Hi Jesse,
Good to hear your reply and thankyou for your interest.
To clarify, my post was geared towards having breath controller CC available for sending out based on the input level from the mic, although I would also love to see Thumbjam being able to accept breath controller CC too.
Yes, I have used my EWI to control TJ and it works very well. When I need a good Sax/Flute/String sound with my EWI on my iPhone, Thumbjam and BS-16i(with SF2 suppport) are my go to app. In TJ I have to edit the instrument so that the minimum volume is near zero to allow expressive control with the EWI. This is not true breath control cc I guess but it works well enough so far. (when you have incorporated Velocity layering I think having true breath cc control would become more important. Please make sure that velocity value does NOT limit the overall maximum volume though.)
So my post's emphasis was on actually using TJ as a Wind Controller Instrument in it's own right WITHOUT the need for an external wind controller like the EWI or WX.
You should check out various apps that use the mic as breath control like Wivi Band/Orchestra, Orcarina, iSaxophone...etc. None of them is a serious music app though and certainly does not have MIDI support. It also gets a bit tricky to blow onto the iPhone mic and I am also a bit concerned with saliva eventually damaging the mic so I am looking out for a good headworn headphone with a boom mic. I am kinda hoping that someone would be making a dedicated breath controller but it is highly unlikely as even the popular Yamaha BC3 has been discontinued.
I am no MIDI guru as I just know enough to get by.
However as TJ already has the vocoder function sending out MIDI signals to be used by both TJ itself and external apps/hardware, I would imagine that it would be relatively easy to filter out the note data, leaving just the relevant controller signals, turning Thumbjam into both a Wind Controller Instrument on it's own, or use it as a pure breath controller for external apps/hardware. (you would have seen my seperate requests for a piano keyboard and soundfont support, both would make TJ a lot more useful as well for the more serious players.
)
The following is an extract I have copied from my recommendation of Thumbjam and BS-16i to be used with the EWI posted on Patchman's windcontroller forum:
http://www.patchmanmusic.com/forum/view ... 503#p19503
"As for Apps on the iOS, all the above mentioned synth apps works well. However as I am more into sample based realistic instrument sounds, I have found two apps that work very well: Thumbjam and BS-16i:
Thumbjam is a surprisingly expressive and playable app in it's own right, with many good acoustic/synth sounds to use and download. I have found that to use it well with the EWI, especially the wind/string types of instruments, I have to change the minimum volume setting range to near zero under Edit >Controls>Volume, and make sure that the Use Core Midi option is on under Pref>MIDI Control. I then save the edited instruments as EWI-Tenor Sax..etc. There are many more bells and whistles to be explored like loop recording with loop samples, Sonomo Audio copy/paste, background playing, and even uing it via CoreMIDI Netsession to control your soft instrument on your Mac! You can also import your own sounds or create your own instruments(gets a bit more technical though). I just love this little app. (Warning: one night I was lying in bed with my earphones on playing with Thumbjam, and forgot to turn off Logic and netsession on my Mac and all the while Logic was blasting out Overdrive Guitar as I played with my iPhone!!!! Woke up the whole house and the wife got a bit cranky! You've now been warned!)
BS-16i is also a less well known app that allow you to use your own SF2 sound fonts that immediately open up endless possibilities for sound choices as there are literally thousands of them floating around the net or you can make up your own with software like AWave. I bought a couple of SF2 packs from eBay and now don't know what to do with so many sounds!!!! Load just a single GM2 SF2 and you have 127 sounds to choose from immediately and you can load 4 sf2 at a time(up to around 2-300mB or it crashes) altough you can keep hundreds of sf2 on board. Once again to use it well, you have to tinker with it's settings a bit. Increase it's volume to max, and also it needs MidiBridge to work. This apps does take a bit of digging into to work well but once I had done that it is indispensible for me. Do upload your own sf2 sounds as the ones shipped are crappy. I would also like to see BS16i being able to play as a background app. At the moment it just shut down whenever another app is opened up.
Many other apps do work with the EWI like MusicStudio, FL Studio, 50in1 Piano...etc to different degree. Many of them limit the maximum volume/amplitude from the velocity value though, and my trick to circumvene that is to turn off Breath Sensitivity variable velocity output and set the EWI constant output velocity to a comfortable high value(high enough but not too strong an attack):
Setting>BS>vE
Setting>vE
Most sampling based app on the iOS only uses velocity for volume and do nothing to change attack/timber/filter anyway and even if they do it is a fair compromise for usability I think. This way you can start a note off very soft and have it swell to the maximum volume. (think nice string build up)
Sampletank is an interesting one. It has many quality sounds but at the moment it is un-usable with the EWI as it does not respond to cc control well if at all. I have contacted IKMultimedia and was told that in the upcoming update it will include cc controls and many other enhancement. So I am keeping my eyes out for it.
I also use other apps as backing tracks. I'd like to mention Sweet Midi Player as you can use your own SMF and GM DLS(like sf2) and it plays in the background, then you've got literally thousands of songs with your own preferred GM Sound set. Chordots/Band in a Hand has some nice chord patterns too. In fact if you use a background playing app for your EWI, you can use any music player to jam and play with. Various karaoke apps are good for this.
One problem that I have found with many of the apps is that it seems like sometimes they are not receiving the note on command and miss some notes during playing and is very annoying. I have not found this to be the case with Thumbjam and BS-16i but happens a lot with 50in1 Piano and MusicStudio. If anyone has a solution with this I would love to hear about his/her solution."
I apologize for the very long post but I just cannot contain my excitement at the prospect!
