Modal Kombat

These are not Guitar Hero controllers, but actual guitars that have been modified to control classic game consoles. A giant projection screen on the back wall of the theatre shows the games being played while Hindman and Drummond control them live. The duo use different cords to turn left and right in Mario Kart; they guide a Pong paddle up and down by raising or lowering the pitch, and hitting certain notes will trigger special attacks in Mortal Kombat. All of this is accompanied by classical guitar music.

Hardware hackers and gadgeteers will find it all quite interesting, and music fans should be entertained by this new way to combine music with visual art. Game design nerds should also find the concept intriguing as well. Audiences who are just looking for an interesting show will no doubt enjoy the novelty of the project, not to mention the audience participation section called Team Tetris.


In Team Tetris, audience members are invited onstage to play two guitars. One guitar pulls tetris pieces to the left, the other guitar to the right. A third person is given a Wiimote to control other functions like rotating, while the rest of the audience screams out instructions. It’s a chaotic example of teamwork.

Although Hindman and Drummond have been performing this project for years, the performance I saw introduced a new piece in which the pair attach Wiimotes to their guitars to play a first-person shooter hunting game called “Guitar Hunter Hero.” By aiming with a standard Wiimote, and hacking the Wii so that certain chords “Fire” their virtual guns, the two guitarists set about killing things… WITH MUSIC!

It’s a very unique experience, and an informal sort of performance – certainly something that musically-inclined geeks should try to catch. - playeraffinity.com

"DON'T MISS!" - New York Post

"Guitarmed and Dangerous" - urbanguitar.com

"With the wild success of the Guitar Hero series, using video game controllers shaped like guitars is nothing new. However, the duo at Modal Kombat actually use guitars as video game controllers. They won't reveal all of their tricks, but you can read a bit about their technology here and at this interview with Urban Guitar. The results are awfully impressive." - www.metafilter.com

... "btw, if you've ever wondered what it's like to play nintendo with musical instruments, you must catch these guys. for about an hour, the duo of modal kombat played pong, mortal kombat and concluded with mario kart (the original). if there was an emotion for "hang loose" hand sign, i'd insert it here." - http://luckofseven.com

"Brings a New Definition to Guitar Hero" - www.bloodykitty.com

"David Hindman has created a new way to play videogames. They use their (real) guitars to control the fighters from Mortal Kombat and Mario Kart as if the guitars were actual buttoned controllers. Modal Kombat (the mod of Mortal Kombat), is controlled by different pitches, volumes and their sequences that tell the fighter what to do..." - www.destructoid.com

"Hindman has developed a process that allows the minute pitch changes to control the fighting moves of the characters on screen, resulting in an unforgettable afternoon of music, choreographed video, arcade nostalgia and old fashioned fantasy street fighting." - CUNY Newswire

"Essentially, it’s dueling banjos, both real and virtual. And it’s sort of totally awesome."

"But the real treasure was the night’s second show, put together by two brave and amazing young men (of course they are young men), Yale-trained classical guitarists, who have successfully hacked Nintendo and Super Nintendo games to run using their actual guitars as controllers...." - EPIC Magazine

"...guitarists Evan Drummond and David Hindman took the stage for “Modal Kombat,” an exhibition of technology they have developed that allows real classical guitars to control the action in games like Mortal Kombat, a version of Pong and Mario Kart." - New York Times

"It sounds absurd because it is absurd, but it’s a funny and interesting concept..." - Technabob

"...Using modified electronic guitars hooked up to a console, these musicians go and play music and MK simultaneously..." - QuickJump Gaming Network

Live in NYC? Go See Modal Kombat Live! - TRMK

"...there's something hilarious about watching Sub-Zero and Scorpion flail about as David and Evan strum up a flurry of punches."

"...this wonderfully useless bit of art" - KUL: That Sounds Cool

"A modern-day Dueling Banjos, with two performers controlling the characters in console video games with modified electric guitars." - Siliconera

The gaming audiophiles of Game Play are currently running a show down at the Brick Theater in Brooklyn, New York, and what makes their theater festival even more special is that it has one awesome twist: gaming. - Wii Games & News

Have you been looking for a far less efficient, but suitably awesome way to control your games? Let's say a guitar so you could jam out while performing a fatality? Yale School of Music graduates David Hindman and Evan Drummond have come up with a way to play Mortal Kombat III with a classical electric guitar. It's art. Called Modal Kombat, the artistic experiment "lies at the intersection between music, visual arts, and digital media that results in the defining of a new genre of audio-visual performance: the public guitar-controlled video game battle." Uhhhh...GUITARISTS FIGHTING EACH OTHER!!! - Destructoid