i know i haven’t been gigging very much this year. and i could forgive you for thinking i’ve not been doing much on the live music front but you’d be wrong. so very wrong. i don’t want to make you feel bad or anything, it’s just the truth. this is my new guitar hero to midi max app i’ve been working on. it turns the guitar into a playable instrument while keeping all the control functionality of my previous patch. here’s the hastily thrown together blurb i slapped up on my youtube.
An app i’m working on called AXIS. it enables an xbox usb guitar hero controller to output midi to control ableton or any other software or hardware that eats midi.
it has two modes – play and control.
in control mode the buttons, whammy and 3 tilt sensors send out midi messages. this is intended for interfacing with software.
in play mode any musical scale can be superimposed over a guitar hero scale built on the first four buttons. the up pick can be offset to allow rapid playing of fifths or whatnot. the orange button acts as a modifier key allowing change of key and offset on the fly. the D-pad changes scale and the back and start keys change volume (velocity). the three tilt sensors and whammy send out MIDI CCs to control what ever. the tilt sensors on this guitar are particularly awesome, they sit on three different axes and you can make the guitar really expressive.
there’s a little HUD you can sit on top of what ever you’re controlling to monitor mode, key, volume, offset and scale.
i’m sorting out some documentation and then i’ll release it as a stand alone mac app. if a max-head out there want’s to help me port it over to windows that’d be ace. mac and windows interpret the guitar controller differently. once finished, i’ll release the source so people can modify it for other system’s guitars too. I went for an xbox guitar because it’s usb and the tilt sensors and whammy work which is a problem for ps2 guitars/adapters.
at the moment i’m building up my new live show utilizing the guitar to simultaneously shred, trigger samples and effects, control the rest of the track and control the accompanying video. see, i have been busy! and not just on this. i’ve got a whole album of new material which i’ll be relentlessly plugging through out the near future.
this post is little a bit of a tease, now i think of it. perhaps this video might make it appear more substantial.
another new clip in the works. this one will involve aerial video and possibly toy cars… i’ll post a less foggy explanation soon, along with news on all the other stuff that’s in the pipeline: new album! midi guitar hero application! fun new merch! weeeee!
Thanks to everyone who made it out to the Aleks and the Ramps album launch. it was a great night. there’s some footage of the night that i’ll post up when i can. if you’re unfamiliar with the ramps you should go edumacate your self. they’ve got a new clip which is pretty fantastic and just happens to share a few themes with my clip for faux pas‘ track coach. while i can’t really overtly claim it’s plagerisation, i certainly can insinuate it.
SPOT THE DIFFERENCE:
i know now some of you might think this whole thing’s a trick, that they are both obviously exactly the same video, but i promise you there are some subtle differences. It might help to watch on a larger screen…
and if you want to do that you can! because COACH is going to be screened through out july at fed square in melbourne thanks to a competition curated by the portable film festival. it’s fun news, coach has been pretty underground since its creation. so if you’re around melbournia between July 15th to 25th go and see it debut daily for ten days … i don’t mean you should go see it all 10 of those days. just the first day. and the last day. and the day right in the middle. and the two days between the first day and the middle day and the middle day and the last day. then arrange yourselves into human sculptures to represent the screening times you’re attending. tearing it’s debut from the 4th dimension into the 3rd with little forethought to the dire consequences for the cosmos. that would be an apt debut… Continue reading kittens, space, axes
for the last few weeks i’ve been working on a clip for melbourne band cuba is japan. they make sorta soundtracky, interesting music. it’s really great stuff to work with visually… it’s great stuff in general. i’ll put a video sample up once my internet is dethrottled. it’s a fun project to have been working on too. broken into three sections, the clip starts with bugs coming out of cocoons, continues with bugs flying and ends with bugs dying. my job was the begining and end with the flying bit in the middle being animated by another robert elsewhere in australia. it’s all being pieced together by various animators, illustrators, director/producer/editors and new zealanders via the wonders of the internet… and snail mail. when i post a video about this i’ll put up a run down of everyone involved and their particular claims to awesomeness.
in other news: ZEAL RETURNS TO THE STAGE!
and this is going to be something special. why? because: ZEAL IS PLAYING WITH ALEKS AND THE RAMPS AT THE JADE MONKEY JULY 9TH!
it’s difficult to explain how exciting this is. i’ve wanted to play with aleks and the ramps for years. so come! it’s my first gig in 6 months! hear the new album! watch my new guitar hero max patch in action! see my audio/visual spectacular of which the visual component isn’t quite complete!
click here for the facebook event. invite your friends :)
greetings and welcome to the year 2009. incase you were unaware, the year actually begins on the first of febuary. don’t worry, it’s a common mistake. i don’t think any less of you. recording’s continuing and the scaffolding of an album is well and truly in place. progress was halted briefly by a crippling heat wave and while i would of liked to have been recording i was too busy curled up on the comparitively cool bathroom floor in a sweaty heap… not really… but it was too hot to think… or even exist.
anyway, more has been happening too. i think i left off talking about the guitar hero drums and my attempts to MIDIfi them. well, my success was limited. but i did put together a little video for youtube world to explain my guitar hero rig and some of things other people are doing with these awesome little plastic axes.
it’s quite likely you don’t care but i do get asked about it and sharing is caring. more has been happening too. i’ve started on a new clip for the new album and this particular clip is being filmed from the air! with this thing!
i’ll report back as things happen. and things are happening so i’ll report back soon. i think i’ve got some gigs coming up in march so i’ll have to tell you about that… it’ll involve banjo!
farewell for now as we launch recklessly into the future,
bob.
long time no post. yes, my internet presence has been slightly neglected. apologies. but i have much to report. recording! recording! recording! after the string of gigs last october, i’ve a veritable bounty of tunes and beats and, at this point in time, i am committing them to binary. you could almost say i’m recording an album. and i even know what’s it’s going to be called… but i’m not telling. although recording at the mighty ja’sstudio conctrete looked like this…
we recorded some drum samples two floors down in a big empty concrete room. the mic leads made their way down via the window and the side of the building but unfortunately we couldn’t get a headphone send down there. solution: a coke bottle + a piece of string. communique inside bottle. bottle out the window. genius! headphones are over rated i say. i was going to make a movie of this but hit a wall when i discovered how unbelievably crap imovie is… *about an hour later*… bah! combination of after effects screwing up and imovie not letting me pick my freaking export format. laaaaame! ok. never mind. hey, here’s an mp3 of a new song! it’s me in front of my computer playing ukulele and singing the morning after the last octoberlaide gig. anyone who came to that gig (rhino room) – this is that song i forgot all the words too.
ok, so what else? well i’ve sort of officially release my ep. it’s release has been up in the air for almost a year due to a series of minor disasters and roadblocks in the shapes of people. so i’ve taken a page out of the book of punk and i’m going DIY.
speaking of DIY (a segway worthy of radio!) i’ve been knee deep in drums and DIY midi triggers thanks in part to the truly wonderful guitar hero four. this game is really teaching me to drum. it’s the future of music education – or any skills training – i tells ya. my current project is converting the wireless usb drum kit into a fully functional midi drum kit. all of that equals a wireless, usb, midi drum kit. which is pretty neat. that will be the next post. right now, i’m off to drum.
bob out.
Zeal is 27 year-old Melbournite, Robert Jarvis. He makes anticon-esque indie-pop-tronica, animated music videos about cats in space and software that enables you to do all sorts of stuff.
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