back to article Massive organ blown with Kinect

Composer and creative developer Chris Vik has used Microsoft's Kinect tools to play the pipe organ in the Melbourne Town Hall. Vik describes himself as “a sound designer/electronic music producer/Max developer” and has released music under the name Synaecide. Since 2011 he's worked with Kinect and has developed "KiNECTAR" ( …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh I see, assured Sunday morning disturbances

    It was bad enough they put the bells up high in the roof's so you couldn't dampen them on a sunday morning. Now there able to have a backup organ player the other side of the world you have no hope of getting drunk the night before as a ongoing ploy to assure a peacful Sunday morning.

    Seriously though if they wanted to move massive organ parts with a kenetic and xbox then just stay in the spawn room shooting and you can be assured that many massive organs will be moved by your actions via kinetic. I thought there was a unwritten rule about giving church's technology, we only tossed them the radio mic bone as it was easier to block with a baby monitor.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Kinect isn't the important bit here...

    Its Max/MSP/Jitter.

    A visual programming language which is fully aimed at, you guessed it, multimedia aspects. However, its still a full fledged programming environment, just "not the way you're used to". See also:

    http://cycling74.com/

    Being a Max developer myself I question the relevance of the Kinect part. After all; it seems the Max program is doing all the work, and with that in mind I think he could have swapped the Kinect for any kind of camera. As long as it can captures motion then this motion can relatively easy be 'translated' into midi.

    1. rmacd

      Re: Kinect isn't the important bit here...

      I ended up borrowing a Kinect for a few days and got it hooked up with Pd (open source Max/MSP) via a little OSC magic in no time - there are a couple of good libraries available.

      This dude sure looks impressive on stage, but it looks like this piece has been basically pre-determined, sequenced really, with the role of the gestures changing as the piece trundles on. Pushing through a few instructions via MIDI on demand, when one has already decided it's going to be, say, a block of A minor on diapason, principal and 2', is trivial.

      Meh. Move along.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Kinect isn't the important bit here...

        That's probably why he refers to himself as a "sound designer" rather than a "musician", although after watching a few seconds of the clip, even that title seems to suggest he is reaching above his station.

  3. James Cooke
    Thumb Up

    Still April?

    I love this sort of thing - a few years ago this sort of thing released 10 days ago would have been called an amusing prank. Now you could make your own version with a £100 games console peripheral and your home PC.

  4. Francis Boyle Silver badge

    I liked the singing

    Pity there was some bloke wanking his organ all over it.

  5. Martin Gregorie
    Coat

    Notice the length of the video?

    An accident or a message in a cage?

    1. Emacs The Viking
      Joke

      Re: Notice the length of the video?

      Yeah! I thought I was the only one until you mentioned it.

      I listened to that recording many a time and it def. sounds better on vinyl rather than CD!

      ;)

      LMFAO (silently of course)

  6. Emacs The Viking
    Joke

    Re: Notice the length of the video?

    I thought | was the only one that noticed that until you mentioned it Martin.

    Of course, having heard the vinyl and CD version, I think it sounded better on vinyl!

    LMFAO (silently of course)

    ;)

    1. Francis Boyle Silver badge

      Call me a philistine

      but I prefer Faboy Slim's up tempo three minute twenty-two remix

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