Odisei Music Travel Sax 2 – the Synth and Software Review

It’s a remarkably responsive MIDI wind and breath controller, as well as a portable practice instrument

We saw the Odisei Music Travel Sax 2 and their new Travel Clarinet at the NAMM Show in January. These instruments are ostensibly designed for practicing wherever you are – they have an internal synth and speaker (and headphone jack), along with an iPhone app to set the instrument up, change sounds, and so on.

But the Travel Sax 2 is also a very responsive MIDI wind controller for playing synths, and that’s the main reason it belongs in Synth and Software. Your breath is arguably the most expressive performance control available for playing synths, whether you’re using a breath controller to complement another MIDI controller (usually a keyboard) or a full wind controller like this – a controller that you play like an acoustic wind instrument.

You can also use the Travel Sax as a breath controller, as we’ll discuss. 

Hardware

Please refer to the Odisei Music site for full details about the Travel Sax 2 hardware, but here are some of the main points and impressions.

Travel Sax 2 comes in a roughy 10″x6″x4″ high case that has a lot of protection and fits the instrument snugly. Remove it, and the first thing you notice is how well made it is. While the 50+ included sounds seem more for practice and learning than actual use, this has the look and especially feel of a real quality instrument, absolutely not a toy.

In addition to various sax mouthpiece adapters and a passive mouthpiece, the instrument comes with an alto sax mouthpiece. But the instrument responds to fingerings and breath pressure only, there’s no particular embouchure, so the sax mouthpiece doesn’t require pressure on the reed.

The iPhone app connects to the instrument by Bluetooth, and it works fine for adjusting the settings. Travel Sax 2 lasts a few hours on a charge, and it uses a standard USB charger. It also connects to a computer by USB C when you’re using it as a MIDI wind controller.

For Synth and Software, we won’t delve into AI-assisted guided “play sax like a pro” lessons, playing with backing tracks, connecting with other sax players, etc. Among other educational applications, however, the instrument does make a lot of sense for kids just starting out. The head of the company mentioned that it doesn’t weigh as much as a sax and that the hands are closer together. I’d add that it doesn’t require a lot of breath pressure, and not having to worry about pressure on a sax reed to stay in tune and get a good tone is going to make it easier to get started.

Of course, being a good instrument for beginners doesn’t detract from its application as a practice instrument for advanced sax players.

Setting up the instrument isn’t complicated, and the “getting started” video on Odisei Music’s site is good – once you locate it. The documentation on the iPhone app is okay, but phone screens are small, and – without wanting to sound too grumpy – it would be nice if it were easy to find on the company site, and if it were consolidated into a PDF. Things like fingering charts don’t lend themselves to iPhone screens.

Travel Sax 2 can send MIDI Continuous Controller 2 (Breath – which is what we used for this review), CC7 (Volume), or CC11 (Expression). By default it also sends velocity based on your breath, and not all wind controllers can do that. Settings are remembered when you turn it on subsequently – you don’t need to go to the app every time.

By the way, if anyone gets confused, the app’s screen where you set the MIDI CC to be sent calls it the “Breath Channel.”

As a MIDI wind controller

Travel Sax 2 is a portable practice instrument first and foremost. And if you’re looking for a way to learn and exercise your sax fingering while listening to its internal sounds or others on an iPhone, there’s absolutely nothing not to like about it.

But Odisei Music could shout a lot louder about what a nice MIDI wind controller it is. Its features are basic, which is to say limited to your breath and fingerings – there are no extra expression or pitch sensors you find on some instruments. But its response to your breath and fingers is excellent. I used it with the fabulous Acoustic Modeling SWAM instruments, and it’s possible to articulate double- and triple-tongued sounds with it every bit as well as on an Akai EWI (I compared it to an EWI5000 as well as the older and now discontinued EWI USB, and EWI 3020). There was no reason to change anything from the default settings – it just plays really well right away.

One of my personal interests in checking out the Travel Sax 2 was to see how, as a recorder player from early childhood, I’d adapt to sax fingerings, and whether they’d lead my ears in new directions. Recorder players can pick up an Akai EWI and feel comfortable right away, because it can use a barely modified recording fingering.

The sax’s Boehm fingering system is more complicated, but the experiment has largely been a success. You can also program custom fingerings in the app very easily, which lets you “cheat” by adding some easier or more familiar ones to you (such as the Eb shown here). 

Being able to program custom fingerings also lets you extend the 2-1/2 octave range of an acoustic sax. For example, you could program regular fingerings plus one of the right hand side keys to add octaves. 

While being able to store sets of fingerings might be useful, it’s not fair to review the Travel Sax 2 as something it’s not really intended to be. Its audience is budding and experienced sax players, and as a basic wind controller it gets an A because of its excellent feel.

As a MIDI breath controller

As with all MIDI CCs (continuous controllers), you can make synths very expressive by using your breath as a real-time substitute for static programmed envelopes. Typically, you’d assign it to amplitude and filters to control the volume and brightness of a sound, but of course there are many other possibilities.

This is nothing new. The Yamaha DX7 had an input for their BC1 breath controller when it came out in 1983, for example.

If you just blow into the Travel Sax 2 without fingering anything, it sends a C#4 (along with the breath and velocity data, although you’d probably want to turn off velocity in the app for this application). So using this wind controller just as a breath controller – that is, you play notes on a keyboard (or other controller) while blowing into it – requires that you filter out C#4 notes in your DAW. 

In Logic Pro, for example, that’s really easy to do in the Environment. The Travel Sax’ MIDI input is cabled to a Transformer object that’s set to filter all notes. Other DAWs have different ways to filter the input, and of course this would work to use any wind controller as a breath controller.

I personally don’t find having a wind controller on a strap around my neck when using it as a breath controller cumbersome, in fact Odisei bills this as the lightest electronic sax available. But if it is an issue for you, one solution would just be some rubber tubing to lengthen the distance between the instrument and your mouth so you can put it down on a surface – bearing in mind that the tube itself could make it slightly less responsive. 

In any case, everything good about using the Travel Sax 2 as a wind controller applies to using it as a breath controller. Its feel is just right.

Thus

You really have to try the Odisei Travel Sax 2 – and would assume the Travel Clarinet – to get how satisfying it feels in your hands. It’s very successful as a portable practice instrument, and it works well as a simple MIDI wind or just breath controller.

Click here for more info

Price: 649€ in black as reviewed (other colors available)