Akai EVI 1000 Electronic Wind Instrument

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The EWI 1000, EWI 1000 and EWV 2000 from Akai belong to a series of electronic wind instruments developed by saxophonist Nyle Steiner. In 1975, he launched the first model, the Steiner EVI for brass players, which was simply a controller with a connection to other instruments. The instrument was further developed in 1980 in collaboration with Crumar. Steiner also built the woodwind version EWI and developed a MIDI interface around 1985. In 1987, Akai licensed Steiner's designs and launched the Akai EVI 1000 wind controller and the EWI 1000 woodwind controller together with the corresponding EWV 2000 sound module.

The mouthpiece is the central element of both the EVI and the EWI. They detect the air pressure of the blow and the lip pressure. The EVI uses the mouth pressure to switch the glide function, while the EWI uses it as a vibration sensor. Vibration information can be routed to VCO, PWM, VCF, VCA and pitch bend, breath pressure to VCO, PWM, VCF, filter resonance and VCA. There is also real-time control of breath sensitivity, glide and pitch bend. Each VCO, VCF and VCA can act independently.
The EVI 1000 has a bell like the original EVI and forms a hybrid digital-analog system in combination with the EWV 2000. Analog signals are derived from the various sensors (key, bite, bend, glide, etc.) of the control unit, converted into digital signals by a front-end microprocessor in the EWV 2000 and modified by the microprocessor and converted into internal analog control voltages for the analog synthesizer ICs. (Source: muzines)