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

fear not.....

[yagu]

Never underestimate the human ear and its ability to pick (pun intended) the poser. I've heard of the obsolescence by technology of so many things musical that never really got there.

One I fondly remember was a report on the CBS Evening News, granted, it was a long time ago, but the point is valid today... They played a video clip of an orchestra playing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and asked, "What's wrong with this picture?". I remember thinking, aside from the really crappy quality of sound, hard to say. Their punchline? The music was from a synthesizer, NOT the orchestra (yawn).

This experience (for me at least) is not unique. I had to toss my "white noise" generator I used to help sleep at night... over a period of time my ears picked up the "random" pattern and it actually became an irritant, not a mask of other ambient noise.

I also own a Yamaha high-end keyboard (full 88 key, acceleration keys, 128 voice polyphonic), and it's main piano "voice" was digitally sampled from a Steinway. It sounds wonderful, but I could pick the Yamaha out of a bunch of real pianos from a mile away. The pitch was always too perfect, the decay was always to predictable, etc.

Have you ever listened to a musical recording and found the laid down "generated rhythm" track so perfect it was annoying? I have.

Technology can do some interesting things in music, none of them human. If technology is used create an instrument played by a human, that's one thing... Technology to play an instrument is quite another, and in my opinion will never approach the real thing. If you've listened a lot to classical, it's pretty easy to pick out Stern, or Perlman as the violinist on the same piece. Likewise it's pretty easy to recognize Vladimir on piano.

Re:fear not.....

[tmortn]

Yes but that just brings up the next likely step for music automation and that is fuzzing the edges a bit. For example instead of sampling the stienway for a single tone to use for that note across a dynamic range how about you sample thousands of strokes and sample another layer or two to reproduce a more valid range. Also allow for a tune drift function that allows the individual values to float withen a range of acceptable values.

In effect you try to create something similar to brownian motion to the tone quality and musical execution. IE instead of set values/lengths of tones rigidly adhered to and perfection of timing you create a set of varibles that execute randomly across an acceptable range forming a HUGE range of possible combinations.

It still won't replace live musicians but it would likely go a long way to eliminating that fake perfection feel synthesized music always has.

in refference to this particular invention I found the decision to go with plucking to be an odd decision. It seems to me some kind of back and forth mechanisim utilizing an actual guitar pick would have resulted in a sound much more equivalent with something a live player would produce. Instead they wound up with what amounts to a 6 string harpsichord. A neat technical problem for applied engineering education though.

Wrong one. I knew the robot.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know the original robot guitarist... Steve Morse.

True story: While working for The Dixie Dregs and the Steve Morse Band sometime 1991-92, I did a gig at The Ranch Bowl in Omaha, Nebraska.

This venue had, as well as an "old-man bar", a rock radio station, a small rock club, and a beach volleyball court, a bowling alley on the premises.

After the gig was over we (band & crew) were invited to bowl a few games on the house. Sometime around 1:30 AM, Steve Morse (accomplished commercial pilot, virtuoso musician, genius composer, and guitar god) picked up a bowling bowl, announced that he had not bowled previously, and then attempted his first bowl.

I think he knocked over a couple of pins. As he stood there motionless, I could just see him running back the instant replay in his head.

His next turn... he threw a strike.

His next turn... another strike. All night long, strike, strike, strike.

Steve Morse is the original guitar-playing robot.

And he can kick your ass at anything. Period.

'Swelp me gawd.

Or, from a different POV

[xbytor]

Try Robert Fripp. He's a freak and he's training others to be freaks, too. He's like the Neal Peart of guitar: deadly frickin' accurate every single time. Very spooky. He's the only guitarist I could see being able to play with the Philip Glass Ensemble.