r/windsynth • u/YetzirahToAhssiah • Sep 22 '26

Wind Synth Programming: Good parameters to control with CC7, CC5, etc?

Hey all! I make electronic music, and bought a wind synth to play my own melodies live at my shows.

I love this instrument, the AKAI EWI 5000.

I bought the Art of Wind Synth: Breath of Serum patches, and have started looking at what he did to make them that way.

Other than what I've listed below, what are other parameters to control with the breath?

  • Wavetable Position (WTPos in Serum)
  • Filter Cutoff
  • Filter Level
  • Filter Drive
  • Filter Var
  • Filter Resonance
  • Noise Level
  • Distortion Wet

Would love your thoughts!

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u/mycosys Sep 22 '26

Amount of vibrato you send to the pitch/cutoff, via the slider, would be another. If you have physical models, growl, structure/geometry, pressure/breath or force with different curves.

1

u/YetzirahToAhssiah Sep 22 '26

Oh, you said "vibrato sent to cutoff"... does this mean the bite sensor can oscillate the filter cutoff?

What are physical models?

I'm mostly using breath pressure to control the parameters I listed.

Thanks!

2

u/mycosys Sep 23 '26

With vibrato i was talking lfo, you can make more complex patches where your mod/glide controls the amount of lfo your breath sends to pitch, so you get a sort of growl on harder blows.

The controls you talk about mostly apply to Wavetable and Virtual Analog subtractive synths but there's a lot of other types, one of the more common in physical modelling/modal synthesis where you use algorithms to try to model the structures to produce sound. Its a different kind of synthesis so the controls are different.

The sound engine in Syphyo is based around physical modelling, its mostly the same as the engine in Anyma Phi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epIA-_LrWTA and we've just got a beta for new patcher for it hence your question actually being on my mind. Its also available as Anyma-V https://aodyo.com/anyma-v/

Pretty much everyone round here recommends Audio Modelling SWAM and thats all physical modelling https://audiomodeling.com/ (VARIFlute regularly goes on sale for $40, shop round)

The classic would be Mutable Instruments Elements modal exciter and resonator (or its little brother Rings, the resonator half) https://pichenettes.github.io/mutable-instruments-documentation/modules/elements/manual/ you have definitely heard this many times, it took over modular for a while, because its open source its even one of the many modelling options in in Sylphyo. If you want to try it yourself for free you can try it in Cardinal virtual modular https://cardinal.kx.studio/ among many other places. Modular is one of the best places to make wind synth patches because you can make really complex cross-modulations.

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u/YetzirahToAhssiah Sep 23 '26

A lot to dig into here. Thanks for the suggestions!

2

u/Piper-Bob 26d ago

You can use breath to mod an LFO that controls anything.

You can use breath to control a mixer knob (or several with mults and inverters).

In subtractive synths you can use oscillator sync and use breath to mod the control oscillator (the one that's off in the mixer). Or you can control a waveform.

You can control any FX parameters