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Musical Robots Invade Juilliard
roboRob writes "RoboRecital, a recent concert at the Juilliard School, featured four robot performers: GuitarBot, a self-playing guitar; an automated fifty-seven rank pipe organ; a Yamaha Disklavier, a modern player piano; and ModBots, a collection of robotic percussion instruments. This New York Times article and it this Juilliard Journal article discuss it." This beats the band-in-a-box automaton at Wall Drug by a fair stretch.
When will a fembot invade a geeky school??
captured by robots.
I prefer musical robots with an edge.
http://www.capturedbyrobots.com/
In Nelson voice: "Ha-ha!"
Will Captured! By Robots ever get into Gilliard?
... Captured By Robots?
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
Since the player piano was invented in 1863, it's curious to be so interested in a robotic guitar in 2005. :)
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
q: How does a robot get to carnagie hall?
A: Assembly, assembly, assembly.
Following the concert, the robots met up and started a Styx cover band.
Ah, the spirit of Jacques Vaucanson lives on, more than two centuries later.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
When you consider that Philip Glass studied at Juilliard for several years, this isn't really that surprising or far out for them. The robots' music was probably less repetitive and more soulful than Glass's compositions of the time ;-) one of which is described as:
"The player performs "1 + 1" by tapping the table top with his fingers or knuckles. Two rhythmic units, which build the block of "1 + 1", are combined in regular arithmetic progressions."
I'm disappointed.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The concept of the Disklavier is at least a decade old, so this part isn't really newsworthy I guess. The idea is that you record how the keys are struck (probably bad english) while someone plays. After that you have almost an excact copy of the performance.
I really like the concept. You can play interpretations of classic pieces performed by top-notch pianists of today at your dinner party. Even if I would play the piano that well, I would definately have other obligations at said party.
I don't read replies by ACs.
'At these times of special celebration a choir of over two million robots sing the company song "Share and Enjoy". Unfortunately - again - another of the computing errors for which the company is justly famous means that the robot's voices are exactly a flattened fifth out of tune and the result sounds something like this, only slightly worse.'
The performance would be the same. What is so great about 'self-playing organ'?
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
Where can I get them, and do they have a MIDI input?
"RoboRecital"
I swear I read that as "RoboRectal" first
What is so great about 'self-playing organ'?
You don't have to pay someone else to play your organ. Depending on how often you like your organ played, it could get expensive.
I'm still not sure I get it. Specifically, I guess I don't get "guitar-bot". As a reasonably accompomplished guitar player myself, I was pretty interested in hearing what the guitar robot could do. Instead of being the fairly organic yet dissonant sounds as the piano and pipe organ pieces were, it sounded like one of those old film strip soundtracks that they used to show in science class or driver's education classes (you remember, think soundtrack to "Blood on the Asphalt"). Then again, the version of "Yesterday" sounds like you're listening to the Beatles record after eating mushrooms but that's just me.
The impact of tech on music is huge. Who can point to links that keep abreast of the latest tech-music developments, ala Slashdot, but for music?
The best part about this GuitarBot thing is that if it totally malfunctions and bursts into flame while on stage, people will just think it's part of the act.
....a RoboRECTAL is probably more pleasant than some of the music on the RoboRecital (mp3's)
A friend of mine is a pretty successful pipe organ restorer and he says that for well over a decade modern pipe organs have been set up with MIDI interfaces from the consoles to the actuators that actually control the pipes. Many restoration projects on older pipe organs involve replacing older mechanical or electric consoles with MIDI. So, as far as I can tell, it sounds like there's nothing special going on with this organ. The guy has just replaced the console with a laptop as the MIDI input device.
yea i stole your sig- whats the big deal, it sucked anyway.
My girlfriend works at a gallery on the UC Irvine campus called the Beall Center for Art & Technology and they currently have an installation of some of the LEMUR "robots". Frankly, I was a little disappointed as they are more funky MIDI instrument than robot, but if you're in or near Orange County, CA, go check it out.
This concert raises aesthetic issues that are more interesting than the tech stuff--here's a blip from the composer's program notes:
"Automation of acoustic instruments allows a composer to transcend limitations of performer ability and offers new sound possibilities that could not be reproduced by a live performer. While other techniques of computer music may seem more practical, the automated instrument approach retains the richness of the source acoustic instrument and offers the visual interest of live instrumental performance.
My music for this these instruments takes advantage of the suprahuman abilities of these robots, exploring musical possibilities unachievable by a human musician."
What does this mean for musicians?
I for one welcome our rockin' robot overlords!
I thought I read RoboRectal and thought, "I wonder what that robot does".
From now until March 19 they're exhibited at the University of California, Irvine Beall Center for Art + Technology. Free admissions.
Are these the robots that we will be Sending into Iraq?
Jaron Lanier once said: ...As the most eloquent machines, instruments predict the future of culture."
I think he even worked with Disklaviers, as a composer, a few years back.
"Musical instruments have often been the most advanced technologies around, sometimes surpassing even the tools of war.
that all the robot's voices are flattened by the same amount, only special people who have excellent pitch would be bothered, and then only if they were aware of the original key of the piece, or if the piece made typical or extreme use of voice range and sounded unconventional, or if there was an accompaniment in the original key.
sorry... nerds to the rescue.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Instruments played by machine are hardly new. More impresive than a robot that plays guitar, a robot that plays piano, or "a collection of robotic percussion instruments" would be a robot that plays "a piano, two ranks of organ pipes (flute and violin), mandolin, snare drum, bass drum, timpani, cymbal, and triangle." Now that would be really impressive, especially since you would have to travel all the way to The National Music Museum" Vermillion, South Dakota to see one that was made in 1913! The machine is called an "Orchestrion" and they were common in the early part of the last century, as the musical accompaniment to a ride on a merry-go-round.
But... can the drummer compete with this robot mentioned in slashdot???
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http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/15/16112
I immediatly thought of this video
Technoli
This concert raises aesthetic issues that are more interesting than the tech stuff--here's a blip from the composer's program notes:
"Automation of acoustic instruments allows a composer to transcend limitations of performer ability and offers new sound possibilities that could not be reproduced by a live performer. While other techniques of computer music may seem more practical, the automated instrument approach retains the richness of the source acoustic instrument and offers the visual interest of live instrumental performance.
My music for this these instruments takes advantage of the suprahuman abilities of these robots, exploring musical possibilities unachievable by a human musician."
What does this mean for musicians?
In 1999 I decided to write a piece for disklavier. Not being a pianist, I found the human limitations of pianists frustrating sometimes. Having set up a midi file, and borrowing an laptop with a midi interface, I went to a piano shop that generously let me record their disklavier. The piece sounded fine until the crashing climax when its fuse blew and I had to sheepishly go down the road to a handy electronics store.
That said, an acoustic instrument like a disklavier or midi-controlled pipe organ is a far better sound experience than the fully electronic equivalent.
I’m old enough to remember 16K of memory being described as “whopping”
The only new instrument at the concert was the GuitarBot; the other instruments have been around for quite a long time. I was hoping that a robotic guitar would sound something like a real guitar; instead, it sounded considerably worse than a MIDI guitar. And it's not like it's a new, different sound; it just sounds like complete crap.
It sounds like whoever designed this robot just got bored of it and decided to abandon the project as soon as it could play notes. This is reminiscent of the attitude that's all too prevalent in software today -- if it compiles, ship it -- that causes most software to be so horribly bug-laden.
I used to read Caltizzle. I was a lot cooler than you.
As a musician, I'm not very impressed. This is only slightly better than a stereo system, in that it gives you the real acoustics of the instrument. But what would you be more willing to pay to see? An Eric Clapton show or a robot show? Who would you want playing on your recording? A robot or someone who actually has emotion that they can express through music. So what, I say. Its only someone who played with their Mindstorm set long enough to make it work.
Do you Applaud? I remember at Bush Gardens, an attraction that featured robotic birds singing and such. The most appaling part was that there was supposed to be audience particiaption (clapping along) applose at the end. Gawd i felt embarasment for everyone there. Am I the only one who isnt' impressed by their "performance?" It's a recording! Don't clap!
Anyone also reminded of the book Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut? http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385 333781/102-5140189-7040143?v=glance
Does this remind anyone else of Pipe Dream?
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
As a former South Dakota resident, I remember visiting Wall Drug many times as a child. The automaton, or "dancing cowboys" as I came to know it, was as fascinating then as it is now. Yes, I know the mechanics - it's a pile of gears draped in clothing attached to a recording of real people singing - but looking at it now even as an adult it still holds some degree of fascination.
The "dancing cowboys" automaton is simply more than the sum of its parts.
welcome our new musical robot overlords....
RoseColor red={0, 0xffff, 0x0000, 0x0000};VioletColour blue={0, 0x0000, 0x0000, 0xffff};find / -name *mybase*|chown you
My grandad used to roll in from the pub, drunk as a *unt and fire up the old pianola so he could pretend to be playing the piano.. no doubt he'd be equally skillful with a robotic guitar..
The self-playing pipe organ is nothing. Any church with an organ installed or updated int he past 15 years has an organ with MIDI capibilities, which will record the actual electric action of the organ. Unimpressed.
Guitarbot could have used some of those long, thin metal arms to pick its strings with. Now that would have been worth looking at.
As a qualification, let me first point out that I'm a graduate student in music and helped construct several electronic music studios. Automation and programming are important issues in electronic music and the idea of a "perfect perfomance" All of these instruments are variants on the same basic idea of the player piano - recording and reproducing a performance on the same instrument. They are robots only in the limited sense of machines on a car assembly line. All of the instruments in the article can be MIDI-controlled; you can either pre-program them, record live, make post-recording additions or some other combination. Note that a basic MIDI file could be produced just by exporting out of Finale... Player pianos and their ilk were originally used for home entertainment, back before the days of radio and television. The machines that punched out the player piano [control] rolls were surprisingly accurate, later ones covering a fair range of dynamics. For a more complex performance, one could run the same roll back through the punching machine to add more notes - something George Gershwin did on several pieces, producing music unplayable by a single person at the piano. (As a sidenote, Yamaha has restored and "enhanced" several of Gershwin's piano rolls and included the data on the Diskclaviers for playback, as well as releasing a few CDs). Step forward several decades from Gershwin, and Gyorgi Ligeti produced a body of works for player piano and (roll-operated) barrel organ. These took Gershwin's double-punched ideas even further, producing pieces that could take 4, 6 or more hands to play. These are dazzling pieces, overwhelming the listener because there is so much going on. Now, the ModBots are cool because they're generalized controls you can adapt to just about any percussion instrument and/or surface. However, their programming is probably a tad bit tedious and getting a good range of dynamics is going to be a pain in the butt. Think of it as a variation on the drum machine, but hitting live instruments instead of playing samples. The Guitarbot would be cool, in that most of the efforts I've seen to produce one have, well, sucked, but there've been automata taking that approach before. The organ...old news. But the Diskclavier...that one is interesting. For those of you that don't know, the Yamaha Diskclavier is a grand piano fitted with recording and playback circuitry. Yamaha's other digital pianos use snythesis or sampling to reproduce sound; the Diskclavier does the actual generation with hammers striking strings. This creates a much more authentic sound (since a real piano mechanism is used), if not quite up to the "perfect reproduction" that Yamaha claims. There's a piano competition sponsored by Yamaha that includes long-distance judges who listen to the performance on a Diskclavier recieving webcast data; however, even with the webcast video that accompanies the feed, I believe that this "remote judging" misses out on the essential aspect of a live performance: watching a live performer. Syncing issues aside, there is no comparison towards being in a concert hall watching how a pianist moves, breaths and trembles in his/her playing to watching the same thing on video. Then there's a host of potential technical issues: if a key is sticky or less responsive on the performance Diskclavier, the pianist will compensate...but the extra force will sound wrong on the playback machine; one plays differently in different acoustic environments - an intimate performance in a parlor would sound very out of place in a large concert hall, and different frequencies are reproduced more wherever you go... Automation is a nifty tool, and useful when you don't have players around up to the stuffing of your works, but I don't expect it to replace live performers anytime soon.
De Bas Meister
It won't be long before we hear about a Disaster Area concert.
This sig is false.
- Derwen
http://fsfeurope.org/
Doesn't self playing organ lead to blindness?
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.