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Clarinet Wins Robotic Orchestra Competition
Sasha writes "The Australian designed robotic clarinet beat out Dutch and Finnish entries this year at the robotic orchestra competition. The researchers don't expect to replace human musicians, but are instead interested in what makes the difference between playing music well and playing music poorly. There is also a video available of the performance."
I, for one, will continue to enjoy the imperfections introduced by humans when playing instruments. I find artificially generated music (I'm looking at you techno) to sound rather bland and boring. But then again different strokes fo different folks!
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
Aah, but what you failed to mention is that those are not imperfections at all but rather emphasis and meaning. Why should sustained notes not change pitch, what's wrong with a little unexpected (but not unwelcome) syncopation? Nothing. That's humanity creating music.
On the other hand, having the ability to have an infinite sustained note or a perfect beat or pitch is invaluable in creating music, like techno, even if you intend on changing the beat and whatnot.
Are you kidding me? It is what humans do best, and I would say it is what separates humans from basically every other animal in the world we know of. We have the ability to spend resources on problems that aren't really useful to us yet, but one day they might be. All to play have fun and do something that wasn't possible before. Because of our natural playful attitudes towards life, we have been able to do very useful things. Using your criterion, some of man's greatest achievements are not worthwhile. Going to the moon was nothing more than an ego trip, but the knowledge gathered from it may one day save our species. Who knows. I do know that playing with things is how we learn, and learning in itself is worthwhile.
I think he was referring to drum machine type music. Stuff like FL Studio where you're tracking the song out and the entire thing is all perfectly timed using identical sounds. In other words - it's created by a person but essentially being played with machine-like precision.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
Same could be said of music, art, etc... doesn't make it any less interesting or important to people. Curiosity, tinkering, and "because I can" have lead to all sorts of amazing things. Just because you don't understand the motivation doesn't mean it's not worthwhile to someone in some way.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
"Played by a robot" doesn't mean "robotic" in the sense of "the same every time". It would be perfectly possible to add e.g. normally distributed variation in hold time of a note. There could well be a psychology research grant waiting to be filed to investigate whether it's possible to generate imperfect music in such a way that even "experts" (broadsheet critics, for example) can't distinguish between the computer and a human playing the same piece.
I would take your comment even further, and say that in general "fate" tends to laugh at plans, and (anecdotally, of course) most efforts undertaken to advance along a set path and accomplish a specific goal are fraught with failures and setbacks. On the other hand, efforts undertaken for the pleasure of doing them frequently not only yield our best culture, but our most innovative advancements (and at worst, they were generally at least amusing).
That's not to say we shouldn't set goals, we should just expect that our true successes in life will come from what others might view as frivolous.
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
You are making a false assumption that the only thing that comes out of the project is a robot that plays the clarinet. There are several other outputs:
First, some students learned how to build a robotic system. This has applications far beyond artistic works. Often sound and art is a very good excuse to spend time learning things that can be used for "real" applications later. For instance, would you prefer students build a clarinet playing robot or a robot that throws beer? There are plenty of examples of "useless" projects undertaken by undergrads -- but they then move on to produce useful results later in life.
Secondly, there is the psychological / human-centric part of the work: building robotics to mimic human gesture and human expression teaches us a lot about how we work.
This is called "basic" research: it doesn't necessarily consist of making something that DOES something, but it allows us to learn more about ourselves. Learning what techniques are needed for expressive clarinet playing implies that we know what those techniques are-- it implies we know what "expression" is, and that we understand much of the physics behind airflow and reed action.
This is interesting stuff. You say it is a clarinet that is "not being played very well." Well, WHY is it not being played very well? What can be improved in the playing technique? Why can humans do it better? Is it the lack of "expression" in playing (cognitive), or is something wrong with the airflow-reed interaction (physics). Or both?
This is physics and engineering and psychology all rolled into one amusing project. How can you say it's useless?