Guitar Hero Hacks

Edge Online has a short blurb mentioning a project at the University of California turning the Guitar Hero guitar into a real instrument. From the article: "For the final project of their Computer Audio course, University of California students Travis Chen and Sunny Chan have created Guitar Hero Hack, a plugin for sequencing software Max/MSP that lets players assign switchable banks of samples to each of the controller's buttons, utilizes its tilt switch as a way to clear current audio on any given track, and, the two hope, might be on its way to a fully functioning live instrument." His incredibly impressive demo video is well worth watching.

Easy?

[Southpaw018]

...don't miss the accompanying video, in which Chen, like every proficient player, makes it all look far too easy to produce a surprisingly nice tune in just seconds

Ain't that the truth. I wish I had that much talent - if I tried that it'd just be a random sequence of sounds. Awesome proof of concept.

Re:Your sig

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the hell cares being on some 9xx.xxx slashbot's foe's list?

MIDI is Great!

[drewzhrodague]

Lots of groups have adapted non-instruments into musical instruments, by hooking them up to MIDI [wikipedia.org], a digital interface for electronic music instruments. It's quite easy, extensible, and everything electronic and musical supports it (after like '85 I guess).

I'm not so great with a guitar, bass, drums, and definately not keyboards. MIDI sequencers (computer and embedded) let me play the notes as I want them to be played, instead of relying on my fingers to actually play the bass [bandnight.com]. I can then focus on where I want the tune to go, rather than this solo I can't play right. Just figured I'd toss that out there. MIDI is great!

Re:Synthaxe Drumitar

[rbochan]

The Synthaxe [wikipedia.org], is simply a midi controller. The only difference between that and the more 'traditional' keyboard style controllers is that it's held and can be played like a guitar. Guitarist Allan Holdsworth [therealall...sworth.com] was one of the early pioneers of it's use back in 1985 or so. It's all over the album Metal Fatigue [amazon.com], and others.

Like any other midi controller, you can connect it to any DSP device you want, not just drum machines, but any synthsizer that you can get a cable connected to.

Re:Easy?

[gEvil (beta)]

I wish I had that much talent - if I tried that it'd just be a random sequence of sounds.

Hmm. I just watched the video and it pretty much is a random sequence of sounds. It's really hard to go wrong when you only have five tones to choose from for each instrument, especially when they're all in the same key. The rhythms/beats of the different tracks he was laying didn't match up at all, though. So, ummm, yeah. Still, an incredibly cool hack for the guitar hero controller though. I gotta give him tons of credit for that. And I'm sure some of the tracks he's spent more time honing sound great too.