Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Nintendo Labo: build and code your own instruments”.
One two three four ( melodic acoustic, strumming ), Wait. I messed up. Oh my god., I’m so nervous. So this is Nintendo Labo. It’S a new DIY, cardboard accessory kit for the Switch and it lets you make things like a fishing rod or motorcycle, and it comes with its own corresponding games for it..
Currently, there’s two kits on the market. There’S a seventy dollar variety kit, which comes with five separate games and there’s an eighty dollar robot kit which lets you suit-up and punch a bunch of skyscrapers.. So you might be asking yourself: why is this cardboard so expensive? Aren’T I just going to play with it once and be done with it, And the answer is no there’s this thing called Toy-Con Garage, which is like a coding platform that lets you remix all these different games and basically make whatever you want with it., But Nintendo’s. Actually been putting out these trailers that show all the different things you can do with Toy-Con Garage like a full on tank, simulator or a little device that feeds your pets., And they also showed a little bit of what looked like a Labo band.. I thought this was really cool and I wanted to try it out for myself, so I thought of a really simple song I could play, which is Rainbow Connection.. How hard could it be? And two days later, I am now a shell of a person. ( record scratch. ) Lets start with the piano.. This is one of the more interesting complicated pieces of the variety kit.. The build guide says it takes about three hours to build, but I think that’s factoring in time that it takes to make with a child. Our production manager Meg, who is very much an adult.
It took her about half the time to make this., So the software makes it really easy to follow along step-by-step to build your cardboard toy. And one of the best parts is moving around the camera. You can zoom in zoom out and it will really help you visualize the toy in a 3D space.. You can go forwards and backwards. If you miss a step, and it’s really great for kids., They can take their time and learn exactly what they’re doing..
If you look at the back here, there’s actually little IR stickers placed on each key and when you press a note, it reveals itself to the infrared camera on the back of the red controller., Which you then stick in the piano like this and then just put The keys back in here press a note which will then make a sound.. So there’s also these little IR knobs that you can add in to the piano.. They each have their own combination of IR stickers so depending on which one you put in it will change the sound of the toy piano.. So here’s one of my favorites, which is the old man, voice. ( melodic old man, sounds ) And here’s another cute. One cat sounds.
( Meowing ), So this isn’t actually gon na help us make music, but I thought it was pretty fun., So something that is going to help us make music. Is this little lever here which, when you press it, it changes the octave or lets you bend the pitch of a note like this. (, bouncy, tone, ) And one of the biggest challenges of making a Labo band was choosing a song that was easy enough to Play., So I decided to go with Rainbow Connection, which kind of happens mostly on one octave., Except for this B note that I need right here. So to do that.
I’M gon na press this lever with the C sharp to get a B. ( harmonic tones ). So that was the easy part. Now lets put this aside to move on to the hard part which was making the guitar, and this did not come with the variety kit. We had to go and make this on our own. Again, our superstar Meg. She signed this guitar and made it out of a bunch of Popsicle sticks.. It’S very much the kind of DIY that Nintendo’s encouraging.. I can imagine, it’d, be pretty fun to make this with your kids or really fun for adults who love arts and crafts.. This was the fun part, and this next part of actually programing the chords broke me..
So this is Toy-Con Garage and basically, how it works is with a series of notes.. So, let’s start with an input which, in our case, is a touch box. And we’re gon na connect that to an output which is making a sound. And you can customize what kind of sound you want., There’s different keys.
Guitar sounds you can customize how long you want the sound to be played., So I’m gon na go ahead and connect these boxes here and that’s what happens when you touch it.. So I want to make this look a little bit more like a guitar, and what you can do is stretch out the this touch bar. So it looks more like a string and you can go ahead copy these nodes here.. Now I’m just gon na figure out exactly what notes are in a G chord and take it from there..
You can also change the octave of the keys, so I need to make sure all these octaves are correct for the chord., I’m not a guitar player. So I have to look up each note in a G chord. And I hope I’m doing this right.
( somber guitar sounds ). So actually I don’t like that. Guitar sound, I’m gon na change it to an acoustic guitar sound.. So that was just one G chord and if you want to play a song like Rainbow Connection, you have to program like six or seven different chords., And I just want to show you guys what that looks like on the screen, because it was a nightmare.. Basically, I had to program a different button to play a different chord and I was kind of running out of space here, so you can see I cheated a little bit and made one touch bar play like six different notes.. It took every brain cell.
I have to learn how to do this., So this is the programming mode and now we’re gon na go to play mode., Which clears the screen and lets you play without moving any of the nodes around.. So if I press this button, that plays an E chord, this is a G chord and that’s A minor. ( guitar strumming ).
So I feel like I’m getting the hang of this, but I really think that I probably could’ve learned to play a real guitar in the time it took me to program this on the Switch. One, two, three four ( playing Rainbow Connection ) So making a song On the Labo is just scratching the surface of all the things you can do with Toy-Con Garage. Nintendo Labo isn’t just about cardboard its an experience, that’s centered around learning and whatever you decide to do with it is up to you.. I decided to make a song on the Labo..
I love it. It’S my baby very proud of what I’ve done., Maybe overly proud, but I’m sure, within a few days the creative community is going to be able to come up with some pretty cool things for it. ( playing Rainbow Connection ). If you like, Nintendo Labo, and you want to check out more video game content check out our sister site, polygon.com They’re, our weird and hilarious cousins, we love them and I think you’ll love them too.
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