post by Mitchell Sigman (president/North American Kenny G Fanclub) I have to admit, I've never been much of a wind instrument guy- my sole experience with the woodwind and brass sector amounts to a couple of unsuccessful attempts at playing "Who Can It Be Now" on my buddy's alto sax circa-seventh grade. But I've always found the idea of synth wind controllers kind of neat (as long as they weren't playing smooth jazz). Traditionally, they've been a pricey item, but now, today, hey heck it's good to be alive, Akai has bestowed the EWI USB wind controller upon us for a breezy $299 (get it? breezy?!?). Initially, I expected some kind of glorified MIDI melodica, but it's actually got a pretty impressive feature set- plug and play USB with Mac/PC, fingering modes for sax, flute, oboe, EVI brass or "traditional" EWI (i.e. EWI predecessors). And they toss in software with 75 sound sets, so it's ready to, uh, rock? Blow? Wail? Not sure what the proper nomenclature is for giddily playing this type of instrument is, but it's easy and affordable. I gotta go download an MP3 of "Careless Whisper" (btw, you wouldn't believe the number of hysterical Wham! pics one finds with Yahoo image search).