Imagine a nightmarish, dark-world, alternative-reality version of Wii Music, one that sends Miyomato-san screaming. That’s what you get from tokoloten, in a very un-Nintendo noise performance, as found on comments. The Wii is just one of his tools:

tokoloten uses a variety of objects such as magnet motors, infrared devices, game controllers… in order to hide his lack of conventional technic. Depending on the venue, the show might be ambient-like, experimental or electronica with weird cinematographic references. But it most often combines all of this.
tokoloten is based in Lausanne, Switzerland.

It’s proof that the controller – any controller – is in the hands of the creator, and what it sounds like is entirely undetermined.

Mapping a hardware input to a sound means making an abstract connection between one physical action and another sonic reaction. What that relationship is is entirely up to you. I was honestly a bit surprised by some of the impassioned critical reactions to yesterday’s brief mention of the use of the Wiimote as a studio recording. Of course, that proves the creed of the blogger – post first, ask questions later, and when in doubt, just post. Amidst some of the frustration, there are some good discussions, though I do dream of an Internet on which we criticize content without name-calling.

But the reality remains: controllers are always abstracted from the sound, by definition, and whether they’re satisfying to you depends on how you’ve mapped them. I don’t know what qualifies as innovative, but then, there have been times when I’ve very much enjoyed turning a knob, so “innovation” isn’t always what matters to me. I tend to fall back on Duke Ellington – “if it sounds good, it is good.” For controllers, that means “if it feels good, it is good.” You’re the one with the controller in your hands.

For an alternative example, musician/artist Kassen has an excellent session on improvising with custom software and game controllers. Below, you can catch some of his talk from Amsterdam’s famed STEIM research center, which has a long history of researching the controller-music connection. After all these years asking that question, what we have is …more questions. But that’s a beautiful thing.

Kassen (DJ, performer, ChucK programmer) from STEIM Amsterdam on Vimeo.

Part of the reason I’ve never liked “controllerism” as a term – sorry, Moldover – is that there is no clear technique, no clear sound, no particular discipline. That is, I understand the case for the term and I’m glad there’s a discussion. But it seems to me that part of why controllerism is interesting is that there is no such thing as controllerism. The beauty of digital music is that you do have wide-open, blank-page possibilities. You can create your own system. It is abstract, simulation, ungrounded in physical reality. But while that is at odds with millenia of acoustic instrument-making, it’s also in tune with centuries of compositional and notational tradition, which are abstract. For the first time, the systems of how we conceive music can themselves become physical.

That to me is an exciting thing.

So, here’s a question — let’s take the example of sensors that handle orientation. How would you want to deal with them in music software, if they could be standardized, if any accelerometer or tilt sensor could announce its orientation? How do you decide which is the x, y, and z axis, for instance? How would you want the data normalized?

Amo Navas Bravetti – Raw (live video) from Gustavo Bravetti on Vimeo.

Sure, 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 you’re just listening to the track?

The pitch behind the track “Raw,” celebrating the fifth anniversary of Fresco Records, is just that. It’s a studio-produced track, but the artists wanted to maintain some of the improvised feel of the live music. The track pairs the hit DJ/producer duo of David Amo and Juli Navas with Gustavo Bravetti of Uruguay – the Ableton and alternative controller wizard who regularly feeds tutorials to CDM.

Of course, this trio aren’t the only folks thinking this way. The first sequencers gave us the power to arrange everything in advance, meaning people immediately began to seek ways to restore live feel, turning off the metronome and doing everything in one take. But it’s nice to see these high-profile artists – and our friend Gustavo – taking it on specifically with something as off-the-wall as a Wii remote.

Friend of the Site Gustavo Bravetti is back, getting the young Brazilian boys and girls on their feet with his virtual reality glove and Wiimotes and gesturally-controlled electronica. Gustavo sends us this video from the 2009 Tribaltech SC Edition in Campinas. Having seen a lot of DJs take the easy way out at festivals in front of throngs of people, it’s great to see someone really play his laptop – and while some of us, ahem, look goofy waving Wiimotes around, Gustavo makes it look good.

Gustavo also gives us the scoop on a new track release, orange. It’s inspired by … wait, Henry Purcell? (Indeed; see also: Wendy Carlos.)

I did produce this track specially for the Tribaltech 2009 SC edition, it was inspired on the classic piece by the baroque composer Henry Purcell (century XVIII), “The Funeral Of Queen Mary”. As usual all synthesizers and fx was made using only Ableton stuff, this time Operator, Analog, and Tension was used to create all synths and effects.

Gustavo also gets a rather eloquent review by our friend David Cross.

The incredibly simple melody of the short ‘Bocuma’ becomes a lump-in-the-throat meditation on man’s place in the universe through subtle pitch shifts and just the right mist of reverb. The slow fade-in on ‘An Eagle in Your Mind’ is the lonesome sound of a gentle wind brushing the surface of Mars moments after the last rocket back to Earth has lifted off.” Why not listen to, Only the Proletariat Floss’s by Screaming at the Mirror. With a truncated syncopation and approach that rivals only Tosh Guarrez pre “FartFlap”, “S.A.T.M” has taken steps to dismantle what was previously only dared mantled by the great Gilda Thrush when she fronted “Cycle Clause”. It’s as if Genghis Kahn got together for breakfast with Oliver Wendell Holmes and Virginia Wolfe and ordered just a bowl of homemade granola and then skipped out on the check. RATING: 11.-111 -David Cross

Previous Gustavo action on CDM:
Live + FM8 = Drum Kit Love: Free FM8 Drum Kit Download
Weekend Inspiration: Ableton Live Follow Actions, Dummy Clips, Making Snares
Gustavo Bravetti Show Us How To Glitch out Ableton Live
Interview: Gustavo Bravetti, Playing Music with Light and Interactive Gloves

Our friend and interactive hero Gustavo Bravetti must have been inspired by all the talk of hexagonal sequencers, because he’s come through with a brilliant prototype of a new interactive sequencer design. He writes:

I just wanna share mi first very unfinished and at ultra alpha stage, hexagonal sequencer prototype!

Between many things, I have planed to include many automatic scale definition tools, follow actions, you’ll can easily change the hexagon density, and multi-touch support via IR (wiimote or cams) is planned also.
This is just a sneak peak.

For an “alpha” version, as you can see, there’s already a lot of goodness going on. The visuals and interaction are powered by vvvv, the free-for-non-commercial use (and otherwise affordable) Windows-only patching language. Max is great, but vvvv is capable of some very powerful features of its own, including particularly nice hooks into Windows’ DirectX rendering engine.

vvvv Site + Wiki + Community

More on vvvv at Create Digital Motion, as it’s most often used on the visual side:
http://createdigitalmotion.com/tag/vvvv

As with so many of these things, vvvv’s community is more valuable than even the tool itself; we’re seeing lots of work on doing clever things with the environment. And vvvv has gotten some powerful music features like VST plug-in support, meaning you could build your sequencer in vvvv and skip something like Live altogether.

Previously on this topic:
Music on the Game Grid: Interactive Arpeggiators Al-Jazari, reacTogon
Alternative Sequencers: Elysium Generative Mac App and the Joy of Hex

And for more of the Awesomeness of Gustavo (pay close attention to that interview, especially):
Live + FM8 = Drum Kit Love: Free FM8 Drum Kit Download
Weekend Inspiration: Ableton Live Follow Actions, Dummy Clips, Making Snares
Interview: Gustavo Bravetti, Playing Music with Light and Interactive Gloves

Want to hook that joystick / Wii remote / Guitar Hero controller / something odd to your music software? If you’re on Mac, OSCulator is the do-everything solution. It’s pay-what-you-like software ($19 minimum for PayPal), and it just got a big update:

Announcement: OSCulator 2.6 [Unidentified Sound Object, as seen in our sound design round-up]
Download page, with changelog [osculator.net]

There’s a lot new in release 2.6; highlights include:

• Preset management
• Graphical OSC routing editor
• Wii Guitar Hero support (preliminary)
• Hook up more: up to 2 virtual HID joysticks, up to 8 Wiimote (does anyone own that many?)
• Make keyboard shortcuts just by striking the combo

And just to be clear, this app outputs MIDI. That means you can use whatever music software you like — so don’t worry about the OSC business if it’s new to you!

It’s not even really just for OSC, any more — does all kinds of input tasks. Windows and Linux users have plenty to be jealous of in this program. Major kudos to creator Camille Troillard; USO Project points to a terrific SEAMUS newsletter article on the software and its future.

The only sad news: this is the last release that will support Tiger; future versions are Leopard-only. (I’m curious, Camille — why? Lots of us still run Tiger for audio apps. Is this just to streamline testing, or is there really something in Leopard that OSCulator needs?)

You can add this to yesterday’s good news as far as OpenSoundControl — the iPhone/iPod touch app we saw released to the app store in yesterday’s round-up.

Joystiq has a post I expect will be updated; see also their joint Engadget liveblog.

More on this soon.

In other news, it looks like Nintendo is adding still more sensors to its Wiimote, in the form of the Wii MotionPlus add-on. Sounds like the Wii hackers will have more to do – and that the Wiimote will remain gestural computing’s most excellent bargain input device.

A new version of Rock Band (for Wii) means still more ways to turn these game controllers into musical or visual performance instruments. Jordan Balagot writes with some hands-on experience using junXion, a wonderful tool for adapting game controllers to MIDI or OpenSoundControl. (junXion also works with Wiimotes and nunchucks, audio inputs and pitch sensors, joysticks and standard USB devices, and much more, so even if this bores you, you’ve probably got some use for it.)

Jordan says:

I tried plugging in the Rockband for Wii guitar and drums into my mac and Junxion recognized them perfectly. This seems to be the easiest solution for turning the rockband instruments into real instruments because it has low latency and the Wii instruments are already USB.

Full instructions at his blog:
Turn Wii Rock Band Instruments into Real Instruments with Junxion

junXion is wonderful, though that EUR75 stings here thanks to the weak US dollar and the fact that we have fewer grants and have to pay for health insurance and hospital visits and whatnot. (Especially any Wii-related injuries.) There are other ways of getting at this data, as it’s USB HID — try Osculator on Mac or GlovePIE on Windows, not to mention HID input in Max/MSP and Pd. That said, junXion remains a very powerful option and worth a look.

Other Rock Band controller tips?

We’re still anxiously awaiting what our friend David Lublin of VJ app developer vidvox does with his — as pictured below. (He was searching through createdigitalmusic looking for tips, so, erm, I’ll be sure to update the site with whatever he finds!) Expect some drum kits triggering videos. (Photo by Todd Thille.)

Never that impressed by people waggling the Wii Remote? Time for some full body-weight control. Enter the Wii Balance Board, the force-sensing hardware bundled with Nintendo’s Wii Fit.

Evan Jones, aka Chardish, has hooked up the balance board to the fantastic Audiosurf, a music/rhythm game that allows you to play through your existing music collection rather than needing special content. (Vive le FFT!) Audiosurf is ten bucks on Steam, Valve Software’s indie-friendly, happiness-packed online service, so Mac users, if your Boot Camp hasn’t been getting any love and you needed an excuse to boot Windows, this is it.

The key ingredient is a script for GlovePIE, the Windows-only software for custom connections to lots of hardware,  including the P5 data glove. I heard a nasty rumor that GlovePIE development is on pause, but I haven’t been able to confirm that.

Of course, I bring this up as it’s not just for gaming. Like the Wii Remote, the Balance Board is a simple Bluetooth device. The force sensors are really accurate – easier to work with, in fact, than accelerometers. Given the relative paucity of good controllers for your feet in music, that makes the Balance Board intriguing indeed. I’m interested in making it work with Java, as well, as that would work across platforms and with Processing. Weekend project: Balance Board hacking. If anyone is interested in joining me, drop me a line; otherwise I hope to have some results for you soon.

Wii Balance Board + Audiosurf + Motion Controls = Awesome [Chardish's site]

Via Joystiq

Gibson Guitar may require a new column here on CDM, titled something like “what the $&*((*&$ can you possibly be thinking??!”

Sure, it was strange enough when Gibson started a patent dispute with Guitar Hero game developer Activision because it claimed to own the patent for anything “simulating a musical concert experience.” (Jeez, I’m glad Gibson hasn’t been to a couple of my gigs.) Never mind that their patent involved pre-recorded concert footage and a head-mounted virtual reality apparatus and had no similarity whatsoever to Guitar Hero. Never mind that they’ve waited years into this franchise, almost a decade into their patent, and over a decade into music games to both to notice.

Now things get weirder.

Gibson is suing Harmonix, developer of Rock Band. (Unlike Guitar Hero, Rock Band appears to lack a Gibson instrument license — but the suit covers Gibson’s supposed game patents, not Gibson’s guitars.)

And they’re suing Viacom, because Viacom is Harmonix’s corporate parent.

And they’re suing Electronic Arts, the publisher.

And they’re suing GameStop. And Amazon.com. And Toys ‘R Us. And Target. And Kmart.

And they’re suing Wal-Mart. (Oh, I’m sure that will end well. I can’t imagine Wal-Mart is a big outfit with armies of lawyers or anything like that.)

Joystiq has some coverage of the situation:

Gibson sues Harmonix, Viacom, EA over Guitar Hero

Gibson lays lawsuit on GameStop, other major retailers

At this point, I’d do a little evil air guitar solo to provide a soundtrack to this whole story, except I’m fairly certain Gibson might sue me for simulating a musical performance.

Hey, Gibson — got a little tip for you. Guitar Center also sells Rock Band. Any reason you’re not suing them? Ah, okay, at least at some point some surviving sense of self interests intervenes.

It’s ironic, too, because other manufacturers see these wildly-popular music games as very good for music making. Rock Band and Guitar Hero were all over the NAMM show floor, partly because of companies picking up endorsements, but partly because musicians seem to like playing the game. It’s advertising for instruments, for music gear, for — music lessons, frankly, for any time people want to learn how to play beyond the game. And it doesn’t appear to violate any Gibson intellectual property — especially with a license for Gibson’s stuff in both games.

Cheer Up, Kids!

Okay, so Gibson is embarrassing the entire music instruments industry. On a happier note, Nintendo Wii owners get to play Rock Band June 22. (via Joystiq) And that’ll be good fun — and will unleash the hardware on the Nintendo-loving game hackers out there, meaning Synth Hero or Chiptune Hero could follow in homebrew form shortly thereafter.

Real music making — also a very fun way to pass the time. Try it with friends.

What’s not fun? Lawsuits. “Lawsuit Hero” will not be coming to an Xbox 360 / PS3 soon.

Updated: I incorrectly said Gibson sued Activision; that’s not true. Activision actually pre-emptively sued Gibson to try to invalidate their patent after Gibson threatened Activision with a patent violation and tried to get partners to “license” their supposed patent. As readers have noted, this is a bizarre case of biting the hand that feeds, given that Gibson had partnered with Activision on the game’s hardware, software, and promotion. Wired.com has a good write-up:

Gibson Sues Viacom, EA Over Rock Band (Update)

Suffice to say, this could have a chilling effect on the entire music software development community if Gibson wins. Everything from indie music games to Apple’s MainStage could be said to simulate music performance.

Want to make music and motion with unusual inputs, like Wii controllers, Lemur multi-touch touchscreens, Monomes, and (now) 3D mice? OSCulator is a wonderful app that supports OpenSoundControl and sends MIDI events, with support for some hardware that can’t be supported any other way. The new 2.5 version adds new stuff:

• SpaceNavigator 3D mouse device support
• Mouse support
• Raw IR data from the Wiimote controller (Nintendo Wii)
• AppleScripting
• OSC Forward
• Keyboard combos
• “Meta events”

Software like Max/MSP and Reaktor will support OSC natively, but using MIDI input and output, you can hook up Kyma workstations and any MIDI software under the sun.

Software is pay-what-you-will, with a US$29 minimum.

Osculator page and manual

Camille Troillard is the wonderful musician you can thank for this tool, a member of the band Neimo which evidently is coming stateside, so stay tuned!