Everyday tools as instruments
Evan Tobias brought out an interesting new use of game controllers in his blog. Someone has used Nintendoo’s new wireless Wii controller as a musical instrument. There is some resemblance to infrared contollers such as Soundbeam, but the difference is, that this is a tool that so many people own. Evan states that we should take advantage of the motoric skills that young people tend to develop.
In Finland – and several other countries – text messaging (sms) seems to be the primary form of communication from distance. I have noticed that many people are able to use the number-pad with the speed and accuracy of a concert violinist or a metal guitarist! I’ve been speaking to people at Nokia to take advantage of this possibility. Cellphones used to have infrared, now they have bluetooth. Perhaps it could be used as a controller as well? Certanly this would raise some eyebrowns at our institution as among traditionally thinking musicians as well, but maybe the cell phone, or some other common tool will be used for creative purposes someday!
Cool ideas… I was just talking about Wii-based music with a colleague of mine last night. What I think will help on the cell phone side will be the new Apple iPhone… multitouch display with wifi and bluetooth. It’s a built-in multitouch wifi music controller.
Out of the box, you should be able to use it with any flash-based musical interface that runs in Safari. The future is ripe for new gestural music controllers.
Yes, the iPhone will be interesting! I think in many ways it is nothing new (rather old), but the multitouch display is truly something new and probably ground breaking. It is quite possible that Apple will not leave it just for iPhone. The downside of iPhone is that it is not based on open standard as is with Nokia’s S60 (symbian) so we will not see as many third party applications – but then again, maybe they throw us with something as cool as GarageBand was!