The AKAI EWI is an Electric Saxophone - Wind Driver for midi sound sources and USB Driver for soft synths! Greg Vail has been playing the AKAI EWI since the early 80's - EWI 1000 and 2000 - and now records and performs on the NEW AKAI 4000 Wind Driver.

The Akai 4000S EWI fingers like a saxophone. It is 100% electronic and makes no sound with out turning it on and plugging it into a speaker system or plugging in some headphones. The sound that comes out an EWI is confusing to most people because it can sound like any instrument an electronic keyboard can emulate. 

If you have owned a little electric keyboard, you know it can sound like a piano or organ and has drums sounds, clarinet, violin, guitar and every other sound you can imagine. Before electronic instruments, an instrument looked a certain way and sounded a certain way; people could see a Cello and know what it was going to sound like. (Shape=Sound)

Most people still want to package a shape with the sound it makes. I hear it all the time. OH, So that's what an EWI sounds like! The answer is always the same - YES AND 1,000 other things. The EWI can sound like any sound you have ever heard....


The EWI translates the data a sax player creates while playing a saxophone type instrument into keyboard language - known as MIDI. When you blow, it reads how hard you are blowing with sensors and translates that to MIDI volume or tone changes. When you finger a 3 note G, it reads that fingering as a G note and translates that to keyboard MIDI language.

All 10 of your fingers, your mouth and your air pressure are all read and translated to MIDI thru sensors on the wind driver so you can play keyboard sounds with more of the expression a saxophone has. The amount of control a sax player has over the sound all work together on the EWI to make a keyboard sound much more expressive than it could be played on the physical keyboard (although it often takes some programing on the sound source to get the EWI to sound great with the sound you plugged it into to.)

The most accurate name or description for an EWI is - WIND DRIVER. The EWI is a WIND INSTRUMENT and a MIDI DRIVER - it takes all the data a wind player creates while blowing and fingering, translates it all to a common electronic instrument language called MIDI, and drives every electronic sound you plug it into using saxophone/wind fingering.


There are differences from a real saxophone and an EWI. The big one is the range and octave key mechanism. Saxophone has a range of 2 1/2 octaves before altissimo, EWI has nearly the full range of a piano - 9 octaves almost 10. The issue most people have with playing an EWI right out of the box is the crazy octave key strip. The other huge difference is nothing moves on the EWI - it is all touch sensitive - no keys.

Most complaints come from these 2 big design differences but I have seen people give up over the right hand thumb that rests between bend up and bend down plates - one friend COULD NOT stop touching the top-bend up plate thinking the EWI needed a thumb rest like the sax has.

With practice, the EWI can be mastered much faster than a totally new instrument since so much of the skill a sax player has learned will apply to the EWI. The problem is many don't want it to be different at all and will give up within a week realizing it IS NOT A SAX.

This is a very brief description of the EWI and the difference between the EWI and the Saxophone.

Greg Vail has a number of helpful sites online and has been providing free help on a number of topics online for years now. Greg is a professional Sax Player with a number of CDs released as leader. Greg has also recorded on hundreds of CDs and worked with a large list of artists in a wide variety of styles and genres.


NEW - JUST UPDATED JULY 2010
VIDEO page update - Nyles Steiner talks about the EVI on the morning news - very interesting...
Rock Guitar Clips are the first on the Sound Clips Page - JUST ADDED


NEW EWI dotcom ---- What is in here??????
HOME PAGE - you are there now
    <<<  EWI PICTURES
    <<<  EWI VIDEO
    <<<  EWI Sound Clips / Samples


MORE Online EWI 4000 INFORMATION and HELPS


THE OFFICIAL AKAI -- EWI HOME PAGE
EWI Set ups - EWI Gear
EWI questions and answers - helps
EWI gear and accessory links, stores, sites
Musicians that play the EWI - links and info



The AKAI EWI 4000 is a very sophisticated instrument that resembles a saxophone but has a learning curve to be able to play and can do things a traditional wind instrument could never do - I LOVE IT!!!!!

JULY 2010