Last night Eric Singer, musician and technologist from NY, had an electronic concert in Trondheim Match Making 08, a festival for art and technology. He is the founder of LEMUR (League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots). He is talking about his invention, Guitar Bot, one of the robotic musical instruments they have built up so far:
Now he has Adam Matta, the fantastic beat-boxer in his group:
In one piece while Adam and the robots were performing together, he wanted to teach them a rhythm so that they can tap with him. Tonight, during the Norwegian folk dinner Eric Singer told me he had just finished the programming code for this part right before the concert!
When something comes to the musical collaboration, I can not avoid thinking of collaboration over a distance. Since last night I’ve been thinking about the possibility of playing these musical instruments remotely, since in principle they are being controlled by MIDI commands.
In a remote duet we have two musicians and two instruments, each musician with his/her instrument in its own side. What if we keep a musician in one side and bring the instrument (remotely played by him through robots) to the other side? Then, instead of transferring the wave signal stream, we can send the performer’s MIDI commands and reproduce the musical sound at the destination, where the other musician is playing his/her own instrument and the audiences are attending.
things that happen in a musician mind are more complicated. they are so hard to be modeled. besides, we create our own moments in playing that are so live, unpredictable and rare. there are too many things to calculate:
the relationship between player and her/his instrument, how does he/she feels the piece, what kind of feeling she/he has at that moment, her/his conception of many things that could effect one’s playing. and all these elements make music alive and efficient. maybe you have to make sure the robot will understand all human senses.
But I find it interesting because if you let someone do apart of your job, you can concentrate on other things like how does the music sounds when you hear it as a misician but you are not actually playing it. then you can improve the music!
keep going honey!
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Nim:
It has not yet been about being replaced by the robots. Eric’s robots in this suggested scenario are supposed to act as the extension of human body. They are remote arms of the drummer, for instance. The performer is still the one who plays the music and send the commands.
Too much interesting is the fact that Adam, the half-egyptian talent has been being into rhythmic training of other creatures before, check this out:
Could you believe? Kimba the bird!