New Wii MIDI Percussion Instrument

Prototype for a new instrument i've been working as part of a project at the University of York, UK on new musical interfaces. It's the first in a duo of instruments (the second be a continuous pitch type affair being modeled on a cello) designed to put some of the energy and expression back into electronic instruments as the last million years have been dominated by keyboards.

The instrument is a velocity sensitive tuned percussion instrument modeled on a steel pan or marimba and in this case is playing a copy of string studio and ableton operator, but as its MIDI you can attach it to what ever you want. It's written in c# for windows but i'm planning a mac port when i'm officially done with this project.

I can even play teardrop on it....

I have also been developing another continuous pitch instrument that can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09HTiuoCKhM

for more info and the source code - check out http://www.maxleonard.webspace.virginmedia.com/wiidii.html

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Wii
• Music
• Instrument
• Percussion
• Electronic
• Electronica
• New
• Synth
• Synthesiser
• Mapping
• Teardrop
• Instruments
• wiimote
• MIDI
• controller

[eyesuck17]

Awesome instrument man, very tight. Response seems amazing! I'm currently developing something kind of similar using Puredata and Glovepie. Which protocols are you using to turn the bluetooth into OSC?

[mwl500]

its not OSC - its MIDI. The software talks to the bluetooth stack, takes the accelerometer data, does a bit of processing and spits out messages on the MIDI bus.

If you like I can get you the source code.

[coder12thinc]

This is awesome! I immediately downloaded it and it is quite fun to mess with! The only things: It's not very fun to get working in Windows. Also, your website seems to be down, are you working on it or is it down for good and this project marked as cancelled? :(

[mwl500]

no, its a bit of a pain I to get working, I agree. It never really went passed the stage of having it just for me to mess with and on to a more general user friendly interface. The web site is down because I was hosting it at my uni and as I've just graduated, they've canceled my web account. I've started working on a more general version for the mac where by you can build up your own instruments and make use of the wii motion plus. thanks for the interest anyways.

[PDJMDS]

Something I've been working on is a feedback model (kind of karplus strong with added extras) where the timbre and is effected by continuous motion, velocity and change in velocity. If you use SC I can email you the code?

I often get the impression that tonal sounds and melody are not best suited to free form gesture, I tend to work with granular synthesis, FM and other techniques (Supercollider is loaded).

I should make a video really!

[mwl500]

I've never used supercolider but the idea you're talking about is the basis for the next instrument which will have a ks physical model along side an FM/additive synth all done in reaktor. The tone and timbre will be effected by the intensity of movement of the right hand, and the energy will be steered with the left. It should be done in a month or so.

It would be great if you could email me that code - id love to have a look at it.

[billynanard]

It is not so terrible..

[dudantona]

wow, i love this. im using osculator for ableton, but this is sick !!! can you send me a message explain how you connect Wiicontroler in ableton without osculator ?

Thanks a lot for the video !

[coder12thinc]

@JIMEKs you realized that too? :)

[JIMEKs]

cool :)

mac with windows? you're crazy ;)