The Gwiitar
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"What the @#$%?" - Most common response from audience members
After decades of insane guitar stunts, audiences have come to expect electric guitarists to rock out not only musically, but to jump around, kick stuff over, and smash guitars into things. I got to thinking - I don't really move around a whole lot when I play, and the rock gods were probably frowning on me. But what if I had some tool that would reward me for moving around by sculpting the sound from my guitar? Audiences would go crazy! My mind began spinning...Before the Wii
Sometime back in 2006, the concept was born. I knew I would have to create some sort of motion sensing device that I could program to control different aspects of my sound. I just had no idea where to begin. Originally, it seemed like volume would be the easiest effect to modify, based on the angle of my guitar neck. Maybe there was a way to hotwire a volume pedal. But on the other hand, that would be so much work for just one effect. I then started to look for some sort of USB motion sensing device, so I could program which guitar effects to control. Well, needless to say, I realized that would take more time than I would ever have, so the project came to a standstill.
Wiimusic
I had told my friend James Yuill about the idea while I was in London, and he later tipped me off to the use of a Nintendo Wii Remote for sound sculpting. After checking out videos of Wiimoting DJs on youtube, I realized this was exactly what I was looking for. I picked up a Wiimote and downloaded a free program to interpret the movements of it - OSCulator (this one's for Mac, but there are ones out there for Windows, too). I then set it up as a MIDI device in my recording/mixing software to control the envelopes as the guitar sounds are sent through my laptop. Wow! I was like a kid at Christmas. The project I thought would take years and cost hundreds of dollars turned out to be $60 and I got it working in one afternoon.