The AKAI EWI is an Electric Saxophone - Wind Driver - Pictures from shows, sessions and EWI 4000 images.

Greg Vail - AKAI EWI 4000 - APRIL 2010




Yes it is fuzzy, but it is hard to get a good picture of me PLAYING an EWI since it feels pretty rock guitar when you solo, and you have to flip your hair around when you play rock guitar!! I could work on the painful faces I make though! It is not hard to play or painful in any way.... lol.....










If you pose with it - you can get a clear picture! My baby Ness took this picture and I'm glad she said HEY DAD and did. Of all my instruments, I have the least EWI pictures of any of them!!





Greg Vail EWI 4000



The 2010 EWI rig with VLM70 Module



This image was taken at a live TV session for Christina - the runner up for the Latin American Idol competition 2009. I was called to play sax one 1 song but the band was recording 3 songs for Walmart Latin division, and I wanted to find something to contribute to her music. I tracked Cello parts off the record on 1 track and added French Horn parts on another track - of course playing saxophone on the sax feature. On this session I was all midi, pulling sounds from the Yamaha Virtual Synth VL70 module - turbo. The roll of the EWI on this date was Orchestral parts. Cant wait to see the video when it is released!



This image was from a live show - the KSBR BASH 2007. I still had big hair - haha! The gig is a giant jam band with well known Smooth Jazz Artists playing together, reading each others songs and featured on 1 number during the event. Since there was a ton of sax players I broke out this bad boy for the closing number and didn't play very smooth on it either.... See the Video Page for the clip shot that night.

These next EWI Images comes from my last project I used the old EWI 1000 - RazzorSharp


The Old EWI 1000 had a driver and a sound source EWV 2000 - 4 rack spaces of very lame design but really cool old 2 oscillator synthesis. I got this one back in the early 80's! It is now retired......



I was an acting lead guitar in this heavy rock band, pulling guitar sounds from the Roland 2020 module and running thru a pile of processing.



The foot pedals - left Midi controller, amp channel foot switch, chorus, multi-fx and volume pedal.



It was very overwhelming! Left EWI, then EWI rack, then sax rack. The rack on the right was the PA rack and I was running a Fender amp for the EWI and all the foot pedals - it was a really long set up and longer tear down.....

Go back up to the top picture and compare - the EWI driver and the little module on top of the rack is all I needed for the EWI that day! The rack is my regular sax rack for FX and monitor control. Much easier in 2010!!!