Video Demos
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Clarinet
Here are some videos of Zoot’s designer playing the included virtual clarinet. While I hope they give you a basic sense of the instrument, I look forward to seeing what you can do!
For “Autumn Leaves,” I wanted to show the use of gentle pitch vibrato by swaying the instrument.
“Ver Hot Aza Yingele” is a klezmer piece, and it demonstrates the “air bend” feature to simulate something like the klezmer krekht ornament. In this example, I trigger the ornament on the three repeated notes at 0:10.
Attempting to reproduce the iconic opening to “Rhapsody in Blue” is a stretch, but I couldn’t resist playing around anyway. There’s a lot that’s not right in this performance, but it’s what I’ve been able to do so far.
The stepwise glissando is triggered when I roll the instrument to my left on the bottom note and then finger the top note. Similarly, the continuous glide is triggered when I roll the instrument to my right on the bottom note and finger the top note. I tilt the tail end of the instrument up to engage an octave shift. I am also using sway vibrato, roll pitch bending, and a bit of air bending also.
I had fun with “Bei Mir Bistu Shein”! It shows off vibrato and subtle air bending.
Strummer
The strumming feature was intended as a way for someone like me who doesn’t play guitar to accompany themselves singing. Between my abilities as a singer and the crudeness of the accompaniment, I wouldn’t say this effect is necessarily “performance worthy,” but I definitely find it satisfying and fun.
The strumming chords are voiced as they would be on a real guitar, but, in “Blow the Candles Out,” I’m playing a sampled piano. Note that the magnitude of the physical strum motion determines the MIDI note velocities sent to the synth.
I like “Christmas in the Trenches” for lots of reasons, but I also think it’s a good one to show off Zoot strumming: with all the chord changes, one strum per chord change actually works pretty well. It also demonstrates being able to play two different chords for the same root note, like A and Asus4 or Bm and Bm/A.
“Eldorado” demonstrates the arpeggio effect of increasing the strum’s stroke time.
Other Wind Instruments
Zoot can send MIDI output to other virtual instruments, such as those hosted by REAKTOR, a visual programming environment and DSP engine for creating music synthesizers and other audio tools. In this example, I’m running REAKTOR on a MacBook and using members of Chet Singer’s excellent Beauchamp Brass collection of 14 sample-playback brass instruments.
Finger-Controlled Pitch Bends
When Finger Bend is enabled, Zoot uses the proximity of one finger from its sensing pad to bend the pitch, allowing slides from one pitch to another (portamento). A trombone works well for slides, of course; the instrument in “Meditation” is from the Dannenberg Brass ensemble by Chet Singer in the REAKTOR User Library. The virtual bass drone is from Singer’s Serenade III ensemble. I wrote this melody years ago when I was first learning to play alto recorder.
Slides also work well on a virtual fiddle. In “The Star of the County Down,” a waltz tune I used to hear at contra dances, the violin is from the Serenade III ensemble, and the piano is a sampled Yamaha Grand from Plogue.
SWAM Violin
Zoot works well for playing a physically modeled virtual violin like the SWAM instrument by Audio Modeling. I’m controlling the vibrato in the usual way.
