Virtual conductor was designed to be an interactive Wii remote controlled experience where a user was using the Wii remotes to control music and be a conductor of a piece of music. The idea of how we would implement this changed during the designing process. We eventually came to a conclusion that instead of it being an advanced conductor simulation we thought it would be more user friendly if it was a piece of music that the user had simple controls over such as volume of each instrument and tempo of the piece. It was broken up into four pieces of controllable sections of the musical piece and that was woodwinds, beat, strings and brass. A nun chuck on the left hand controlled the volume of the piece and of each instrument and the right hand which held the Wii remote controlled the tempo of the piece so as you swung the remote up and down, like a conductor, it would speed up the tempo according to how fast it was being swung. The music itself was conducted by use and we specifically wanted a composed original orchestral piece that had build up and feeling in the song to give the user a chance to put emphasis with the volume control on certain instruments in the song, which in my opinion turned out exactly how we desired in the final product.
Related and influential works
Some specific works that gave us ideas and influenced our basis for our design were games such as Wii conductor hero, guitar hero, rock band, singstar and the new upcoming Wii music game.
We initially wanted to make something musical and just wanted to make a visual conductor where you didn't need a wii mote but we thought the wii mote would act as more of a conductors stick and make it easier and more responsive other then video capturing.
Design motivation
Our motivation for our end design originated from each of our musical backgrounds we wanted control music using gestures in a similar way to which a conductor controls an orchestra. Our motivations are those that are mentioned in the influential works such as wii games where the interactivity from user the triggers music. Our idea changes a lot during the process of designing the system and we decided to take out the gaming experience from our original plans and this was because it was hard to implement in such a short time a way to keep points or some sort of scoring system.
Technical method
Using the IRCAM software supervp play patch that gave us control on the playback speed changes, with limiting the minimum and maximum speeds reachable, while pitch and envelope correction maintained the original patch envelope. The nun-chuck joystick is used to select between the four different streams over audio and puts emphasis on them and the C and Z button controls the master volume of playback. The wii mote controlled the tempo when was swung up and down and would send a signal to maxmsp and there was a max tempo that could be slow down when swung slower.
Above is the maxmsp patches of the programming for the wii mote and nun chuck. The nun chuck when moved the wheel stick would trigger the box on the right and trigger the instruments which were assigned to that quadrant and give it max volume.
User experience / usability considerations
The simplicity in the interface is designed that a person with no musical back ground can come wave their hand to get a varying tempo and use there other hand to adjust volume levels. This I believe is achieved efficiently for the user as there is not many button presses involved for the user. The interface is also defined that the two parameters that the user will control are laid out one in each hand. We wanted the user to not have to practice this to get a hang over how to use this particular software, but more natural in how it works. We wanted to simulate what non musical people believe a conductor does for an orchestra using simple controls. This influenced us to use a simple method of the wiimote and nun-chuck. Our goal was for a user to have an immersed experience through manipulating a musical arrangement. This would require that there are appropriate parameters that may be altered by the user. I believe we achieved our goal quite successfully and gave us a good platform to build on if we wanted to develop the idea more to accommodate a gaming experience or possibly something that a user could use for longer then just the 3 minutes length of one song, possibly by making more songs.
Resources/references
http://uk.videogames.games.yahoo.com/wii/previews/wii-music-orchestra-7d8da2.html
http://www.guitarhero.com/
http://au.wii.ign.com/objects/827/827335.html
Here a few sites of examples that gave us ideas to our final design.
Conclusion
To conclude some of the different things if we had more time, in my opinion, I would change would be I would of made a few more songs so the user has more choice of songs because playing the song it gets a bit repetitive playing the same song. Also more control on reverberation and sustain would have been nice but this was in our original plans but due to technical problems in supervp we could not implement this into the experience cause it would cause it made our system lag to do the processing needed to run. More choice of music would of gave a user a bit more incentive to stay and play with the virtual conductor. Using it myself I noticed once you figured out the song and played it a few times you wanted a new song.
Virtual conductor turned out the way we wanted with all our planning and designing shown when a user grabbed the wii mote and nun chuck they could control the song and conduct how they wanted too.
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