I use the Yamaha WX5 MIDI controllers. They are no longer in production (sadly), but I have spares, and they are well-built. I bought spare reeds and octave key covers, the only parts that seem to wear out.
The reed doesn't vibrate, but the WX senses how much pressure you apply to it and assigns it to a MIDI Continuous Controller. That allows for natural vibrato, scoops up to pitch, and intentional pitch variations (like playing a tiny bit sharp on a high not to add stress). When coupled with the Yamaha VL70m Physical Modeling synth module, as you change the pitch of the reed on a sax patch, it also changes the timbre, so you get a very natural sounding vibrato, unlike the old LFO. On the trumpet patch, I can trigger lip slurs with it. Depending on your synth module, you use the reed's continuous controller to affect what you want.
The WX also measures how much air you are forcing through it. Again, you can assign the cc to whatever you like. On sax and brass patches, I like it to regulate volume, because as a sax player, it's natural. With the VL module, it also changes the tone with the volume, like many physical instruments do.
There are 4 other continuous controllers that you can assign to whatever the synth can respond to. On the thumb there is a lever, it'll go either up or down (two separate ccs). It's variable with values from 0 to 127. Depending on the synth patch I can use them for wah, distortion, breath noise, flutter-tongue, or whatever. There are two more on/off cc buttons. One is toggle the other on only when depressed. Again, to be assigned to whatever your synth can respond to. I might use them for throat distortion, or vowel change similar to changing mouth shape on the sax.
Here is a very low bitrate (56k mp3) that I posted during the dial-up Internet days (20 or so years ago). The tone is terrible due to the low bitrate, but you can hear the sax expression.
https://www.nortonmusic.com/mp3/_sunshinesax.mp3
And another for guitar:
https://www.nortonmusic.com/mp3/_oldtimeguitar.mp3
They were recorded live on a gig, using a pre-iPod, Archos Juke Box near the PA speaker. So the mix is bad, too. I think too close to the woofer and the built in mic. But it was a private party, and I didn't have much time. (BTW, the rhythm section backing tracks were made by me).
I should take the time to do some new recordings, but time is something I don't have a lot of. That's OK, I'm busy doing things I love.
I've played the WX5 through quite q number of different hardware synth modules, and more than a dozen software synths. The software synths all sucked, besides for the latency delay, the voices were just not complex enough. I suppose that's a fact of not having the voices in RAM and having to construct each note. Of the hardware modules, the Physical Modeling as implemented by Yamaha in the VL70m is the only one I'd use for saxophone. It feels more like playing an instrument than triggering samples.
Notes ♫
