Wacom tablets

Here's a video of two australian academics in their research/rehearsal space discussing and demonstrating their use of wacom graphics tablets to control digital audio.

Getting one of these tablets working within maxmsp is pretty straightforward and you can use it in a variety of different ways...



link

wii-theremin

speaking of taking yourself too seriously...

Here's a video where the maker of a wii-mote based theremin explains how it works. He's using the infra-red sensor of the wii-mote to determine the position of two markers (one on each hand). He then maps the position of one marker to pitch, the other to volume to create a theremin type instrument.
It doesn't have to stop there - the mapping could be done so that the two markers control any parameter of the sound - giving you expressive control over any sound.

Grainface laptop performance

Here's a video of a german laptop ensemble giving a performance.
The music is quite 'ambient' with long sustained tones and then short percussive elements introduced throughtout - there's also some vocoding going on.
Musically, it's not everyone's cup of tea and the performers do look like they're taking themselves a little too seriously at times. But they use wii-motes as gestural input devices to control the sound and the link between their actions and the sounds being generated is pretty obvious - so worth a look...

AudioTouch

Over at Make Magazine there is a video of a demo of the AudioTouch system. This is a multi-touch musical interface.

This system is being produced by Seth Sandler as part of his final degree project.
At the moment it is still a work in progress, and there appear to be one or two little buggy things still in the system, but some of applications he has created using the multi-touch system look pretty cool - think tenori-on and Elecktroplankton.

wii-mote controlled guitar fx

via synthtopia
This guitarist has produced a patch in maxmsp that takes his guitar signal and processes it in various ways. He uses the accelerometer and button press data from the wii-mote to control the parameters of his fx processes.
Sounds quite good, and adds a performative element to the whole process.

Touchless

Touchless is an open-source application framework that enables you to use your webcam as a multi-touch interface.

via lifehacker:

"Right now the Touchless Demo lets you play with four proof-of-concept ideas: Draw, Image, Snake, and Defend. The first is a free-form drawing application, while Image is an image manipulation utility that allows you to zoom in or out and move around on a map with marker gestures. The other two are games (Snake is exactly like the classic, and Defend is up to four-person Pong). To set up a marker that Touchless tracks, just grab something colorful, click Add A New Marker, then draw a circle around the object. From there on out, Touchless will monitor that marker wherever it is in the shot. Right now the application is a little clunky, but as a proof-of-concept it's not bad (and it's fun to play with)."

wiiloop machine v2.0

This is hardly a new video (originally from January) but I thought I'd stick it up as its a pretty good demo of live performance software which utilise gestural control.
The wiiloop software allows you to record up to 4 tracks into the software and then turn these on and off as you loop through. You can use the wii-mote to control sample playback, effects processing, pitch control, etc...


Wii Loop Machine 2.0 :: Sampling! from The Amazing Rolo on Vimeo.

AirPiano

via createdigitalmusic

The AirPiano is gesture sensing MIDI controller. It consists of an Arduino board and IR sensors, the prototype instrument provides the user 3 layers each of which contains 8 individual "virtual switch". When a switch is triggered a MIDI note message is passed and a LED under the switch is activated to provide the user with visual feedback to aid in the learning of the instrument.

The developer has posted 2 youtube videos of the AirPiano in use:
The first demonstrates its use a controller for Ableton Live.


The second demonstrates its use a more traditional melodic MIDI controller.


Whilst it looks like a fun thing to play around with I'm not convinced by it really. I don't really see the advantage over a 'normal' MIDI controller which gives you tactile feedback. The developer suggests that it could be used to make a more interesting performance which is true, but a 'normal' MIDI controller can still be played as an instrument. I think that there could be potential to do some interesting things with this controller given more time spent experimenting with it.

More info can be found at airpiano.de