Article By: Terry Wilhite

MIDI has always amazed me because it is simple, yet captures every nuance of one's playing that can be recorded and played back later. Although I had used MIDI in the keyboard and drum machine world for a long time, I was most amazed by MIDI when I purchased a Yamaha WX-5 MIDI Wind Controller.

While it looks kind of like a clarinet, people still nudge my wife in the choir and ask, “What's that thing he's playing?”

My description of it is this: it's a keyboard that you blow! It makes no noise in and of itself. It simply sends MIDI data from the instrument, via a MIDI cable, to the MIDI IN of my synthesizer. I set the synthesizer to a flute, clarinet, French horn (any instrument), and blow; music comes from the synthesizer, played from the WX-5.

Amazingly, the sensor in the mouth piece is so good that it is more sensitive than the clarinet that I play. The harder I blow, the louder the sound. The more I tighten my lips on the mouthpiece and reed, the more the pitch bends. All of this sensitive information is converted into MIDI data.

Fortunately, to make this work, I didn't need to know anything about MIDI other than how to connect the cable. The fingering can be set to saxophone or flute fingering. I chose the sax setting because it is very close to the clarinet fingering that I know.

The WX-5 also responds to “tonguing”, the technique of stabbing (staccato) notes for emphasis. What's nice also is that I've been able to adjust the settings to the “emphysema mode” (requiring very little air compared to traditional instruments) and I've bypassed the pitch bend, so I really don't have to worry about my poor embouchure (mouth control, hey I'm a keyboard player at heart, for goodness sake.)

If you can play a woodwind instrument, you've got to check it out. The instrument comes with an inter-changeable recorder-style mouthpiece and a sax mouthpiece. Someone who can play a simple reed recorder should have no trouble playing the WX-5.

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