Wiimote Drum Set Original Proposal

ABSTRACT

My final project would be a program which produced the sounds usually created by a traditional drum set by playing back recorded sounds controlled by a personal interface with the user through a wii remote.  This program would be based on existing programs and reworked to be far more extensive in it’s production of sound.

PROPOSAL

     My proposition for a final project is a “wiimote” (wii remote) drum set.  On the internet, at sites such as   www.kreativrauschen.com/blog/2007/11/04/wiiwiiwiiwii-using-the-wiimote-as-drum-kit-or-piano/, and www.thisisnotalabel.com/my-wiimote-drum-kit.php there are several programs which could be considered a good start. There are also the programs called darwiimote, darwiimote OSC, and wii drummer. These programs usually contain the programming for the interface between the remote and the computer.  As some of these basic programs have begun to do, the wiimote drum set created in this project would use recorded sounds of a drum set played when the sensors in the wiimote pick up a specific motion.  The motions which a drummer would naturally use for each tone (snare, high hat, kick, crash, toms, etc.) would coincide with the playing of each sound.  The sets which I have viewed and cross-referenced over the internet usually play only a few sounds, usually snare, high hat, crash, and kick.  The completed project would preferably be far more extensive, covering the sounds of all the drums in a usual set (base/kick, high tom, low tom, floor tom, snare) as well as several cymbal sounds (high hat open, high hat closed, crash, and ride).  The set would use the nun chucks for the wiimotes to correspond with the foot pedals in the average drum set, allowing one to control the kick drum sound replay, and the other to switch between open and closed high hat sounds.

     For the final presentation of the project, I would set the drum set up in class, and allow the students in class to play it.  I would present a cd of a couple recordings of me playing the drum set as well as some other documentation of the process of creating the drum set.

Wii Drum Project Process

            As I began this project I talked with my professor about what would be the best way to go about it.  He suggested (after much idea hashing and discussion) that I use a device than inputs wii and outputs something else along with a program that accepts whatever the input program outputs and plays musical tones.  Boy does that sound confusing.

            In the end, after long experimentation, I chose to use midi as the middle format.  I tried several programs that accepted the wii and put out midi, and I tried many programs that were supposed to take the midi input and turn it into music.  Most did not.

            After a great deal of trial and error I came across a program called wii-to-midi.  The program accepted wii and output midi.  Then I searched through programs trying to find one which accepted midi.  Ironically my final choice already resided on my computer.  Garage Band. 

            Once I set Garage Band to accept the same input which wii-to-midi put out, I was ecstatic when I heard several drumbeats as I accidentally moved the wiimote.  Unfortunately, I could only create two types of drum beats, and those only by pushing the B and A buttons at the same time as when I swung the wiimote.  I was very disappointed when I tried for a long time to get more tones and was unsuccessful.

            So I had to backtrack.  I had found out the joys of Garage Band so I stuck with that, and therefore sought another midi output program.  I was blessed (after several more hours of search) to find a tutorial which supposedly showed how to use the program wiinstrument to control Garage Band using a midi interface.

            Terribly excited and nervous of another promising program which might fail, I began to follow the instructions.  Unfortunately the instructions only got me part way, and they needed some tweaking.  I began to loose hope.  But then, wonder of all wonders, after I had tweaked and prodded the ideas behind the instructions to their limit.  And then…nothing…nothing…VICTORY!!!  Drum tones came from my computer.  One tone? Not again!  But I realized that by pushing the arrows on the remote I could produce an entire range of tones!  Excited with my victory I played with the drums for quite some time, after which I sought to find out if the results were repeatable.  They were.

            The basic procedure for completing the wii drum set is at the link provided below under tutorials.  It needs to be altered depending on the version of the computer, but I had great success with it. This tutorial is only mac supported, and I am pretty sure it only works with OSX, if you have any other type of computer the links below should provide you with a start.  Enjoy!

Process Sheet:  All the Things I Tried

In the process of attempting to make a successful wii-remote (wiimote) controlled computer drum set synthesizer I tried many downloads and angles, here they are, feel free to give them a try.  I put in bold which ones worked for me.

DOWNLOADABLE WIIMOTE DRUM SETS

Successful

Using the Wiimote as a Drum Kit or Piano

Download and blurb: www.kreativraushen.com/blog/2007/11/04/wiiwiiwiiwii-using-the-wiimote-as-a-drum-kit-or-piano/

Unsuccessful

Wii Play The Drums

download: http://dl.qj.net/Wii-Play-the-Drums-Wii-Homebrew/pg/12/fid/13759/catid/526

instructions/blurb: http://www.qj.net/Wii-Play-the-Drums-in-action/pg/49/aid/92990

                        My Wiimote Drum Kit

for pc:  www.thisisnotalabel.com/my-wiimote-drum-kit.php

PROGRAMS THAT ACCEPT WII INPUT

            Successful

darwiinRemote

 http://sourceforge.net/projects/darwiin-remote/    

darwiinRemoteOSC (osc connection works for mac osx) http://code.google.com/p/darwiinosc/downloads/list

witomidi

http://mike.verdone.ca/wiitomidi/ http://software.techrepublic.com.com/abstract.aspx?docid=180802

OSCulator

 http://www.osculator.net/wiki/Main/Download 

Processing

 http://processing.org/  

                        Wiinstrument

Download and instructions: http://screenfashion.org/releases/the_wiinstrument/

            Unsuccessful

Glovepie, (highly recommended but nearly impossible to download because the creator’s page is constantly bogged down)

http://carl.kenner.googlepages.com/glovepie_download

MUSIC SOFTWARES:

Garage band

http://mac.sofotex.com/download-121712.html

Ableton live (supposed to be great, but I just did it with garage band)

free trial here:

 http://www.ableton.com/

INSTRUCTIONS, TUTORIALS, AND VIDEOS WHICH WERE HELPFUL

How to use the wiimote with Ableton Live:

http://www.vimeo.com/442266

Intro to Wiinstrument

http://macapper.com/2008/01/23/wiinstrument-play-the-drums-using-a-wii-remote/

Using the wiinstrument with a pc  http://screenfashion.org/2007/11/first_wiinstrument_release_for_windows.html

This is the tutorial I was successful with (with some alterations)

http://screenfashion.org/2007/09/wii_remote_garageband.html

OTHER MIDI DOWNLOADS

Midi creator software

Midikeys (unsuccessful, seems not to work) http://www.manyetas.com/creed/midikeys.html

Wav to mid converter

http://the-music-teacher-s-secretary.qarchive.org/  - expensive

This is the response to a narrative project for timearts class. The assignment was to create a narrative which did not go in time order. This clip has been edited for three reasons. For time (It was very long, and some important parts such as the response of my family have been left out), in order to make the video more palatable (some of the more horrible, graphic, and nightmarish events I have left out. I am thinking about making a clip of just these parts and putting them up with a warning), and for drama (the piece has been made more concise and some of the distracting parts have been left out) I bared my soul in this video, so bear with me, it is long. Please feel free to comment any tips you have to make the video better in any way.

This is an extra credit project we worked on in class, we played with the program Context Free Art, which can be found at: http://www.contextfreeart.org/ and is a whole lot of fun to play with.  I took a picture of every step I took from the file I was given to the file I decided to keep and made it into a quick video.

This is a project where the teacher asked us to remix a movie trailer to create a different impression of the movie, the first two videos are examples of that technique, and the third is my actual video.  It is longer than I intended.  Sound bytes from “Moulin Rouge” used as well as a scene from a spanish soap opera.

The Circle of Life:  A Lion King Remix

For our actual animation project, we were assigned any type of animation we wanted but we had to use three “oblique strategies” in order to assist the project’s development.  These were the strategies I used.

Cut a vital connection – I decided I wanted to do a scene from the lion king.  I ended up cutting all the connections to visuals that came with that idea.   Removed all understanding of the lion king, the lions, and used something new, something different

Convert a melodic element into a rhythmic element – I originally had music in the background, but this gave me the idea to use the origonal wrds.  I understand that his was not really “a rythic element” but it was because of this card that I came up with the idea.

Emphasize the flaws – I originally had intended to crop the part at the end where you can see the edges of the “background”  but I decided not to when I saw this, it was kind of cute in the end.  We all knew it was home made anyway

We were told to create an animation for practice in class.  This is the traditional hello/wave video with a new twist.

This is a movie we created as an assignment.  The teacher assigned a horror/gore movie.  I went more toward the horror angle, the movie is meant to be a nightmare.  The video can be played as a loop if desired.  It is about a girl who is trapped in a dorm hallway and cannot escape, as common friend’s rooms become totally different, and the door at one end of the hall leads right back to the other end!  Unfortunately my computer repeatedly froze and I lost data each time, so the clips were much smoother before and the transition between beginning and end was almost seamless.  Oh well, it’s still fun!

In Timearts we were asked to create a video using the audio and video libraries our class had created which would overload the senses.  This is the result.  The sound track has four different levels of constant sound.  One track is a single song.  The second is a series of song clips arranged to be the same beat as the original song track, and the third and fourth levels are dozens of sound effects following closely after one another.  The sound I feel was more successful than the audio, but overall I am satisfied.