12 Facts About Wind controller

Wind controller, sometimes referred to as a wind synthesizer, is an electronic wind instrument.

The most common form of wind controller uses electronic sensors to convert fingering, breath pressure, bite pressure, finger pressure, and other gesture or action information into control signals that affect musical sounds.

The control signals or MIDI messages generated by the wind controller are used to control internal or external devices such as analog synthesizers or MIDI-compatible synthesizers, synth modules, softsynths, sequencers, or even non-instruments such as lighting systems.

For example, a performer who has pressed a long held note on the keyboard with a sustained sound, such as a string pad, could blow harder into the breath Wind controller set to control volume to make this note crescendo, or gradually blow more and more gently, to make the volume die away.

Fingering and shape of the wind controller put no acoustic limitations on how the wind controller actually sounds.

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For example, a wind controller can be made to sound like a trumpet, saxophone, violin, piano, pipe organ, choir, synthesizers or even a barnyard rooster.

Steiner was the inventor of the brass style EVI wind controller designed for brass players, as well as the EWI designed for woodwind players.

Wind controller's research started in the late 1960s and his first wind controller was the Steiner Parker EVI released in 1975.

Originally this EVI was only a "Wind controller" which sent control voltages only for pitch and gate and was to be connected to commercial analog synthesizers.

Recent addition to the wind controller category is the Synthophone, an entirely electronic wind controller embedded in the shell of an alto saxophone.

Wind controller players do not have access to as many of these controls and thus are often limited in exploiting all of the potential voicings and articulation changes of their synthesizers, but the technologies of physical modeling, sample modeling and hybrid technologies promise more expression control for wind controller players.

An example of a hardware synthesizer with wind controller support is the Yamaha VL70-m which uses physical modeling synthesis.