SWAM Alto Sax

What it does

A physically modelled alto saxophone rather than a sampled one, so the tone comes out of how it is played. Expression, velocity, vibrato, growl, breath noise, key noise and pitch bend sit on the front panel and all take MIDI learn, and a timbre page slides between warm and bright versions of the instrument. A compressor, EQ, early reflection and reverb section, master tuning and transpose are built in, and it runs standalone or as an AUv3.

In the demo

Jade plays it from an Arturia keyboard with an iRig expression pedal on the floor, maps growl and the noise controls to the keyboard knobs, then plays a phrase with expression flat and again with the pedal moving so the difference is audible. She finishes by driving it from a guitar through MIDI Guitar.

Worth knowing

Without a pedal, breath controller or MPE surface it behaves like a static sample, and several advanced pages are locked on iOS that are open in the desktop versions. The onscreen play surface covers anyone with no controller at all.