Could the Nintendo Wii remote liberate DJs from wired hardware, freeing them to wave their arms around and make embarrassing dance moves? DJ ! hopes so.
DJ ! (read “DJ Shift 1”) has devoted himself entirely to the Wii controller for DJing, in what he calls WiiJing or “wireless DJing.” This “mashup DJ” says he hopes wireless DJing will become an art in itself, so this isn’t just a one-off gimmick — he actually wants it to catch on. To that end, he’s set up a complete blog with daily tips and thoughts on the subject:
DJ WiiJ: The First and Original website dedicated to Wireless DJing with Nintendo Wiimotes
To give you an idea of what he’s doing, here are two videos. (Via onlyhousemusic.com, the amazing Spanish-language house music portal.)
The secret sauce: Traktor, plus GlovePIE for Windows, a powerful utility not only for mapping the Wii to MIDI, etc., but other game controllers, as well.
I have to say, what he’s doing is pretty entertaining — more so than a lot of DJ sets I’ve heard lately. I only have one question, though, which is that everything he’s doing could be easily accomplished with old-fashioned buttons. It’d be less fun to watch, but that’s essentially what all these big arm movements are doing: most of the acceleration data is getting turned into on/off triggers. So there’s not a musical equivalent to all of the arm-waving. Nothing wrong with that per se, but I’m still interested in translating all those gestures into actual sound. That may lead to a melodic device rather than a DJ gadget.
What would you like to see the Wii do? We won’t be dedicated to the Wii here at CDM any time soon — who would talk about parrots? But I do plan some Wii projects of our own over the next few weeks.