You may remember the video of me re-playing “sweet child of mine” live on the dance floor with a Rock Star guitar. Soon after we posted a guide on how to set that up yourself in this article. Coming in October the makers of Guitar hero are going to be releasing “Guitar Hero World Tour” which boasts a pair of sick looking controllers equipped with new features that might be great for djing.
The Guitar not only looks significantly better than the last version but boasts a bunch of new features that upgrade its usability as a dj controller or live stage instrument including:
Touch Sensitive slider on the neck
The big new addition is what Neversoft is calling the “touch strip.” Essentially, it’s a touch-sensitive section of the guitar neck right next to the standard, multicolored buttons. The touch strip doesn’t stand out from the rest of the neck, so you might not even realize it’s there if you’re not familiar with your new hardware. What this touch strip does is act as a multipurpose tool for several inputs and effects. One use is finger-tapping guitar solos, but you can also swipe your finger along it, side-to-side, to mess with the sustain on your held notes and provide a sound very different from the whammy bar. You can also use it to affect the synth sounds during songs with heavy keyboard usage.
Improved accelerometer
could that mean multiple directions of movement tracking?
large palm button
+ a Joystick?
The Drum Set
this is looking like it might actually make a great set of triggers for the studio or the stage. If the price stays under $100 then it will also be a bargin.
- The cymbal “pie slices” can be rotated and repositioned to taste.
- To activate star power on drums, hit the yellow and orange cymbal at the same time.
- Drum heads are 8 inches, slightly larger than the 7 inches of Rock Band drums.
- Drums have a silicone surface, so they’re (reasonably) quiet right out of the box; no modifications required.
- Wireless!
- Velocity sensitive
Guitar Translator
The last time we talked about this concept it became obvious there are precious few apps out there that effectively translate HID information into MIDI. The only one that actually does it for mac is $80 and may not be around for much longer. So to make it a little bit easier for those that want to try this sort of thing out we created guitar translator. Its a simple mac only app that is fast, super reliable and impossible to use incorrectly. Its only job is to convert almost any rock band or guitar hero instrument on the market into midi automatically. You dont have to do anything, just plug in a guitar or drum set and they will show up as midi inputs in your software
We will be posting more info in a few weeks but here is a little screen shot teaser for now:
Someone should really put their mind to creating a guitar-like controller that is actually made for DJing. Don’t get me wrong, these controllers look cool as hell and if they’re really under $100 I would definitely consider picking up the guitar to use this way, but it would be amazing if someone came up with a controller that could be worn like a guitar that offered full control over DJ software (or at least as much as possible; not sure you could do song selection without a computer screen).
Then again, maybe superstar DJs have enough ego as it is already without being able to strut around stage like a lead guitarist ;)
The one thing I found very disappointing with the original version of the guitar was that so many of the buttons repeated the HID signals on other buttons.
…There were like only 3-4 buttons that didn’t to the same thing as another button. LAME. Hope they fixed that.
yeah that was lame but that was a result of how they designed the game, not an error on the hardware.
the only buttons you lose are right and left on the hatswitch/joystick. they are the same as the up/down strum bar.
yea ean i agree with ben they look cool but thats not enough….u should tell vestax to create a new VESTAX MIDI STAGE CONTROLLER like this
[IMG]http://i37.tinypic.com/dyt174.jpg[/IMG]
i try to post the pic but it doesnt show so click on the linkk
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=dyt174&s=4
Heh, vestax plays it safe. Everyone plays it safe excep for numark. Numark has been creating toys lately (iDJ if I’m not mistaken). Ow and another good toy is Evolution UC-33. Cheap and toy-ish feel, doesn’t have a silicone finish. :-)
Ean, it is nice to have all these translators built for users that need not more. You are still converting HID to MIDI, which is a downsampling.
Someone should (I said this earlier and I don’t have time to learn these environments) create a patch for PureData, CPS or MAX/MSP.
Something that is good enough to be used in all possible combinations (MIDI/HID/OSC).
Frankly, it is too bad that just NI traktor (which I am very fond of) supports OSC for now.
Now I know this ain’t the place for this but:
Here is a hack/idea for the usage of traktor and high res MIDI pitch fader(on itch):
detect fader movement, calcualte offset from the last position and send enough up or down control events(depending on the direction of movement). Every time the pitch fader moves over zero position send control MIDI event that resets the pitch to zero.
Optimisation would be to detect fast changes, aproximate position and set virtual value with a combination of low res MIDI CC value and few(er) increase/decrease control messages.
Note: this idea is for traktor as it has a possibility to bind increase/decrease, direct control and reset for a single fader. and inc/dec can be set to different resolution.
Ow BTW, MIDIBox platform can read positions of pots/faders with 10 bit precision, which is still not 14bits but can be aproximated.
Do you think this will be released by Halloween time? I have a huge gig that this would go over like crazy on.
looking at Guitar Translator nice app mind you, Is there an option for P.C users. I got virtual dj and would love to ause the touch strip for video transtions
very cool that touch strip…
the velocity sensitivity on the drums is swell as well…
for a second i thought this was post about the rockband .mogg (multi track .ogg) files floating around…
So any news? have someone succesfully tried new instruments?
How they feel? And what about Guitar Translator - is it done?
guitar translator is done and ready to go- its very stable and simple.
unfortunately the new PS3 guitars for guitar hero dont work . They are drawing too much USB power :( trying to find a work around.
Thanx Ean.I suppose its same problem with Wii guitar? Is there any difference with connection when using PS3 or Wii guitar from new GHWT?
I am asking, beacause I would like to know if it is better to buy Wii version or PS3/Xbox version.
The Wii one is not going to work for sure. The only chance is the PS2 or Xbox version. I need to find a store that has both and test them on the computer. :(
Hey Ean,
Are we going to be able to use this any time soon? I’d love to mess around with it.
yes- very soon! :)
Hi Ean
So any news with software? :) Did you tried also the GHWT drums yet with traktor?
I have heard it got some issue with recognision when you hit the cymbals.
sorry, it should come out at the end of this month. We are just very short on resources with so many things happening these days. I did not try the new drums but the new guitar is not working at all. The playstation version drawing too much USB power. has anyone tried the xbox version?