clipping on the other patches (without tweaking mixer sum) would be very much appreciated.

Josh

 

Hey Josh, I'm having trouble getting my FM4 to look like yours. Mainly, I don't really know what to do with all the extra AM inputs in the 4x5 matrix. Do you have a screenshot of the matrix?

 

I'll upload complete screenshots of fm4 tonight ie in about 12hrs.
I did a little core editing, and replaced the envelopes with breath.
One thing you will want to add later is a limiter somewhere in the feedback signal I think, if you want to make use of a wider variety of sounds. I've taken a break from the project to knuckle down to practice.

I hope you like the end product. With the limiter added, this would definitely be my EWI synth of choice. The sounds that don't clip and work 'predictably' are great. Later I will look at incorporating filter envelopes, and fine tuning the portamento.

 

I tried to post this as an update to my UL post, but here it is..

Any other questions/observations just shoot. Like I say, the mods aren't perfect but there are worthwhile sounds working, and more with a bit more fiddling.

You can see that I stripped FM4 to a mono channel. I thought it might save cpu.

The rate range of the portamento needs adjusting, because when you put your thumb on the glide strip it makes the portamento too slow

For sounds that are way out of control dynamics-wise, I assigned one of the macro controllers to turn down the mixer sum. This actually produces some interesting results with delay sounds like 'Spectrum'.

 

Sorry Dan, here are just the FM4 screenshots...

 

Thanks, Josh. Send me your email and let's stay in touch. I'm sure I'll need a bit of hand-holding... LOL. Also I've been asked by someone else how to get in touch with you and didn't know how. danperezsax@gmail.com

 

I'm an idiot. here is the actual modified fm4 instrument for you to wire up.

 

Ok, so here are the actual macros that I have either made or modified from UL synths, that I used in the prism breath synth. There are also screenshots with blue wires for visual clarity.

There is also a screenshot of the front panel set up for the CondorEWI patch, notice that the 1pm resting position of the orange mixer sum dial, and that it is tweaked by a macro controller ( and observe by how much).

The porta dial has to be midi learned by the EWI glide strip.