Evan explained a little how he rigged his Guitar H...

2008-02-08T12:32:00.000-06:00

Evan explained a little how he rigged his Guitar Hero controller to be used as a real musical instrument on his blog:

About a month ago, while utterly dominating ZZ Top on Guitar Hero, I got a dumb idea. Everyone loves Guitar Hero, right? How cool would it be to play a Guitar Hero guitar during a live show? Okay, bad question, but I intended to do it anyway. I couldn’t just play the game on stage, however. That would cross the very narrow line from geek-cool into Lamesville, USA, Population: The nerd playing Guitar Hero on stage. No, I’d have to play an actual song… so I did, and “Underneath Your Clothes” never sounded so dumb. The sound guy at Schubas seemed to get a kick out of it, though.

Several people have asked me how the dingus worked, so I will explain it below if you’re interested.

Wii controllers are actually bluetooth devices. Bluetooth is most commonly used for those wireless borg-esque cellphone ear-thingies but it can send other types of wireless signals as well. So the first step was getting a bluetooth receiver for my computer. (Thanks, eBay!)

I then found a little C# library written by Brian Peek that reads and processes the raw wireless signal from the Wii controller. It needed a little wrangling, but the software was soon reacting to button presses from the Guitar Hero controller.

The next step was to make those buttons do something. I figured out all the chords I would need to play the song and mapped them out to combinations of buttons on the controller as shown to the right. Single buttons were used for single notes and multiple buttons represented chords. I then recorded all of the guitar strums and plucks. The “up” strums were short and choppy, while the “down” strums were longer and more sustained. I did three versions of each sound so that repeated strums wouldn’t sound too, well, repeated.

Then, using the managed DirectSound library, the application plays the appropriate sound file based on the buttons that are being pressed, cycling to the next version each time a sound is played.

He has links to sound files and helpful other stuff to allow you to at least try to do it yourself over at his blog. Check it out here.

Here's what Lacy wrote about the show on her blog:...

2008-02-01T11:25:00.000-06:00

Here's what Lacy wrote about the show on her blog:

"My friend Evan packed Schuba's last night, then proceeded to charm the pants off everyone.

Evan: (exuberantly, between songs) THANKS! For all the CLAPPING!"

Are you sure that's not Josh Groban in the picture...

2008-01-31T20:55:00.000-06:00

Are you sure that's not Josh Groban in the picture?

I should also mention that near the end of his set...

2008-01-31T19:12:00.000-06:00

I should also mention that near the end of his set, Evan brought out a Wii Guitar Hero controller that he had somehow programmed to actually play music. He used it to play a Shakira cover.

Pretty amazing. Even the other software engineers in the audience seemed impressed.

Buy his album.

I like how you use The Onion and Evan's ex-girlfri...

2008-01-31T19:00:00.000-06:00

I like how you use The Onion and Evan's ex-girlfriend's mother in the same sentence, like their reviews are equivalent in stature.

fantastic shot, Arnie. Really cool framing.

2008-01-31T17:32:00.000-06:00

fantastic shot, Arnie. Really cool framing.

Comments on A Year in Pictures of Comedy: .flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flick...

Evan explained a little how he rigged his Guitar H...

Here's what Lacy wrote about the show on her blog:...

Are you sure that's not Josh Groban in the picture...

I should also mention that near the end of his set...

I like how you use The Onion and Evan's ex-girlfri...

fantastic shot, Arnie. Really cool framing.