Slashdot Mirror
A Guitar Robot That Can Really Shred
botPatrol writes "As reported today by Create Digital Music and the Wired blog, PAM (Polytangent Automatic (multi-)Monochord) is a robot who has discovered a love for vintage Metallica riffs, and can churn them out non-stop at superhuman speeds without ever requiring anger management therapy or treatment for drug abuse."
(Read more, below.)
"Her younger sister MARIE, a road-ready robotic ensemble of wind and string instruments, promises to be even more of a musical badass. STEIM (STudio for Electro Instrumental Music), a leading international research center for the development of new musical instruments, will play host to MARIE this spring, and has posted a story on the revolutionary nature of this new musical robot. PAM and MARIE creators Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI) are calling on metal- and tech-heads alike to push their Kickstarter fund raising campaign over the top in its final few days, to fund the MARIE prototype and "help thwart the imminent robot vs. human wars by demonstrating how fun, cool, and sonically interesting it can be when humans and robots combine their powers for good.""
Lawsuit from Metallica coming in 3...2...1...
all it needs now is a massive EGO module and it will be just like a real shredder guitarist ;)
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
....Metallica's music was always rather repetitive and robotic.
Show me a robot which can play classical violin without becoming arrogant and whiny; that would be an achievement.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
The videos doesn't show any superhuman speed. I (a half-decent guitarist) can play metallica songs faster, and a lot better/cleaner (the robot doesn't seem to be able to mute the stings for example).
Wake me up when the build a robot that can compete with Yngwie Malmsteen.
Oh, come on. The point of doing this can only be geek joy. To say that it is a good idea to replace a musician with this is stupid. It's not about technical prowess in the end. The robot is metal (or at least comprised of it, in part). Yet it does not rock.
This thing sounds more synthetic than a lot of synthesizers.
Hitting the notes is only part of the guitar playing equation. Technique is just as important. Even implementing basic string muting would make a huge difference here.
Still cool though :)
welcome our heavy-metal-playing, made-of-heavy-metal robot overlords :-)
They could at least have tuned the thing! Gawd damn! My ears my ears :(
This is not news. Pat Metheny has been doing this for the last two years, except with a full band of robots. I have been to his concert and I can attest it works very well. Here is an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsYEOUKS4Yk&feature=related
It's a band comprised of one guy and several robots, started because he tired of the shortcomings of human bandmates. However, the robots give him just as much (if not more) trouble.
He has a guitarist that has two necks on his guitar, one for bass and one for lead. Here they are.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Is not impressed.
Sig this!
Cacophony!
I hope that's not what rock music sounded like to my father... Holy Jesus! What a racket that thing makes! Perfect for a burglar alarm though... Could even scare off stray dogs
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Just think about how awesome it would sound if they tuned it.
I am not trying to flame or anything, but this would be much cooler if it sounded good (subjective, I know). It sounds kind of like they just cranked everything... kind of muddy and hard to distinguish notes. Give it a nice wood body and neck. Cool, but could be better.
Robot instruments are not to replace humans, but to provide an alternative approach to music. Sure, people can do lots of stuff robots won't be able to do in the near future, but robots are also capable of doing things people would find impossible. You can make a robot react to movement sensors, light, touchpads etc. It can use information from databases or the internet. Let me see a human who can do that in real time.
Humans use a technique to play an instrument that has been perfected over hundreds of years. With robots, we first have to develop the robot. Once that is done, we can try all possible options to make interesting music with it. But this includes a learning curve. It's not very fair to compare the tried and tested technique of humans with robotic instruments at this point.
As for the fact that some people think it hurts their ears: there's is more music in the world than the pop-rock-jazz-blues stuff we hear on the radio. Not that I have anything against it, but if one is serious about new ways of making music, why stick to the 1000 year old idea of using chords? And while it makes sense that humans like steady beats to play together, why not try a 3th degree math function as the rhythmical basis of your piece if you have robots to perform it, and explore from there? No, it won't sound like pop music, but that doesn't make it less interesting. Some musicians, and not the least among them, were trying to do that even a hundred years ago. I think they would have been delighted to have a musical robot to try out their ideas.
No, robots will probably never be able to play some kinds of 'humanoid' music with the same feel. But if that would be the goal of making robots, we would better stop making them. People make robots to explore new possibilities. Ok, there is the sony project to make a humanoid robots, and I guess that kind of stuff will always be there. It appeals to many people's imagination. And the less people know about technology, the more they are fascinated by this kind of robot. But the real challenge lies with exploring new ways of doing things. This goes for scientific robots as well as musical ones.
You can make sounds on a computer without making a robot? It's cool as a technical project, but what's the value in having it actually playing in a band when you can just have a recording of whatever sound you want?
Think I'll whoosh myself...
Wake me up when they make something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ahoqR6OGdM&t=134s
It's a player piano (and not a particularly good one) - we've had those for over a century now.
Meh... call me when it's made from legos.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Although it looks interesting, please get back to reposting when that robot can play Steve Vai's Tender Surrender...
Or just picking strawberries when the crops are ripe for two weeks and it's just too fu*cking hot for humans to go out and pick them for 18 hours a day.
Or a million other things. But not playing a musical instrument. We already have Robert Fripp; we don't need a another robotic guitar player.
There are millions of people who were born and raised in tropical lands who would be glad to work in hot weather picking strawberries if they could, we don't need another robotic fruit picker.
The future is coming, many people will be left behind. The robotic guitar player may not be much today, but neither is the robotic fruit picker. We will one day machines that will pick only fruit that's exactly ripe, same as we will have robots that play guitar better than any human could.
Is she made out of polythene?
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
I actually thought it sounded pretty cool. Sure, it sounds nothing like actual guitar playing, but it would really well in some sort of a noisy industrial rock act. :)
It is very impressive for a number of reasons, but I would challenge the naysayers on this thread... if you think it's so lousy and stupid, you build one.
Industrial automation came into maturity during the last century -- research is research. The current generation of musical robots and automated musical instruments is a fraction of what they WILL BE, because of research like this. They offer new avenues for musical expression and are giving creators new tools to work with -- which is a TOTALLY worthwhile pursuit.
since the 1800's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMAtL7n_-rc
and why the hell is the captcha "condom" ?!?
Skynet determined that you're going to father a child who will one day play an important part in the resistance: but as part of an experimental new program of time-travel meddling, rather than sending back a big, obvious threat like an assassination cyborg to kill you, they're trying to subliminally suggest that you use contraception.
Bow-ties are cool.
And we will one day machines that replace words that the humans have out of their sentences.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Yes a robot might be able to play music perfectly but the performance will always miss something. The missing element is playing with "feeling". This element is hard to define but music aficionados will always be able to tell if it is missing. Maybe, in time, robots will play with true feeling but we are a nowhere close to that goal. Viewers of Star Trek will know what I mean. Data could play music perfectly and he could even simulate the style of great performers but there was nothing of himself in those performances.