Feasibility of a trombone-like wind midi controller?

[Gabriel06]

Recently I've been thinking of the feasibility of a midi controller that would function similarly to the trombone.
The big thing I've been racking my brain on is the question of: slide or no slide?

The conclusion I've come to is something like the Theremin, where you would move just your hand in front of some kind of sensor and it would change the note, like you were using an invisible slide.

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts and whether or not any of you have tried creating something like this.

[robcat2075]

This is something I've often thought about but decided was mostly impractical because of the problem of tracking the embouchure input.

A WW controller can work because every note of its range can be mapped to a specific key combination but a slide position or valve combination is ambiguous on a brass instrument without also knowing what partial the embouchure is choosing.

I'm sure you've already contemplated this but I mention it for anyone new to this idea.

However, IF... the embouchure were not an issue and all you lacked was some way to track trombone positions 1-7 I'd suggest some sort Rasberry Pi circuit board project with an accelerometer gizmo

https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-acc ... r-adxl345/

That could convert the motion of the hand into digital data and then some code in a computer could filter that into position information. But still the problem of the embouchure...?

Perhaps a more practical MIDI trombone would be to quiet it with a mute like the Yamaha silent brass and feed the mic into a pitch to MIDI converter such as this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WmgBVVvyj8

That would retain all the standard trombone technique and still get you a MIDI result

[BGuttman]

Yamaha used to make something akin to the EWI (Electronic Woodwind Instrument) called the EBI (Electronic Brass Instrument). It had 3 buttons for valves and a roller for octaves. It never really caught on.

An electronic slide is going to be a challenge since the watchword for these things was compactness. Maybe they would make it use a slide like the Getzen slide trumpet (half the size of a trombone slide). Using pickups for the exact positions so the exact slide location was less critical than on a true slide trumpet. Glissando (portamento) would have to be done with a rotary varistor rather than with slide position.

[mbarbier]

We made a thing with Jeff Snyder (and instrument builder at Princeton) called the feedback trombone that basically turns the horn into a wind driven feedback controller. It's still in a fairly early iteration, but could pretty easily be used as a midi controller. Driven by a wind sensor like the WW controllers. He got around the embouchure issue by having a small joystick where the bass trombone paddle would be that slides you up and down the overtime series. Currently it's a thing that mounts on the horn with a simple laser that measures slide distance. It's technically a feedback instrument, but could take any input and function pretty similar to one of the WW controllers.

On a similar side, Sam Pluta did a piece (Matrix for George Lewis- think there's a score video on Vimeo) for for two trombone with silent brass that's basically using the silent brass input as a midi decide to drive super collider. As a trombonist, it's a much more comfortable playing experience than Jeff's setup because you're actually buzzing rather than just.blowing air (which isnt to say Jeff's isn't fun too, it just feels less intuitive to not be able to directly change things with the embouchure).

But agreed with Bruce about compactness - none of these options make it smaller, which seem to be one of the big draws of things like the EWI.

[hyperbolica]

I've thought about this as well. I don't think you have to be as literal as you're trying to be. You can't really use embouchure without a solid resonator to lock in and give the feedback of the partials. You could try to get fancy with buzz frequency or pressure level, but that doesn't seem very reliable. You can handle partials a different way, say buttons on the left hand. The trumpet thing used a twister device to control octave which I thought was very awkward. I would think the goal of this would be for a current trombonist to be able to pick it up and play it without a lot of extra learning.

The slide could be very short, maybe with some electronic assistance for locking in to the right note, like auto-tune does for singers. This could be enabled or disabled so you can get slide effects. The whole thing could be the size of a sandwich.

[robcat2075]

I've got it!

This still uses the Rasberry Pi/Accelerometer gizmo as your controller in your right hand and it returns a position in XYZ space.

A little math and trigonometry converts that into two values...

• a distance from an imaginary origin point

• an up/down angle from that origin point

The distance controls position on the slide
The angle controls which partial is being played

Every combination of those two can be mapped to a specific MIDI note.

This adds the visual bonus of having the player actually reach higher for higher partials.

AirBone1.jpg

What if you have to skip a partial in a slur?

The controller will have a trigger on it. When you press the trigger it temporarily freezes the current distance/angle reading until you arrive at your destination and release it.

[2bobone]

i have both a Yamaha "WindJammer" and an AKAI EVI [Electronic Valve Instrument] and have had a lot of enjoyment out of them for years. I'm quite proficient on recorders, so the WindJammer was attractive to me because it can use recorder fingerings quite easily. The AKAI EVI really requires some dedication to become a decent player, although in the hands of someone like Nyle Steiner it is remarkable. He really invented and developed the EVI and he is something inspiring to hear ! Flash forward about 30 years and now Roland offers a "wind controller" that can easily be programmed to work like an EVI by using only three fingers [as on valves] and octave keys and still can be used as a woodwind-fingered instrument ! Of course, these new ones have BlueTooth so the wire tangles are part of the past. They are lots of fun especially when your "chops" are tired. Who knows, a trombone model may be in the wings -------.

[DonH]