Electronic musical instrument was designed to be a lower-cost alternative to a pipe organ for church music, musicians soon discovered that the Hammond was an excellent instrument for blues and jazz; indeed, an entire genre of music developed built around this instrument, known as the organ trio (typically Hammond organ, drums, and a third instrument, either saxophone or guitar). The first commercially manufactured synthesizer was the Novachord, built by the Hammond Organ Company from 1938 to 1942, which offered 72-note polyphony using 12 oscillators driving monostable-based divide-down circuits, basic envelope control and resonant low-pass filters. The instrument featured 163 vacuum tubes and weighed
EWI (musical instrument) versatile instrument. The air pressure sensor allows for a considerable dynamic range. EWI (musical instrument) EWI (from electronic wind instrument, pronounced "EE-wee") is a type of wind controller, an electronic musical instrument. It was invented by Nyle Steiner, who conceptualized the idea in the 1960s, and developed the first working models in the 1970s. The early models consisted of two parts: a wind controller and a digitally-controlled analog synthesizer in a rackmount box (which also houses the instrument's electronics). Japanese company Akai took over the instrument from Steiner and released several models (with his design help). The current top models,