East Texas Productions

Yamaha WX5 Wind Controller

My kids gave me a great new musical instrument last winter which has opened new musical areas for me to explore. The instrument, a Yamaha WX5 wind controller, is like a keyboard that controls sounds produced by an external sound synthesizer module, but it plays like a saxophone.

This means that I can sound like almost any instrument, real or imaginary, when I play this thing even though it responds like a saxophone. I can use all the normal expressive controls a wind player has - breath, articulation, vibrato, and so on - and choose the actual sound with a few key clicks. For a musician, perhaps one of the biggest advantages is it’s always in tune!

In the band Ebenezer (see post), I can play clarinet on a swing song, then the steel drum on a Jimmy Buffett tune, then accordion or sax or trumpet or fiddle . . . ; and, well you get the idea! Since the WX5 has no sounds of its own, I play it through my old Roland SC-88 sound module which has over 1,100 sounds and variants available in its memory.

Here are some of the instrumental sounds I typically use with Ebenezer:

Roland SC88 Pro Sound Canvas

• Accordion
• Grand Piano
• Electric Piano
• Harmonica
• Marimba
• Xylophone
• Steel Drum
• Cello
• Violin (or fiddle)
• String Section
• Bari Sax
• Tenor Sax
• Flute
• Piccolo
• Pan Flute
• Clarinet
• Bass Clarinet
• Trumpet
• Trombone
• Flugelhorn
• Various “electronic” sounds

Its fun to talk to the audience during breaks because people are fascinated by this thing. “I heard a violin but looked up and didn’t see one! Is that you?” is a typical reaction. One of the favorites of the evening is the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” which has a famous trumpet solo that I manage to reproduce.

Ron plays Yamaha WX5 with Ebenezer

I started playing with the band Ebenezer a few months ago. This group is a five piece band with two guitars, bass, harmonica and me on WX5. Vocals are provided by the guitarists and we play monthly in Granbury, Texas at Hanks on the Square and Grumps Burgers.

Ebenezer is primarily a vocal band performing music from the swing era up to the present.  Much of our “book” consists of 60s and 70s Rock/Folk Rock with an emphasis on music by The Beatles, Paul Simon, Jimmy Buffett, and others of that style.

Although we use amplifiers for vocals and guitars, and of course my WX5 is an electronic wind instrument, we still could be considered an “acoustic band” since that’s the primary sound and style we produce.