University News
Wii Expands Music, Educational Opportunities
November 28, 2011
MACOMB, IL -- "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" are ways people can unleash their inner Slash and Eddie Van Halen personas, but the Wii gaming system an go well beyond those two popular games to be used for innovative - and educational - opportunities within music education.
Western Illinois University Music Professor James Caldwell has used computers since the 1980s to make music. A few years ago after reading an article in "Electronic Musician" about using the Wii to make music, he decided to try it out.
"I borrowed a Wii remote from my son-in-law, and spent a weekend playing around with possibilities," Caldwell said. "I was intrigued at the ways physical motion could be captured and used to control music generated within a computer and played through speakers."
Caldwell, an active composer, has played two of his solo Wii pieces at national festivals of electronic and digital music.
"Alternative instruments and controllers are an important part of the scene of experimental computer music these days, and I've seen a lot of interest in my work with the Wii controllers," Caldwell said. His most recent piece, "Texturologie 12: Gesture Studies," was premiered on the WIU campus
Nov. 16.
Caldwell's wife, Nancy, thought some of the sounds he was exploring when he started composing with the devices and the gestures he was using reminded her of handbell music, so she proposed they work together on a piece for the Knox Bell Choir, an ensemble of 7th through 12th grade students that Nancy directs at the First Presbyterian Church in Macomb.
The Caldwells collaboration, resulted in the piece, "Texturologie 8a: Wii Gather," which required that each of the 12 students had bells, hand chimes and a Wii remote.
Using two laptop computers to generate the sounds, Caldwell worked to invent a new notation to provide the players with instructions about the various performance techniques.
"Nancy began rehearsing the new piece with the bell choir in late September, and they played it for the first time in church in November 2009," Caldwell said. "Throughout the rehearsal process we had to modify the piece and the computer programming. Some of the notations weren't clear and had to be changed; the Wiis were so sensitive that they picked up the motion of the bells being set down on the padded tables; and the Wiis shut off automatically if they weren't in constant use or if they got too far away from the computers. It was a learning process."
Three days later, the bell choir played the new piece again on ElectroAcoustic Music Macomb, one of a series of concerts of electronic and computer music Caldwell has been producing at WIU since 2002. Caldwell borrowed part of the title of his pieces from a series of paintings by the artist Dubuffet.
"I've used 'Texturologie' for a whole series of computer-generated electronic pieces that are about layers of musical activity rather than traditional melody, harmony, counterpoint or phrase structure. The other part of the title, 'Wii Gather,' is a bit silly, but ties in with the Wii," he said. "I based some of the rhythm patterns for the bells on the rhythms of lines from familiar hymns like, 'Wii gather together,' 'Wii are one in the Spirit' and 'What a friend Wii have in Jesus.'
"After seeing the teenagers play music with the game controllers and computers, the fifth and sixth graders in the Westminster Bell Choir at the church decided they wanted a piece, too," Caldwell laughed. The Westminster Choir debuted their new piece in April 2010.
"This process has been a lot of fun. The players were enthusiastic and willing to try something new," he added. "The music we made is not typical of what is heard in a church, and to my knowledge, 'Texturologie 8a: Wii Gather' is the first piece ever to combine handbells with computer-generated music controlled by Wii remote controllers."
One of the things Caldwell enjoys most about the handbell choir is the visible connection between the actions of the players and the sounds that are heard: the ringing, plucking, marting, malleting, tolling and gyroing. Caldwell also enjoyed the fact that the wireless Wii remote, originally developed to capture the physical motions of sports-centered games, could be adapted to a musical - and educational - process.
To learn more about the process -- and to hear the compositions -- visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqFxNCAW-uY (Introduction to "Texturologie Wii" Compositions); www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WVG-sHE_XU ("Texturologie 8a: Wii Gather" performance); www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfWW5Y2PLnI ("Texturologie 8b: Hyperbell" performance); and www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx_NdsKlBZU ("Texturologie 9: Phacelia" performance).
Posted By: University Communications (U-Communications@wiu.edu)
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