So, I bought an Aerophone AE-05 (it's basically a smaller, lighter AE-10)
It's not bad... it sounds OK, the breath control is easy. The flute and violin sounds are particularly nice.
Also nice is being able to practice quietly without disturbing others.
Price wise it's about half the price of the cheapest Sax I would consider buying. (Doesn't make it cheap, just vaguely competitive)
(Why do I not get a real sax? I don't actually know how to play one, but also I have limited mobility in my left hand, which is why I'm looking for things that might be a little less demanding than a real life (and expensive) Sax)
But I was pretty good at the recorder back in the day, and the skills are readily transferable... after a handful of days I'm getting pretty comfortable with it.
Having hand mobility issues I'm quite excited by the different fingering options... you can play it like a sax, recorder and EWEI, but it also has options to play with only your left hand or your right hand, which seem quite usable) or you could in theory customize your own fingering layout.
The single thing stopping this instrument from being perfect for me is that the octave control keys are just a bit too far over to easily reach with my limited thumb movement... if I could repurpose just about any other button(s) to do octave shifts (or the thumb keys were a bit closer) I would be praising this instrument to the skies... as it is, it is *almost* awesome.
I've also notice the app which you use for fine setting control via bluetooth is just a bit flaky on my android phone... there is supposed to be a usb option which doesn't seem to work on my Samsung S8, and the fingering selection seems to only sometimes work.
(The app has an additional 50 tones, so far I haven't found any which I think is better than the built in sounds, and over bluetooth there is a slight but perceptible lag.
And you can, of course, use it as a midi controller, but I need a better midi mixer to really put it through its paces.
I only have Ableton lite at present, and it attempts to treat all midi input as a keyboard.
But overall, I'm finding it a pretty neat bit of kit.
Has anyone else in the entire world actually got one?
It's not bad... it sounds OK, the breath control is easy. The flute and violin sounds are particularly nice.
Also nice is being able to practice quietly without disturbing others.
Price wise it's about half the price of the cheapest Sax I would consider buying. (Doesn't make it cheap, just vaguely competitive)
(Why do I not get a real sax? I don't actually know how to play one, but also I have limited mobility in my left hand, which is why I'm looking for things that might be a little less demanding than a real life (and expensive) Sax)
But I was pretty good at the recorder back in the day, and the skills are readily transferable... after a handful of days I'm getting pretty comfortable with it.
Having hand mobility issues I'm quite excited by the different fingering options... you can play it like a sax, recorder and EWEI, but it also has options to play with only your left hand or your right hand, which seem quite usable) or you could in theory customize your own fingering layout.
The single thing stopping this instrument from being perfect for me is that the octave control keys are just a bit too far over to easily reach with my limited thumb movement... if I could repurpose just about any other button(s) to do octave shifts (or the thumb keys were a bit closer) I would be praising this instrument to the skies... as it is, it is *almost* awesome.
I've also notice the app which you use for fine setting control via bluetooth is just a bit flaky on my android phone... there is supposed to be a usb option which doesn't seem to work on my Samsung S8, and the fingering selection seems to only sometimes work.
(The app has an additional 50 tones, so far I haven't found any which I think is better than the built in sounds, and over bluetooth there is a slight but perceptible lag.
And you can, of course, use it as a midi controller, but I need a better midi mixer to really put it through its paces.
I only have Ableton lite at present, and it attempts to treat all midi input as a keyboard.
But overall, I'm finding it a pretty neat bit of kit.
Has anyone else in the entire world actually got one?