Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Guitarists, your Days are Numbered

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the funk-machines dept.

spackbace writes "Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a mechanical guitar playing robot, named the Crazy J. The guitar player is composed of two mechanical systems that interact to play a range of 29 musical notes. A plucking mechanism with six independently controlled picks is mounted over the body of the guitar and a fingering mechanism with an array of 23 fingertips is mounted over the first four frets of the fingerboard."

3 of 590 comments (clear)

  1. *Yawn* by smittyoneeach · · Score: 5, Informative

    While not modern enough for a full-on web site, you can see a museum of such in Germany
    The pneumatic piano with the drum holding four violins, in particular, was interesting, if only from a mechanical engineering perspective.
    At any rate, when your gadget can move Mt. Fuji, you shall have accomplished something.

    --
    Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
  2. Re:No, no, no! by rogue555 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've taken the class. Yes, yes it does. It plays any MIDI file with a guitar part to it. It also plays "Layla" and flight of the bumblebee. What is really amazing is that it was put together in a quarter by three students.

    --
    "That's not ironic, it's just mean!" - Bender
  3. Nice try.. but no Hendrix by clockwise_music · · Score: 5, Informative
    As an engineer, this is way cool. However as a guitarist - have you noticed just how mechanical the whole thing sounds? Here's why:
    • String muting - a big problem here. When playing guitar you can mute the strings that you're not playing with either your left or right hand. Notice how all of the strings "ring out" after playing a note? A key change on this thing would not sound good.
    • Bending - half the fun of playing the guitar is that you can bend notes. Bending and sliding is what can make a guitar 'sing' - similar to a voice.
    • Tremolo - to make your playing have any sense of feeling you need to be able to tremolo a note. That means slightly varying the pitch of it. This can be done in a few different ways - none that are possible here.
    • Strumming - ask it to strum a chord. It can't. Individual picks for each string is kind of cool, but won't sound any good when playing any songs recorded in the past 80 years.
    • Harmonics - can it play a one?
    • String selection - a good guitarist will pick particular strings for playing a particular note. These sound completely different because of a few reasons - an A on the bottom E string (fifth fret) compared with playing an A on the A string (open) will have a very different timbre. Doesn't look like that's possible here.
    • Range - the guitar actually has a very large range compared to other instruments. Doesn't look like you can get past the 5th fret here.
    • Legato, hammerons and pulloffs - can it 'flutter' between two notes?
    All of these things are particular to an acoustic guitar. As for trying to duplicate an electric guitar with distortion - that would be freaking cool but very hard.