No sooner do I tell the world (and by “the world” I mean “you three readers, hi there – xoxo”) about my millions-making idea for Wii Conductor does my client Eric send me this from today’s Boston Globe:
When Paul Henry Smith and the Fauxharmonic
Orchestra set up to perform, the sounds made are like no other symphony
orchestra. There is no chorus of string instruments tuning, no scooting
of chairs, no fluttering of the pages of musical scores. Rather there
are just two imperceptible clicks as Smith turns on two computers – a
MacPro for the woodwinds and an IMac for everything else.But the instrumental sounds and full 100-voice choir that Smith then coaxes from the machines, using a
Nintendo
Wii controller as his conductor’s baton, sound surprisingly acoustic,
live, and real. Smith is quick to point out that the effect does not
yet equal the experience of, say, a night at Symphony Hall, but the
advancing technology of digital orchestras is rapidly getting closer.
The full story is here, and here’s how it works:
There are four components. First, there are the sound libraries. They
are 500 to 600 gigabytes of data on a disc. Each note, on each
instrument, each possible way a musician can play it, is recorded as a
separate file. So, say a violin playing a C would be recorded soft,
loud, mezzo-piano, pizzicato, using the bow, loud sharp attack then
fading away. There might be hundreds of recordings of that violin
playing C. . . Next, there is software that manages access to that
data. . . The third component is like the bow for a violin, it’s
something you wield to make the sound happen. For me, that’s the
Nintendo wireless controller and I also stand on a Wii balance board.
The board senses where and how hard I’m leaning. If I wave my arms
faster or slower, that changes the speed, and if I lean toward the
phantom areas where the musicians would be in a real orchestra, those
instruments become louder. I preprogram the notes to be played into the
computer. . . The fourth part is having really good speakers, and
that’s very important. . . Bang & Olufsen has provided me with
Beolab 5 speakers. The technology in them was developed by a local guy,
David Moulton, who lives in Groton. The essence of the technology is
that it spreads the sound evenly in a space, so you can create the
illusion that the sound is originating across the stage.
My game was going to come with Bang & Olufsen speakers, too, Paul Henry Smith.