Guitarists, your Days are Numbered

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."

Comments

Just like

[Approaching.sanity]

How player pianos killed piano players.

It's not only about the music

[Parham]

The music is only part of the fun. Watching the musician entertain is the rest. Interaction between the crowd and the musician is what is good about live music. I mean if I wanted to watch a robot play music, I'd turn on Winamp with a plugin and go crazy with that.

still no

[michaelbuddy]

Wouldn't it be more useful to create robots that perform automation on things that humans don't actually like doing. Why are they even creating this when there are tons of jobs, like trimming the overgrowth in my backyard for example, that I would love a robot / computer to do for me, so i could spend time practicing the guitar on my own.

And In other news, still no cure for cancer.

I'm not scared.

[SocialEngineer]

The technology isn't there to match the dynamics in picking techniques and subtle stylistic interpretations.

For instance, some swing-beat pieces (in jazz band music, not just guitar music) require a little more sluggishness in the eights, to really capture the groove.

As well, there aren't effective improv algorithms yet for these mechanical beasts :)

Oh sure, its possible to program future machines to match interpretations to exact specifications, but the nuances required to program that are unfathomable when it comes to instruments such as guitars - There are so many dynamic elements to it that it just isn't feasible. Besides, people like watching guitarists as much as they like listening to them.. Thats part of why people prefer live shows to CDs - Nothing is like watching the emotive expressions of a guitar duo while they shred in harmony, knees on the ground, eyes at the sky.

Guitar: A month or so to learn, a lifetime to master.

Re:Days are numbered?

[The Wooden Badger]

I think that the point is that the guitarists that get air time are hacks. You and all your sibling posts mentioned guitarists that are almost universally unknown, except to other guitarists/guitar fans. Many times you may never hear about a great guitarist unless by word of mouth. The radio stations around here will maybe play a SRV song once in a while. I never hear anything like Petrucci, Satriani, Vai, Eric Johnson, or a dozen other guitar gods. Most radio stations seem to think that something like Green Day or Nirvana is a tour de force of guitar virtuosity.