Comments on: Gustavo Bravetti, Driving Crowds Wild with a Wave of His Wii-Enabled Hands

By: Create Digital Music » Raw: Wii Waggling Meets the Studio – in Gustavo Bravetti + David Amo + Juli Navas

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:04:24 +0000

[...] novel controllers are fun to watch, like our friend Gustavo Bravetti, driving a Brazilian crowd wild by waving his Wii remote live. But what if you can’t see the performance gimmick, if [...]

By: Fajardo

Fajardo — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:13:58 +0000

Folks, I was there and I can ensure to you that was the best performance IÂ´ve ever seen. I know his sound since 2006. He build the sound from zero on Ableton and his performance on electronic drums and Wii are exciting!! Search for som videos and you can see what IÂ´m talking about!

By: Sassmo

Sassmo — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:32:10 +0000

It’s a cool idea, but it sounds terrible. You can tell the audience is fairly unimpressed by their lack of movement during most of his performance too. That’s what an audience looks like while they’re waiting for the main act to show up.

By: Jordan314

Jordan314 — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 02:43:34 +0000

Yeah, I’m really glad to see a P5 glove up there. Mine’s sitting in a drawer tangled up with a bunch of other old electronics.

By: Rodri

Rodri — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:20:52 +0000

paul rose, I agree

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2IJkJMrlsA&feature=channel_page

By: james

james — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:09:46 +0000

+1 to twilight fish, both for the mathew jonson reference and for pointing out that the video above, musically, is rather conservative, to the point where anything special in there is only visible if you choose not to distinguish the wood from the trees.

By: paul rose

paul rose — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 06:28:16 +0000

the p5 is the opposite of ergonomics, hehe. But Gustavo’s use of the Wiimote is a little disappointing, he needs two Wiimotes to control pitch and a beat repeat on a bleep? You can do so many more stuff with just one: http://institutfatima.blogspot.com/2008/12/wii-osculator-whole-lot-of-shaking.html
or look here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHzsbamlr6c&feature=channel_page.

By: twilight_fish

twilight_fish — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:05:41 +0000

I’m pretty heavily involved in curating and programming shows with electronic music since the early 90’s. There has always been a difficulty on the performance side once laptops came into the picture. Earlier it was mostly DJ’s and the audience generally understood or came to understand the skills involved.

To me laptops were a step back although for a performer it became easier to travel and control the parameters of the performance. There became less room uncertainty and often the performers are really not doing much. You have and the audience have to rely that they are acting in “good faith” which is often not the case and many sets are simply the act of playing back a set with a few effects thrown in for “effect”

I’ve discussed this with many artists and the ones who truly impress me are the ones that feel there always has to be the possibility of the track falling apart if you are not engaged so they set up their software as best they can to allow them the greatest flexibility and options to take their tracks into unknown territory.

You have to remember as well that if it’s “dance music” many acts bind themselves to certain rules and that gets boring rather quickly. This has happened to scenes like “trance” “progressive house” and now “minimal techno”. While I can appreciate the above artists showmanship I suggest you look at acts like Mathew Jonson or Deepchild whose performances for dance music are much more interesting and diverse. Or someone like Jamie Lidell a few years ago with just a few synths, his voice and a laptop destroying a jazz crowd by simply being creative with minimal tools.

All these tools have made it incredibly easy to take the studio which your write music in, onto the stage. We are still very early in the evolution of performance using these new tools and until I can jam and feel like I did when I jammed with a band with all its options and possibilities, I don’t think we are there yet.

By: beatfix

beatfix — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:08:39 +0000

Not bad at all. I agree that it’s not easy to use the Wiimote in a musical way – by mapping it to sounds that aren’t crucial to the rhythm, he gets a nice effect without disrupting the flow of the music. His original tracks are really solid too.

On the other hand, the performance style gets by mostly on the novelty of the thing – let’s see where this idea goes next. And I can’t believe he’s using the P5 – it was always clunky and made my hands hurt. :)

By: gbsr

gbsr — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:45:40 +0000

the guy who did the visuals needs a big fat punch in the face.