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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."
The art form will never die... how long have MIDI keyboards been around?
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
I, for one, welcome our new guitar playing overlords.
Oh wait.. wasn't that Jimmy Hendrix?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
http://www.capturedbyrobots.com/
Unless it can give mouth to mouth resuscitation to a bottle of tequila, smell bad, and grow long hair, country music is still safe. Go Willie Nelson!
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
a fingering mechanism with an array of 23 fingertips is mounted
there's just no way I can compete with that!
quick! post a dupe or something so she doesn't see it! =)
How player pianos killed piano players.
RTFA again for the best results.
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.
I suppose they ordered 23 cups of Wendy's Chili?
There is truth in humor.
Have you ever listened to synthesized music and cringed a little because it was too perfect? I always have that feeling with synthesized trumpets, french horns, etc. I like the variation that "imperfect" humans add to the music. If the robot is always perfectly in time and can't improvise, it won't be replacing good guitarists anytime soon.
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
...Fer fucks sake, just don't teach it goddamn "Stairway to Heaven"... anyone who's spent 10 minutes in a any guitar store on a busy street knows what I'm talking about.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
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 am in no way affiliated with this sig.
. . . as poorly as I do.
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.
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.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
This reminds me of the "programmer's days are numbered" stories - turns out they just got outsourced to India...
I like the variation that "imperfect" humans add to the music.
:)
I wish *you* had been my band teacher in 7th grade.
creation science book
Thats 26 more than our greatest punk bands ... the human race is doomed!
From what I read it didn't mention that it could bend the strings to certain notes. I think that would be very hard to do because you bend the notes at different strengths to reach certain pitches.
Also I would like to see that thing do some Van Halen string tapping. I'll be impressed to see it play "Eruption".
I've played guitar as a hobby since 8th grade.. and i'm something of a metal/shred fan.
... i think a few less notes might do a better job now and then)
This thing addresses the wrong end of the problem.
I can _play_ reasonably proficiently. I mean, anything most people would listen to i can play without much trouble - technical profiency at guitar _playing_ is not really making anybody money right now. I mean, to a lot of people, metallica is like the end-all-be-all of fast guitar licks and "wild" guitar solos and yet i could play the overwhelming majority of that stuff after a few years of playing while i was in highschoool. There are much much better guitarists out there, who's work i cannot emulate, but honestly, there are very few guys out there where some other guy can't play his stuff perfectly.
The issue then, is not about the ability to "play", but the ability to create.
I can play just about any metallica song.. solos and all.
But i definitely can't write anything like they could. It shames me to admit that i can't even put together an original song as good as a crap band like weezer or radiohead or any of the other stuff that's passed as music in the last 15 years.
Composition is the real gem here, not technical playing ability. If you want to hear a trillion notes per second, check out the artists on the Shrapnel Records label.. nothing but guitar/keyboard maniacs (which i happen to love, but i admit it gets tiring at times
One other thing to consider - i haven't seen/heard the thing play, but something you'll hear from older guitarists is that "95% of your tone is in your finger tips, not your equipment". How effective is the robot at things like bends ? If you listen to a player like marty friedman, he really makes effective emotional use of bends that just _sound_ better than what i can do. How does a robot compare ?
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
every headline should be taken at face value. There is no such thing as sarcasm. And your butt stinks (based on statistical probability).
Yeah, you can't play cock rock with a mechanical cock.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Oh, you said... nevermind.
HAL!
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Guitarbot is an earlier robotic guitar, which I read about several years ago. Pretty nifty video...it's basically focused on being able to do everything a regular guitar could, as well as extending possibilities far beyond human capability.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
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.
I don't think that real guitarists have anything to fret about...it's like Roger Waters says in the film "Live in Pompei" "Give a man a Les Paul, and he doesn't become an Eric Clapton".
It won't be able to compose a Layla, or anything of that caliber...it may be able to *play* Layla, but not create it.
ttyl
Farrell
guitarist, among other things...
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
But can it play the hardest chord ever?
man that chick could sing.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
It's neat, the actuators are a decent design, but it won't replace even a basic guitarist. It can only hold a note down and pick said note. It can't slide, tap, pick harmonics, bend notes, fret hand mute, palm mute or any of a number of other techniques that I can think of.
/. editors should know better than to declare musicians will lose to a machine.
However, I can understand why they didn't go for those extra features; they would be a bitch to design. So, kudos to them for the whole design, it looks cool, but
For that matter, people still play chess even.
Jeff
PS Sorry for the rant, it's late, I'm tired, and I'm a guitarist. Struck a nerve...
Anyone who spends any time reading interviews with guitarists will eventually come across some guitarist - it could be almost any guitarist - saying about their favorite guitarists:
The great thing about B.B. is that while other virtuoso guitarists can play twenty notes in the time it takes him to play one, he can "say" twice as much in that one note as they can in their twenty.
It's not even about perfection vs. imperfection. You can introduce slight random imperfection (simply not hitting notes perfectly), you can introduce procedural imperfection that adds specific style (say hitting off beats slightly ahead of the beat in order to create a rock/roll feel - hmm, wonder where that name came from) - but it still doesn't capture it.
It's about expression.
It's about the guitarist who reads the audience and knows the moment when the crowd moves from listening to feeling and can smoothly transition from relatively clean notes to ones where that little extra touch is needed. Add slight vibrato to every note and it's annoying, add it to the right moments and it adds that notion of human soul. And, the thing is, it's different, every night, for the same song, depending on the audience.
It's not about playing the eight bar intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, etc... It's about responding to Jim Morrison deciding to rail on the police who beat him back stage and knowing now is the time to take that twice repeated four bar intro and keep repeating it for however long it takes him to finish. It's about knowing tonight's the last night of a tour and it's just the right time to repeat the chorus that extra few times, to extend the solo - which, on a normal night, would be pretentious and turn the crowd off.
It's about the guitarist having a bad day, feuding with the singer, whatever, and playing aggressively and capturing the audience in the tension of the moment and that dynamic.
It's all those things and so much more. Even if you have a robot that simulates human perfection/imperfection brilliantly, it doesn't express how it's feeling, it doesn't adapt to how the gig's going, it just plays the same things (with whatever generated imperfection) every night - or, potentially, improvises without any awareness of how the rest of the gig is going.
Program a robot and, sure, you can fake the technical aspects. But music's about having a "soul". Soul is all those aspects mentioned above and more - it's far more than just perfection or imperfection.
Give me the choice: A guitarist who can play Ywingie under the table, technically and it terms of number of notes played, or B.B. playing two or three perfectly expressive notes per bar and I'll take B.B. every time.
- 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.Yeah, I'm sure Steve Vai is trembling in fear over these news...
... and then, at the end of the performance, the guitar sets itself on fire!
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird.
I would like to point out a couple of things, why this thing won't be able to play like a human being.
:)
1. Crazy J can't bend
2. Crazy J can't slide
3. Crazy J can't palm-mute
I would like to add one more thing: if you listen to the demo songs, Lola is not played by the Crazy J itself, but you can hear an electric guitar in the back.
BUT, from engineering point of view, I do have to give credit though
What do you mean he's not dead? Have you seen him lately?
Brocklesby Park Cricket Club
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.
I saw a robot like this on TV years ago - except it could fret any string anywhere on the fretboard (not fretless), because it had a 'fingertip' for every possible position.
I think it was made by one of the Japanese tech companies. It could play some pretty complex music, including stuff humans can't play, due to it not being limited by finger length - so it could play a bass line and melody simultaneously on the same guitar (or multiple bass lines, etc).
This was like 5+ years ago. A quick google yields nothing, but I remember it well.
An automatic guitar had already been build, by Nicolas Anatol Baginsky ; with the additional ability to learn. Now there's even a band:
http://www.the-three-sirens.info/
Here are two samples:
http://www.baginsky.de/agl/snd/tton7.mov
http://www.baginsky.de/agl/snd/aglclip.mov
It doesn't sound bad, does it ?
The next step would be to have a guitar which allows to record the
mechanical forces which apply to the strings, when a guitarist plays it
and feed that back into Crazy J. This would allow a preservation of a
play in a very compressed way.
I heard once a public lecture of Negroponte from the MIT media lab,
where he invited the audience to think about the fact that recording
all the forces onto piano keys would allow storage or transmission of
music information in an interesting way. The play of an artist could so
be preserved efficiently. The compression effort is very expensive and
needs a lot of hardware, but the compression rate is enormous. Unlike
formats like midi, it contains all the musical interpretation
of the artist.
Having stored the play in a mechanical way could have applications. One
could try how the "pianist" or "guitarist " would play on an other
instrument, one could correct mistakes or analyze, what features make
a good pianist or guitarist. Further applications are that one could
play musical pieces on real pianos or guitars which humans are
physically incapable to play, for example by pure limitation of the
number of fingers or speed limits of the fingers.
Hello,
I am the development TA for this mechatronics class.
The Crazy J guitar was made by three students, Jason, Susan, and Turner over the course of one quarter (not semester) five years ago.
Their prior knowledge about Mechatronics was limited before they took the class. They learned basic microcontrollers, assembly for the HC11, and basic electronics in class lectures and laboratory lectures at the same time they were constructing their project.
Everything was hand made by they alone. The mechanics were designed, machined,and sandblasted by them. They designed the circuits and actually made them using a circuit board router and soldering Iron. Of course the program for the HC11 was written by them.
After the end of the course, they are able to apply in control theory in a real physical system instead of playing around with simulations.
This project's scope was limited due to the time constraint of one quarter. Of course they are off to a great start so who knows what they will come up with in the future.
If you want to see a movie of the guitar playing, more projects, or lab exercises for the course. Go to http://www.me.gatech.edu/mechatronics_lab
Thanks,
Akio