Software Tools for Electronic Wind Instrument Performance
Bruno Degazio · SOURCE Sheridan's Institutional Repository (Sheridan College) · 2008
Even though alternate musical controllers such as the Electronic Wind Instrument (EWI) significantly extend the expressive range of MIDI synthesizers and software virtual instruments, the computer-based editing and manipulation of data produced by these controllers has remained in an undeveloped state. A primary problem has to do with the binding of note data to expressive information such as breath controller and pitch bend data. MIDI, originally designed as a real-time performance protocol, has very weak binding of such data into higher-level musical structures; so weak in fact that even note endings are unconnected to their beginnings. The author describes a binding paradigm and data structure which addresses this problem and which has proven very effective in the manipulation of recorded EWI MIDI performance. Four further challenges — data integrity, spurious notes, erratic velocities and inaccurate rhythm — are described along with the software solutions which have been developed to deal with them.