Because He Can: Xbox 360 Controller + Reaktor
by Peter Kirn
Via our friends at Make Magazine, Captain Dan controls a custom-created Reaktor synth with an Xbox 360 game controller. The secret ingredient: GlovePIE, the powerful, free scripting tool for alternative controllers under Windows. GlovePIE can actually output both OpenSoundControl and MIDI, either of which Reaktor can use, but in this case, Dan chose MIDI and routed between applications via MIDI Yoke.
The results may not necessarily be a new musical high point, but they are good fun. If you’ve got a Mac instead, you have several exceptional options:
STEIM’s junXion (which now has a Lite version, too)
There’s one other that I’m … forgetting, if anyone wants to chime in.
Tried this yourself? Let us know!
xbox Controller Makes Drum and Bass [Captain Dan's "What Would the Captain Do?"]
360 controller busts mad beats + synth [Make Magazine]
It’s nothing fancy, but there’s by Alexander Refsum Jensenius for the Mac.
Sorry, I got the tags wrong…
I meant that there is MultiControl by Alexander Refsum Jensenius for the Mac.
I do stuff with junxion and Reaktor but Junxion uses quite a lot of CPU. Also the buttons don’t respond that good. It’s not really that useable to mee. The analog controllers also do not respond that well.. It has not been a good duo..
A friend of mine called Nynack http://www.myspace.com/nynack does some interesting things in Max/MSP which has a module that captures joystick input data, Reaktor should have that as well. Maybe in the future? I guess Yasha makes use of that module? I’ll try his patch later this week, it looks promising, thanks for that!
It’s really handy to have a joystick to control midi because of the many things you can do simultaneously. Especially the two analog sticks are cool with the 4 directional functionality!
I tried the patch from Yasha and it’s working way better than junxion. Really cool so thanks a lot for that!
thanks for the comments guys – we’ve built this think into a proper instrument now – this vid was more of a beta test to check the converters worked ok
@gherat the joysticks are cool – but not as good as id hoped . they never retrun to the same centre point and its near impossible to keep the x value constant and move the Y or vice versa. maybe thatsnot the point though but i’ve not managed to find as many usable things to do with them as Id hoped. Remembering this joysticks are set in a circular holder not a square (think abou that…)
Looks like there’s an update to the Reaktor ptach
http://whatwouldthecaptaindo.blogspot.com/2009/05/robot-rock.html
For interesting alternative controllers for mac, also check out TouchOSC