Wiimote helps man rock out
by Chris Greenhough 
{ Oct 15th 2008 at 3:30PM }
While some musicians might snobbily mock those who spastically flail around on Guitar Hero's plastic controller ("Like, lol, why not just learn to play a real guitar?" is something we read far too often), others embrace our hobby, and use elements of it to further their own music.
Rob Morris is one such person. According to his collection of YouTube videos, Morris regularly performs with a Wii Remote duct-taped to his Stratocaster, where it doubles up as a whammy bar. This in turn allows him to add tremolo, or bend the pitch of his notes by up to an octave -- all by using the attached Wiimote's accelerometer. And look, here comes the science: this is achieved by "sending the Wiimote data to a computer running Max/MSP, which then sends data via MIDI to a Digitech pedal."
Ooookay. It's another Wiimote hack that we don't really understand, but it sounds pretty cool!
[Via Music Radar]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Hardy @ Oct 15th 2008 3:40PM
This is what a REAL guitar hero game would be like.
Having to actually learn the instrument and using game tools to alter it to an amazing level.
Stuff like this blows my mine, especially that markets haven't tapped into this market yet.
Video Games would be an excellent and cheap device to help artist work.
Painting, Music, Science, etc. The Wii could be a tool that can help all of those things if someone just made the right software.
Simon @ Oct 16th 2008 3:37AM
Edutainment hasn't worked particularly well in the past (with a few notable exceptions). It's not easy to make these things fun, and requires a mammoth investment from developers, one that (from a business perspective) would better spent elsewhere.
Guitar Hero works because it isn't intimidating, you present someone with 5 buttons - fine. 6 strings - too intimidating. The whole idea behind the Wii/remote was to reduce the intimidation of video games themselves. Strapping it on as an extension of another (itself complex) tool and increasing that complexity is only going narrow the market further, not widen it.
Kudos to this guy in the video though. Great idea/execution. Experimental music is awesome.
misfit410 @ Oct 15th 2008 5:10PM
Really awesome innovation, too bad the music he is making with it is really bad.
Lars @ Oct 15th 2008 8:37PM
Like, L2P a real guitar, lol! ...oh wait.