Goodbye Tokyo Live-Scene
I’ve met so many great musicians in Tokyo, I’ve even been contacted by these individuals who has gigs lined up, but once trying to be able to reach out to them, they basically say it’s the other way around. If I have any gigs lined up for them, or projects coming my way, I should HIRE THEM.
These people have been established in Tokyo for the last 10-20 years, a network that seems closed off for people who came here with NOTHING. But I really wanted to contribute to this amazing group of people, but getting denied even though I’ve been proving myself from time to time that I have the goods and skills to pull something amazing out of my instrument that nobody would’ve thought about.
My guess is the people STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND what an EWI is. What’s the point of my live-streams for these people who think I’m blowing a pipe, generating a perfect sound WITHOUT skills, they are sorely mistaken.
EWI is a very sensitive instrument that requires sensibility and tasteful playing-style. I would say that this instrument is as forgiving as a real saxophone or clarinet-player where the lips really tells you HOW MATURE your sound is. I can tell the beginners from the pro’s when it comes to saxophone players, same goes with the EWI.
Hobbyist who can barely pull a vibrato together, plays most of their stuff straight, just blowing the thing without thinking about the other qualities this instrument offers, dynamics, vibrato, glides, pitch and other functionalities that could be mapped to other expressions like GROWL and FLUTTER.
The EWI is a REAL INSTRUMENT, and I must say I was a skeptic at first, but playing this thing took me 2 months to master, but when the hard work was already done as a saxophone-player for most of my life, the adjustments with working with 5-8 octaves (I have 2 different ranged EWI’s, hooray!), that mean’s I even have a larger range than an 88 key piano! It’s insanity reaching a new level! A cool thing that you don’t expect from an instrument so compact and easy to carry around. The only draw-back is that all acoustic-outdoor jams are out of the question, but modifications and portable speakers are still a way to get around it.
My services for re-recording brass-parts that were slaughtered with bad performances from the other members, I saved a whole production because of my expertise with the EWI and access to some of the best wind-controlled software of all time, thanks to Sample Modeling and Audio Modeling sponsored software. But worst of it all, I won’t get the recognition for my work.
I’m the SILENT KNIGHT, who can be whoever he could be... out alone until someone out there will heed my call.
So with all of this said, I am now only concentrating on my own digital projects and music-production collaborations, so the live-scene with people I admire, I’m done sucking up to these people.
