Wii Orchestra

On November 18, the Sky Hawks Musical Theatre department will be performing Les Miserables at Salem Hills High School. And thanks to Utah local composer Dave Zabriskie, along with his business partner Michael Leavitt, they will be receiving some very unusual help from an unlikely source: Nintendo’s Wii. Zabriskie and Leavitt are the co-owners and creators of Right On Cue Systems, or ROCSystems. The ROCSystem is a program that lets you conduct pre-recorded songs with the Wii Remote and Nun-chuck accessory, controlling things like tempo, volume, and pitch with the touch of a button or the flick of a wrist. In other words, it lets you edit a soundtrack on stage in real time. This allows you to do things that were previously only possible with a live orchestra, like change the shows running time via speeding up or slowing down the music, or add dramatic pauses to build tension. Not to mention it allows Salem High’s orchestra to play alongside the recording by wearing headphones and following the conductor as they normally would. “I think it’s a great opportunity” said Polly Dunn, of the Theatre Program, “It’s marvelous that our orchestra and actors will be able to play and perform alongside professionally recorded music.”