Game controller as instrument on Pixelsumo

Game controller as instrument

I have been researching the use of consumer video game controllers to be used as peformance devices and musical instruments. By making such devices, many people are already used to playing with controllers, so it makes them instantly accessible. There are many examples out there, a few I have found listed below, but if you know of anymore please post a comment and I will add them.

fijuu by delire and pix, is an audio visual performance engine. The suite of instruments in fijuu will include a non-linear beat pattern sequencer, granular synthesis tools and a graphical filterbank. I am a fan of fijuu and like the use of open source in the creation and operation.

Shape Sequencer by Paul Money is a 4 player audio visual composition environment. Sounds are synthesised in Pure Data and visuals in GEM.

PSmaX by Michael Chambers is a Max/MSP set of pathes that allows you to take controller inputs and map them to other programs and control outputs.

[update: part 2]

Posted on April 4th 2005 under Sound

Comments

remco says:
(April 5th 2005)

You should get in contact with Tom Verbruggen (toktek) of sonido gris.
He builds a lot of setups using gamecontrollers for liveshowswith JunXion and LiSa (steim)
He also has a setup with dutch VJ guy called MNK they use gamecontrollers and Max/LiSa.

you can contact him on sonidogris.com [email address editted out]

Hope this helps

Best regards,

Remco van Bladel
we make money not art says:
(April 5th 2005)

Looking for game controllers used as instruments for audio/visual performances

Chris has started a list of video game controllers used as peformance devices and musical instruments. Anyone knows about similar works? The one illustrated here is Shape Sequencer, a graphical instrument where sounding shapes are manipulated using joy…
Steve Adam says:
(April 6th 2005)

http://listen.to/simulus

Reasonable (though in need of an update) documentation/resource of Essential Reality P5 glove in use as a music/sound controller
Hans-Christoph Steiner says:
(April 7th 2005)

StickMusic is an instrument comprised of two haptic devices, a joystick and a mouse, which control a phase vocoder in real time. The purpose is to experiment with ideas of how to apply haptic feedback when controlling synthesis algorithms that have no direct analogy to methods of generating sound in the physical world.
nowak says:
(April 7th 2005)

The most obvious to me would be the GameBoy, especially with nanoloop installed
http://www.nanoloop.de/
Been used many times over for live performances, like lo-bat’s latest (first news item at http://lo-bat.be ).
we make money not art says:
(April 7th 2005)

Migon game kit

The Mignon Game Kit is a kitset create by Olaf Val to enable a minimalist Gameboy to be individually designed, programmed and constructed, allowing it owner to develop a personal relationship to her/his device through the processes of self-production a…
Joao Ricardo says:
(April 7th 2005)

Check out this video: http://www.archive.org/movies/details-db.php?collection=opensource_movies&collectionid=p5glove
Mike Switzer says:
(April 7th 2005)

Just saw a band called “Treewave” their whole setup was an atari 2600, two commodore 64’s and some other processors…
I know they were generating video and sound with the 2600…not sure exactly what the controls were like (outdoor festival, I was on the ground, they were on the stage) but you might want to investigate…
jonbro says:
(April 8th 2005)

I know that geoff gdam (of the gdam audio mixer and share nyc [share.dj]) has used dance dance revolution controllers in his music…

I second the mention of the gameboy, and raise it with a http://www.littlesounddj.com.

I am currently emulating a gameboy on my mac and using a playstation controller to play with lsdj for my shows. As of tomorrow night at least.
vjb2 says:
(April 8th 2005)

Treewave is the brainchild of Austin, TX, hacker supreme Paul Slocum, inventor of the Synthcart cartridge for the classic Atari 2600. I’ve seen Treewave live and they’re truly wonderful. Treewave’s site is http://www.treewave.com (natch), whereas Paul’s own site, with more about the Synthcart, is at http://www.qotile.net.

I also recommend checking out the 8 Bit Peoples, a collective of artists producing music on original Gameboys and NESs, as well as other old school computers and circuit-bent devices. Their site is http://www.8bitpeoples.com.
nicolas says:
(April 9th 2005)

What I am looking for currently is the other way around: the use of musical instruments as game controllers!!!
VJ Ubergeek says:
(April 9th 2005)

I VJ with lots of stuff like that! Including a DDR pad, gamepad, neck-mounted wireless remote, etc. I never sit down, cause my interest is in computer performances that aren’t so much like computer work. I’m very hyperactive. (BTW I used to use a Mattel Power Glove but retired it.)

http://cyberspaceland.org

Re:gards!
VJ Ubergeek
SongCarver says:
(April 10th 2005)

I’ve developed a controller glove based on a wireless force feedback joystick…and with haptic feedback in development as well. pretty easy to do this stuff.. contact me for more info.
Grundlagen says:
(April 11th 2005)

Game controller as instrument

read….
Dennis McNulty says:
(April 11th 2005)

I designed & programmed a system in 2000 that consisted of a Playstation dualshock controller attached to an Analog Devices SHARC chip. A friend did the interfacing of the gamepad to the SHARC.

Audio played into the SHARC was analysed [pretty simply - zero-crossing algorithm & gating] for pitch and rhythm and the resulting information was used to drive an FM synth. The gamepad was used to control the timbre of the FM sounds and stuff like the density of the sound. The idea was to invert the usual control hierarchy: the ‘musician’ didn’t have much control over pitch & rhythm but had a reasonable amount of control over timbre.

It worked :)
Malaga says:
(April 13th 2005)

Thank you very much for the info I was looking for, and Greetings from Malaga-Spain Antonio
Hans-Christoph Steiner says:
(April 13th 2005)

The [hid] toolkit is a software kit built within Pd (http://puredata.org ). It is a toolkit for building your own instruments using USB HID devices. These need not only be musical instruments, but can control anything that Pd can generate including music, sound, interaction, robotics, and more.

http://at.or.at/hans/pd/hid.html
ninjaspew says:
(May 2nd 2005)

i play in a band called ‘chrism and fenris’ we use modded commodore 64s and a gameboy to make music.

http://www.sciencegirlrecords.com/cf
Jason Torchinsky says:
(July 28th 2005)

Hey…

I think I’ve done somthing that fits in here quite well…albeit very crude. I made the “Crapophone”, a musical instrument you hold like a guitar that connects to an Apple II computer. It’s made from, essentially, a pair of Apple II paddles– one knob controls pitch, the other duration or, alternately, an arpegiated pitch. Buttons are used to ‘pluck’. And the Apple II provides the staggeringly crude sound. Weirdly, it’s pretty fun. The band 8-Bit weapon (http://ww.8bitweapon.com) is using this, and many other, better 8-bit computer based instruments. Just thought you may like to know.
Lovely Media says:
(January 31st 2006)

[…] Pixelsumo has a post on using videogame controllers as instruments.Â� PS2 controllers interacting with graphical sound environments.Â� Shape Sequencer is a PD/GEM based game for rotating objects in space to manipulate tamber, rhythm, and sequence [MOVIE].Â� Fijuu is “a 3D, audio/visual performance engine. Using a game engine, the player(s) of fijuu dynamically manipulate 3D instruments with PlayStation2-style gamepads to make improvised music. The suite of instruments in fijuu will include a non-linear beat pattern sequencer, granular synthesis tools and a graphical filterbank.”Â� Fijuu looks awesome but right now is only for linux.Â� PS2 controllers are great because they have haptic feedback (they vibrate) - which can be reprogrammed to give the feel of a real instrument (see H. C. Anderson’s ‘the [hid] toolkit’).Â� a sort of [hid] toolkit explicitly for game controllers is given in max as PSMax (seen above). No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI Leave a comment Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong> […]
Carl Emil says:
(December 10th 2006)

A very interesting thread, although it’s a bit old.

I did a gamepad controlled VJ program in Jitter earlier this year:
http://moodplug.com/index.php?page=project&id=17

At the moment Im working on a multi-user gamepad controlled video synth for a contemporary art museum in Denmark. This time Im doing it it Processing/Java and Im really falling in love with object oriented programming. It’s beatiful.

~Carl Emil

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Game controller as instrument

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