MIDI Hero – Control Guitar Hero and Rock Band with Real Drums

Talk about extending the playability of Guitar Hero and Rock Band! This hack allows you to use real instruments to play the popular games instead of using the cheap plastic instruments that come with the game. Many people say that necessity is the mother of invention and I think this is the case here since it doesn’t look like this hack would have been done if Egyokeo hadn’t hurt his finger.

"Since I injured my middle left finger playing Guitar Hero 2 way too much when it came out, I’ve been dying to get back to playing it. But my finger hasn’t healed. I was holding the neck too tightly on the X-plorer guitar controller and it hurts to bend it anymore. I’ve never had an injury playing the drums, so I thought "wouldn’t it be great to be able to play Guitar Hero on the drums?" So I thought about how that might be accomplished… researched, implemented, borrowed, and here I outline the finished product.

Here’s the whole chain of what’s going on:

1. Me banging on my drumKat MIDI drum pads
2. drumKat MIDI Out to MIDI/USB adapter to PC
3. PC running my own custom MIDI Hero software
4. MIDI Hero calls into XIM which sends input to the Xbox 360 console"

Via: Make and HackaDay