DailyDirt: Making Robot Musicians

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Maybe the music industry isn't really worried about evil robots killing off music anymore, but as more and more technology gets into the field of music, there could be a new wave of neo-Luddite musicians. Software can compose music, and robots can play some musical instruments. What's left for humans to do? Check out some of these robot musicians, and you'll see why human musicians aren't that worried about losing their jobs to robots any time soon.

• Jason Barnes is a cyborg drummer with a robotic drumming prosthesis that lets Barnes play with three drumsticks. The third drumstick is actually autonomous and improvises based on what it senses Barnes is doing with his manually-controlled sticks. [url]
• Japanese roboticists have created a band of machines, including a guitarist with 78 fingers and a drummer with 22 arms. The Z-Machines band will release 5 songs written specifically for these robots, playing music that would be somewhat difficult for a human band to copy. [url]
• Compressorhead is another robot band. It's best known for performing a cover of Ace of Spades. [url]
• An improvising robotic marimba player named Shimon can jam with human musicians. This four-armed robot looks like it would fit right into a Star Wars cantina. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: algorithms, autonomous drummer, compressorhead, cyborg, jason barnes, music, musicians, robots, shimon, squarepusher, z-machines