Availability of Other Resources for Learning Instruments

Hello,



I recently purchased and installed The Flutes and have reviewed the manual. I'm also planning on purchasing some other instruments.



I'm enjoying using Flutes and beginning to appreciate the importance of using the correct settings on the interface.



I’m finding myself spending a lot of time experimenting with different combinations of settings. My question is whether there are any further resources such a blogs or ideally youtube videos of people sharing different setting combinations and approaches they have found of help.



It would be great to have access to some expert tips to save time and maximize efficiency working with the instruments and settings. I've listened to some very good performances on youtube, but none where the performer shared what settings were used to create a particular sound.



Please let me know if there are any such resources available.



Thank you!

Comments

  • edited 8:56AM
    I do every few days/weeks a backup of latest Reaper project, key mapping, EWI configuration file and SWAM presets to this folder:



    https://www.dropbox.com/sh/trza83cwh20ybj2/KaCR1ylvPN



    Kobi
  • edited 8:56AM
    I did lots of tweaking in past couple of weeks to SWAM presets due to the improved attack and sound of latest updates and a preset shared in this forum that inspired me to make some changes to my flute preset. Best way to explore tweaking sound is to start with default preset for your controller type (wind controller in my case) and change one parameter at a time with trial and error. I usually spend a few days tweaking and then play and record for a few weeks prior to tweaking again.



    Lots of parameters interact with each other and also if you use external reverb and compression like me, you need to use different parameters for SWAM, in order to avoid over compressed and reverberating sound.



    If you compare my presets to default, you will find many parameters are same as default and many are very different (e.g. Breath noise and random dynamics). When I change EWI USB settings (e.g. Breath gain or key delay), I need to go tweak again the instruments.



    The goal of reaching the best sound and response is never ending...I do enjoy the journey.



    Kobi
  • edited 8:56AM
    I recently got couple of QSC K10 powered speakers and really love how the sample modeling virtual instruments comes alive through them. I did lots of tweaks to my SWAM presets and the reaper live setup and placed in the Dropbox folder above.

    Kobi
  • edited 8:56AM
    Really Nice !

    (But not exactly cheap ;) )



    -Michael
  • edited 8:56AM
    I took recordings of me playing live setup with piano player (using pianoteq for piano) to stores and tried lots of powered speakers. Was looking for something that would be detailed and clear. That would make the virtual sounds as deep, spacious and full as the real thing, but still be light weight to carry for a gig. That would sound good in both low volume, as a monitor and in large room/outdoor high volume as PA.



    Since the K10 meets all the above for me, I think it is actually a good deal :)



    The tenor sax and trombone never sounded so great. It was previously frustrating to tweak every nuance of each virtual intrument and then find out it sounds completely different with the cheap PA in the cafe/bar I was playing in. Now I can bring my owned tweaked sound with me.
  • edited 8:56AM
    Congrats !



    -Michael
  • edited 8:56AM
    Kobir wrote: I did lots of tweaking in past couple of weeks to SWAM presets due to the improved attack and sound of latest updates and a preset shared in this forum that inspired me to make some changes to my flute preset.
    Hi Kobi,

    I just got my TEC BBC and try to use it with the "Flutes". Other than with the old warn out WX7, the behavior of the BBC is much more reproducible and hence tweaking makes more sense. So I started with the "default breath controller" configuration. The first thing I don't like is that with no blowing (I checked: the CC value is 0), a rather loud sound is produced, when I press a key. (With the WX7 this setting was not playable at all, as this device does not reliably generate a key off event when blowing is stopped.) Anyway, very soft volume can't be done this way.



    For the WX7 I set the SWAM Flute parameter "Expr Trigger Mode" so that the sound start and end is acknowledged without a key-on/off event, but this does not seem appropriate with a BBC.



    What do you think ?



    -Michael
  • edited 8:56AM
    Not sure what is causing this. Recommend you open ticket with swam tech support and/or new thread in this forum with "breath control swam setup" in title. Hopefully Perry would respond, as he is the expert on breath control setup.



    Check his video here:

  • edited 8:56AM
    Kobir wrote: Not sure what is causing this. Recommend you open ticket with swam tech support...

    I am not even sure if this is not by design.



    At what minimum Breath CC value a sound should start when slowly increasing the pressure ? (should not Matter if Breath or Wind controller.)



    OTOH, I right now am a little bit clueless with the Flutes. After I use "Default Breath controller" instead of "Default Wind Controller", things are rather funny. (While playing does work excellently.)



    e.g there should be a key switch "D#" for toggeling "Overblow", but pressing D# does not do anything.



    OTOH the keyswitch "D" dose activate (light up the button) "Overblow", but I don't hear any change in the sound with this (I always happily did use Overblow with the WX7, though.)



    Similarly many sliders and buttons on the GUI don't create an noticeable effect. The most obvious controllers do work as expected, though.



    -Michael
  • edited 8:56AM
    Watching the Midi monitor in the Reaper FX chain shows that the Flute starts producing a sound when the Breath controller CC value exceeds a value of 7.



    At that point a rather hard attack is generated. I suppose this attack in fact is correct when assuming that the value jumps from zero to 8, but in fact I very slowly increased the CC. (I did this with the Breath controller. I could do a really solid test environment by creating a Midi track in Reaper, if this seems necessary).



    I did not find a parameter in the Flutes software that would influence this behavior. I tried to modify e.g. "Attack Start" or similar (I can't access the Flutes installation right now), but this (and as mentioned above many other parameters) do not seem to make any difference at all.



    (Of course I would like to be able to do a decent crescendo from silence to max overblow with my Flue :( )



    Is it possible that the SWAM software does not see some midi message even though the midi log in the FX chain does show them ? I seemingly don't ever see dropped note-on events.



    -Michael

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