Jon HancockDaniel Ozick: "Auld Lang Syne for programmable music box and Zoot wind quartet"
YouTube
Daniel Ozick: "The Addams Family on a Zoot"
Daniel Ozick: "Scarborough Fair on a Zoot as harmonica, cello and piano"
Chief Zoot Maker Daniel Ozick plays "Georgia on My Mind"
WindySynth: "Warbl2 at Sea"
Playing an electronic wind instrument the size of a descant (soprano) recorder that's producing a completely convincing trombone sound is absolutely wild.
Decided to invest in a modelled instrument sound for the Zoot, this one a SWAM tenor trombone, and it's staggeringly good. It will take me a while to dial in the many, many settings perfectly, but even so I suspect that most people would not think that what they heard was coming from a synthesiser. Trombonists and orchestra musicians would spot it—there are a few giveaways, made worse by my playing—which is no surprise; regardless, it's a hoot to play. Lots of Wallace and Gromit theme being played at Whartson Hall this evening.
Playing around with guitar pedal effects on my Zoot electronic wind instrument, running through a very cheap little electronic effects box and a Flight Tiny6 ukulele amplifier. Nothing fancy, but sounds decent enough that I might look into better options in future. The main advantage of these particular items is portability.
Most of the time I have the headphones plugged in to avoid annoying, well, pretty much everybody, but this is an opportunity to crank it up a bit.
#Zoot #ElectronicWindInstruments #Ukulele #MusicSelfPlayedIsHappinessMade
After a lot of searching I discovered that someone has indeed created a software synth that appears to make the same kinds of sound available to the original 1970s Lyricon electronic wind instrument. Very exciting! and a remarkably reasonable price.
https://www.davidsonaudioandmultimedia.com/products/lyrihorn-1
Brilliant, looks to be just what I was hoping to find. Designer had a great reputation and seems to be very highly regarded in the (somewhat niche) world of wind synths.
Except… You can buy it, but it won't work. The designer set up his software downloads to require a separately (manually) issued code, tied to your computer, to work… and he appears to have been failing to issue them for any of his products, or respond to emails and calls, for about a year. A lot of unhappy and very disappointed people out there.
So… bum. Heavy sigh.
Patched together a fingering chart for the Zoot from screenshots of the app display. Unfortunately, only the MacOS program can output a PDF chart, so I had to bodge this one in Open Office and Paint. Not the prettiest cut and paste, but close enough for jazz… assuming I could play jazz.
I did the same for the basic recorder fingering and put it on the back. Since that doesn't cover four octaves it only needed two screenshots.
I found an interesting device developed by someone in Japan and occasionally for sale in kit form, the AFUUE2R(Afue). It's an electronic wind instrument, and the designer is refreshingly honest about it:
"As you can see from the photo, the board number is printed on the surface due to a mistake, and the main body is made using a 3D printer, so the overall quality is low. Additionally, it is not durable or reliable for business use or live performance, and there is no guarantee against breakdowns. Please note that the quality of the instrument is inferior to commercially available electronic instruments in terms of sound quality and expressiveness"
