The Biggest Foot: Control your Eurorack with a Wii Balance Board
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SwampFlux The Biggest Foot · Source: SwampFlux
SwampFlux The Biggest Foot · Source: SwampFlux
SwampFlux The Biggest Foot · Source: SwampFlux
Dig out your Nintendo Wii Balance Board and have it control your Eurorack while you pretend to surf, wobble and lean yourself into your music.
The Biggest Foot
Probably the biggest unsung hero at Superbooth was the bloke wobbling about in front of a modular synthesizer. I caught a couple of clips of what was probably Wray Bowling of SwampFlux grooving away on his board. I couldn’t get any hard information at the time. Well, now The Biggest Foot has made it to Kickstarter, and it looks like it could be a load of fun.
SwampFlux The Biggest Foot · Source: SwampFlux
The Biggest Foot is a Eurorack module that translates the movement of the Nintendo Wii Balance Board into CV signals. What you get are nine outputs that pull from all four corners, the X and Y axis, the inverted X and Y axis. And then there’s a sum of all movement output. These can be patched into anything you like, and then all you need to do is become one with the Balance Board and shift your weight around.
The connection is made via Bluetooth, which requires a bit of pairing and calibration. There’s a really great display that shows the position and outputs that are being produced. You have a sensitivity control and you can also add in some slew to smooth things out.
One very neat feature is the ability to record your Balance Board surfing and loop it as modulation. You can then alter the speed or reset it depending on your needs.
The SwampFlux Instagram is the best place for examples.
SwampFlux The Biggest Foot · Source: SwampFlux
Balance Board?
The Biggest Foot is a clever idea and nicely repurposes neglected Balance Boards. Wray suggests you can pick one up from charity shops for a fiver. I guess that’s the main flaw: you have to rely on either having one of those boards or digging around in thrift stores and car boot sales to find one. But it does save them from going to landfill.
In terms of usefulness, I think it could be a fabulously intuitive way to interact with your modular. On the other hand, you will undoubtedly look a bit of an idiot, but then you always did using a Balance Board. I imagine if you embrace it in live performance, then you could possibly look cool. I think the notion is that you’re probably jiggling around to the music anyway, so why not harness that?
The Biggest Foot module is on Kickstarter now for £242. If you are happy to pay for the extra shipping, they will throw in a free refurbished Balance Board.
- SwampFlux website.
- The Biggest Foot Kickstarter.
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4 responses to “The Biggest Foot: Control your Eurorack with a Wii Balance Board”
Some people say electronic music lacks emotion, but this product has real sole.
Do I have to have two left feet as in the bigfoot image?
I believe it’s agnostic in such matters
Thanks for the press, and perspective! You’re absolutely right: we’re bouncing and bobbing a lot during performances and recording already and it’s a great sensor to grab that stuff. There’s a great example of that from this weekend on insta with a better recording to follow.