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.

Comments

Took a while for the guitar to catch up, eh?

[PornMaster]

Since the player piano was invented in 1863, it's curious to be so interested in a robotic guitar in 2005. :)

Re:Took a while for the guitar to catch up, eh?

[tomstdenis]

... spoken as someone who doesn't play the piano eh?

There is more to playing than simply hitting the right keys. There is the duration, force, rythm, etc, etc, etc...

Granted it's been a few years since I played last but from where I was [grade 7 conservatory] it was a lot more than just "hit these notes in 1/4 time".

Tom

Re:Took a while for the guitar to catch up, eh?

[Leibel]

Yes, but the piano's action is entirely mechanical, and has therefore been much easier to automate. Some of the great pianists of the day were "recorded" on player-pianos (Rachmaninov, Grainger etc) and consequently modern hi-fi CD recordings are available of them today. It really is amazing how an expressive a piano can be when you think of the things that it can't do (crescendo on a note, vibrato, pitch bend, 1/4 tones etc).

Re:Took a while for the guitar to catch up, eh?

[Legion303]

I know nothing about robotics, but I know quite a bit about guitar, so it evens out. If you can get your motors to move the slide mechanism accurately enough, a robotic slide guitar is simple. You know the length of the string, and any pitch you want on that string will be played an exact distance from the bottom of that string.

But Philip Glass was the first robot at Juilliard

[Peter Cooper]

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."

Why not playing it back from a recording?

[Muhammar]

The performance would be the same. What is so great about 'self-playing organ'?

Re:Why not playing it back from a recording?

[prichardson]

Part of it is that there is no such thing as a loss-less recording.

Another is that it's a lot easier to feel the vibrations from a live organ than it is from a recording.