I finally have my TEControl Breath Controller set up, and running the Sax Brothers program. The BC and Sax Bros combination sound amazing, but I find it difficult to get through an entire song, as I have to exert a great deal of breath into the BC. It gets more challenging when you need to re-record a part, and you begin running out of breath. (Thankfully I quit smoking over 20 years ago) I’m wondering if it would help to cut the tube that came with it, so the breath doesn’t have as far to travel. Has anyone tried this, or have a better solution?
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I’m only familiar with the BBC2 version, where the sensor is right on the mouthpiece, and there’s an adjustable valve for resistance. (I replaced the valve with a piece of curled up tubing, for adequate resistance with less air noise.)
Anyway, if it just requires too much pressure to hit the max value, I think you can adjust the sensitivity of the sensor.
Either way, it’s also a matter of getting the right level of flow. Too little flow, and you’ll run out of oxygen. Too much, and you’ll get dizzy from too much oxygen, and/or run out of breath in longer phrases.
Other than that, just like with singing and real wind instruments, a lot of it is physical and mental training. I’d highly recommend looking into breathing exercises for opera singers, as those will develop your ability to deal with long phrases in a controlled manner. Support (diaphragm) exercises are also important, as strong, controlled support is the key stability, precision, and expression, for vocals, wind instruments, and breath controllers alike.
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Haha, I know very well what you mean. I guess we can all appreciate those poor brass players now when we get a sense of how hard this actually is for our breath.
My only way to “solve” this so far is to simply record parts one by one, not one take per instrument through out a complete composition. And also to remember to actually breath in, in between gaps between notes or phrases.
I’m not sure how familiar you may or may not be with the Sax Brothers program, but there’s still one thing I don’t get, and it’s not anywhere in the manual. On the keyboard, to the left are 3 darkened keys, and also 1 all the way to the right. On other programs they would change the articulations of the notes being played, but these don’t seem to be doing anything. I must be missing something. I just wish the manual was a bit more comprehensive. Any idea what they’re there for?
I have one of these, sitting in a draw. The pipe is way too small. I played trumpet trombone and sax in the past, the wind is no way restricted like this. For a wind player (possibly not oboe) I think blowing is as simple as walking, after embrouchure develops
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So I just got my BBC2 late yesterday. I think it’s great, but a few initial thoughts come to mind:
@Mikael - in your video guide you recommend setting the Breath to CC2 (Breath Control). But then you have to go through all your VST’s setting them to learn CC2 as the input for whatever you want to use that for. But since - it seems to me - in almost all orchestral/acoustic VSTs by far the main controls are CC1 (Mod Wheel - for dynamics or vibrato) & CC11 (Expression Pedal - for volume or dynamics). And your VSTs are likely already setup to react accordingly to these inputs. So why not just set the BBC2 to Breath=CC1 and Bite=CC11 (or vice-versa) and you’re good to go straight away, without any ‘midi learn’ efforts across all your VSTs?
My next observation is that it seems to work great straight away for some VSTs, and for others I struggle to get a sound above almost inaudible out of it. Unless I bite (or blow, or both) really hard, which is not sustainable. I’m still experimenting, and working out which controller is better delivered by which method (breath or bite).
3rd observation: Can be quite hard to keep your head still while playing! So unless you want extraneous nod and tilt controllers in your midi data, best to turn the threshold for these up to full so that they don’t trigger. (Of course, depending on what you have them set to, they may not do anything in your VST anyway. But it’s still midi ‘noise’ in your data).
Anyway, still ‘playing’ with it. If anyone has any updated user tips would be interesting to hear them. Thank you.
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I changed it since, and set breath to CC1, and bite to CC2. Then I change in the instruments to make CC2 control vibrato. =)
And yes, I turned off the head tilt and nod completely, as it created lots of unnecessary CC automation lanes.
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