Something New Is Coming Out of My Studio: Meet EmoDyn
For 25 years, a wind controller has been sitting right at the center of how I make music. I started out on standard synths and keyboard workstations, but it wasn’t long before a wind controller worked its way in — the Yamaha WX5 you’ll see me holding in the photo above, paired for a long time with my old Yamaha VL70-m tone generator. That’s a lot of years spent thinking about expression: the stuff a keyboard velocity value can’t capture, but a breath, a bend, a squeeze can.
That’s the itch behind my newest project. It started, honestly, as a simple idea — build a proper modern editor/librarian for my aging VL70-m, since nothing decent still exists for it. But the more time I spent inside that idea, the bigger it got. Somewhere along the way it stopped being a utility for one old piece of hardware and turned into something much more ambitious: a full software instrument of its own.
Say hello to EmoDyn.
What I can tell you so far
EmoDyn is a new software synthesizer — VST3 and standalone — currently in development for Windows. It’s built around nine distinct synthesis engines and deep controller support for wind players, keyboard players, and MPE players alike, so however you prefer to play your expression into a sound, EmoDyn is designed to listen. And yes, that VL70-m editor I set out to build in the first place is still part of the plan, coming along as a companion piece.
It’s worth knowing this up front: EmoDyn is being built first as a solo performer’s instrument. It plays one note at a time, the way a breath, a bow, or a voice naturally does — putting the full weight of its expressive engine behind that single line rather than spreading it thin across a chord. That makes it a natural fit for synth leads, acoustic-style brass, reed, and string emulations, and deep, expressive synth basses — anywhere a single voice is doing the talking. Polyphony is already on the roadmap as a planned future feature, but the instrument’s character starts here, with the solo voice.
But “one note at a time” doesn’t mean one dimension at a time. Underneath that single voice sits an impressive, deeply automatable set of parameters — sonic controls you can tie directly to your breath, your bend, your pressure, or your touch, so every note isn’t just triggered but sculpted, live, as it happens. That’s where EmoDyn starts to feel less like an instrument you play and more like an instrument you perform through — a wide-open canvas for shaping tone in motion, and a serious well of creative fuel for anyone who wants their sound to keep evolving under their fingers (or their breath).
That screenshot over my shoulder in the photo? That’s EmoDyn running live inside Cubase 15 Pro, right here in the studio, mid-development. It’s early. It’s real. And it’s coming.
Why I’m building this
I’ve spent a career — as a working musician and as the person who builds and supports other people’s technology — sitting at the intersection of gear and craft. EmoDyn is where those two halves of what I do finally meet directly. It’s my first software instrument, built by a player, for players who want their instrument to respond to how they perform, not just what they press.
Follow along
I’m not quite ready to open the curtain fully yet — but if you want to be first in line when it is, head over to emodyn.com and follow along. You’ll find links there to EmoDyn on Bluesky, Facebook, and YouTube, where I’ll be sharing progress as development continues.
More soon. This one’s been 25 years in the making — a little more patience will be worth it.