Electric Rock

In the purest fashion of personal passion projects, ever since I learned of the presence of MIDI signals in instruments and how to access them, I have been wondering how to express musicality in a physical manner. To make music go beyond sound, and incorporate interactive behavior into a musical performance. How could I make specifically individual notes trigger different spatial behaviors? Could this be a new avenue for stage design? Or a different kind of musical expression? To figure this out would mean I could perform my favorite songs in novel ways, with a stage that reacts in real-time to the music I am playing. A thrilling possibility for experimental musical performance, and a dream come true for any die-hard Guitar Hero or Rock Band fanatic. While I could achieve these interactive behaviors by learning how to play the piano and utilizing a MIDI controller in my performance, I have always wanted to play a serious guitar, so the challenge was to control creative technology through signals from an analog guitar.

Utilizing the same LED lights from the Respoken installation, I developed the code for an interactive stage. The prototype currently reacts to three elements: guitar volume, melody, and chords.

Guitar volume controls light intensity and melody and chords are capable of triggering different light and color behaviors,  depending on which notes are being played. I currently change between melody mode and chord mode for different interaction triggers.

There is immense further development needed, I need to clean the guitar MIDI pickup as currently a lot of unplayed notes are captured, which trigger unintended light interaction. Most importantly improve my guitar skills! There are only so many coded behaviors I can think of with a beginner guitar skillset, and an inspiring goal would be to seamlessly blend the stage interactivity with musical improvisation.

A lot of work to be done, but gets me very excited to see a working prototype!