The Boston Globe has a short but sweet piece in their paper today about the man behind the Nintendo Wii hack that turns a remote into a wireless foot pedal of sorts.
Rob Morris' Wii hack for his guitar gets quite a bit of play in Marros' Boston band Vivian Darkbloom, the Globe reports. Morris uses a remote, with the help of a laptop, to alter the pitch of his sound and add echo by tilting the guitar around.
Here's how he did it:
1. Attach the remote to the guitar Duct tape works. Velcro is a little fancier. Morris says the important thing is to make sure it doesn't fall off in the middle of a performance.
2. Make the Wiimote and computer talk Morris runs "Bluetooth Setup Assistant" on his Mac to synch up the Wiimote to the computer.
3. Get the right software Morris uses the Max/MSP multimedia suite to translate the controller's motions into any guitar effect he wants. Besides pitch and echo, he likes the "granular synthesis" effect, which can create blips and beeps that sound like old video games.
4. Convert to audio Plug the guitar and laptop into a PreSonus Firebox, which converts the computer signals into audio signals and spits them out through a guitar cable.
5. Turn it up Plug the guitar cable from the Firebox into your amplifier, and you're ready to rock.