An engineer has built and programmed an all-robot band | Hacker News Reader

An engineer has built and programmed an all-robot band

guitarworld.com

130 pointsmetadat64 comments

Check out Compressorhead! They make this look more like "An engineer has built a couple of self playing instruments". Still pretty cool though.

Compressorhead video page: https://www.youtube.com/@RobocrossMachines/videos

This is simply amazing

With John Wright of NoMeansNo! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lFoo4vt5fk

Pat Metheny has done something similar with his orchestrion project, 12 years ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsYEOUKS4Yk). At the time I went to see him perform with it in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, which was impressive, but still missing the band energy that normally makes the music come alive. He did mention that it was the first gig on the tour without major technical issues, it does seem like a nightmare to set it all up correctly.

Captured by Robots also did this, but his look like humanoid robots and have conversations with the singer which are part of the act. The type of music isn't for everybody (or most people). But if you're musically open I'd recommend checking out one of his shows if he's in town. It's an entertaining performance.

https://capturedbyrobots.com/

I was gonna say the same, I went to DePaul music school with Jay before he was...assimilated. He may not have been the very first to have a virtuoso robot band, but he probably isn't far from it.

+1 to the GWAR of robot bands

IMHO, Captured by Robots is great because it isn't just bots playing instruments, it's a full-on theatrical performance. At least that's what it was when I saw it like a decade ago.

Related but its all mechanical

Wintergatan - Marble Machine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q

He is currently working on v3 of it. v2 was more of what he did with v1 which was hack it together and try to get it right. He learned about half way thru v2 that method was good for prototyping and looking cool and was good for 'close enough' but was failing to get the control and precision he wanted. He ended up adding way more complexity than he liked. v3 he is starting with reduce part counts and 'how do I actually build this thing' and decent testing of each part iteration to find ones he likes.

My personal favorite example of composition for robots was the project Squarepusher did for Zima (yes, the defunct drink that tasted like alcoholic diet Sprite) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkUq4sO4LQM]. That being said, there's a long history of music being sequenced for machines to play. Automated calliopes and orchestrions go back over a hundred years. Also, Conlon Nancarrow should be credited with being the first modern composer to write music purely for machines using techniques and speeds that would be impossible for a human to replicate [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2gVhBxwRqg]. I really like how the One Hacker Band took a lot of these preexisting ideas, but added things that I haven't seen applied to sequenced physical instruments, namely using machine learning to allow the band to compose music.

I'm working on a robotic drumming project, but rather than playing canned sequences, I'm experimenting with rhythm synthesis to create an intuitive and expressive instrument that anyone can play. This was a test of an early version with rhythm synthesis happening with oscillators in Puredata that trigger OSC hit instructions to the robot which is just an ESP8266 wired to a Vertiq smart motor. https://youtu.be/zeHJXyyhJ70

My model of rhythm in that version was extremely naive, so now I'm now trying to grok Godfried Toussaint's The Geometry of Musical Rhythm with the goal of moving the rhythm generation to the microcontroller. This is to have a toolset for making autonomous musical ensembles. I'm definitely having challenges figuring things out, so if anyone else is interested in this stuff, ping me and I'd love to share notes.

Have you seen Yellow Drum Machine? https://youtu.be/_RyodnisVvU

The Logos Foundation in Belgium has been in the robot musician game for a long minute: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos_Foundation

Godfried-Willem Raes is a fascinating guy and builds the robots. I asked him once about how he coded his firmware and he insisted that nothing but a very specific flavor of Power Basic was appropriate.

I can't remember the exact tech he uses, but a lot of the performances of the orchestra involve human dancing and movement that is translated into musical phrases for the robots. The sensors have excellent latency, but don't work so well with clothes on. As any engineer would conclude, the true problem was in wearing pants and so the performances are mostly in the nude.

Reminds me of this precious gift to the world:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0hwNWas9mk

For a steampunk throwback of this idea, there are a number of self-playing full orchestras at the House on the Rock (an amazing museum of all things kitsch Wisconsin) that use 100% mechanically driven pneumatically controlled instruments. It's amazing and this video doesn't do it justice, but here's a pretty good idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpaRGpoMyjg

We had a player piano in my house as a kid. My Dad bought it from Shakey's Pizza when they remodeled. Along with a score of piano rolls.

I pumped through Under the Double Eagle march endlessly as a kid. What a thrill to hear all that music come out of a piano through my effort!

Maybe if this guy's music robot was pneumatic and required a kid to pump the compressor, then it'd provide that same thrill.

I thought this was gonna be about Compressorhead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaY7vohLXK4

Notable for featuring a four-armed drummer bot, and headbanging action on many of the robot players. It's really like if Dr. Wily discovered metal in the 80s.

This band looks more like a real life Animusic. Cool, but not as metal.

Well, a sample player likely sounds better and costs less, but automating the instruments is certainly a lot of fun. I do it the other way round, in that I replace a full live band by a single person (no sequencer involved): http://rochus-keller.ch/?p=1153

Not really that new. An artist is Wisconsin made whole rooms of self playing instruments in the 60s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9HeaddNiqU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnXu6YNrJ7A

(And if you haven't been to The House on the Rock, it's honestly worth a trip to Wisconsin /just for it/.)

dont forget your walking shoes though, even as a young person my dogs were barking by the time I'd seen it all. At the time the infinity room was not blocked off but the last few feet and young me wanted to see the toothpick at the end

the ratio of "how many people have any idea such a place exists" over "how amazing and vast the House on the Rock is" is unfathomably low. it's as mystifying as the place itself

The one tragedy is that they seem to be having issues keeping the self-playing instruments in good repair. Many were barely functional last I was there a few years back.

Of interest is that House on the Rock is the setting for the showdown at end end of Season 1 of "American Gods". Worth a watch if you enjoy the place.

First one dates back to 1805: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panharmonicon. I've seen small mechanical ensembles from the 1920s, which included multiple bowed string instruments (which sounded horrible, BTW). Apparently, it was the ‘Phonoliszt Violina’ made by Hupfeld. There is more than one video on YouTube.

Reminds me of Electromancy: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9tBkb9DJTrA

From the channel description:

> I’m a disabled musician building a robot metal band to keep playing music. DIY robot instruments, broken manikin bandmates. Creative mind of Step "Satyra" Tranovich

Why not listen to a recording at this point.. While it might be impressive, it's not interesting (to me).

The point of witnessing live music is to experience the hard work and character of a human with their instrument.

An entire band in sync together - witnessing this incites some emotion in me. Improvisation... this is exciting.

Robotic musicians that could improvise - especially if they can do so alongside human musicians - would be interesting indeed. It seems to me that we have all the building blocks needed for this. If someone isn't working on it already, they should be.

Look into George Lewis' voyager, foundational for this stuff (but not a humanoid robot per se). Been around for a while.

I clicked this link expecting to finally see a writeup on the amazing people who created Compressorhead and got... some instruments with automation attached to them. Which is great. But a headline like, "there's an All Robot Band!!!", that would be... Compressorhead. This is "engineer has added midi automation to live instruments" which is not novel by itself at all. There's 100 year old player pianos that have guitars and snare drums in them (which frankly sound better than this, hitting the hihat from below?! like this one I saw this summer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6sc9ULNA64) .

Going in exactly the opposite direction, the Electronicos Fantasticos have been making electronic instruments for humans to play: https://youtu.be/UB7ZyZSKLX8

LOL this is amazing! I love Japan :)

There is also Compressorhead since 10 years ago. https://www.youtube.com/@RobocrossMachines/videos

Somewhat related and also amazing: https://www.youtube.com/@animusic6837

I knew this would be in here somewhere. This definitely stirred something when I first saw it. If I hadn't already begun a career in computers, I'm certain this would've catalyzed it.

Direct link to Youtube channel: https://youtube.com/@onehackerband

Almost 15 years ago I saw this kind of thing in Seattle.

The tower had electromechanical / pneumatic fingers and pluckers running over the strings.

Here's a blogger's experience http://maiden-voyage-travel.com/one-of-my-fave-museums-exper...

Reminds me of a real world Animusic video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyCIpKAIFyo

Also, at first I thought was going to be the person (or persons) that have their own restored Rock-Afire-Explosion bands and then reprogram them to play contemporary songs.

Does the "Rock-A-Fire Explosion" at Showbiz Pizza count as prior art?

https://showbizpizza.fandom.com/wiki/The_Rock-afire_Explosio...

I was thinking of Chuck E. Cheese when I saw this headline. I'm glad my mind isn't the only one that thought of something like this!

Is it just me, or does it sound off? Kinda like the uncanny valley, it sounds like the song, yet it also doesn't sound quite right. I think its mostly in the drums that I get a sense of unease.

It's reached sort of high school level garage band renditions of the songs, imo.

So yes, it's off, but also it's impressive? It fits into an interesting place where it's very cool and also has clear room for improvement.

My favorite one of these, if you like drum and bass: https://vimeo.com/93923609

> This video has not been rated. Please login to view the video.

Wow, Vimeo is even worse than YouTube.

It's just missing VALL-E for vocals, and it can go on tour.

Please, chuck-e-cheese has been around since I was a kid

I expected the article to be about Compressorhead.

I expected the article to be about Showbiz Pizza.

I expected the article to be about The Trons https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trons

There’s really only one analog worth mentioning in this thread about robots-cum-musicians.

https://youtu.be/Fd5c3Qtcr_w

I quite like this one:

https://youtu.be/bAdqazixuRY

AUTOMATICA - Robots Vs. Music - Nigel Stanford

More industrial robot arm choreography and creative film making, but with some fun mindless destruction too.

(And if you like that, another one of his I like is tghis: https://youtu.be/Q3oItpVa9fs )

There's also One Love Machine Band - https://youtu.be/vcci6vPGBHQ

But we already have Kraftwerk...

We already have Chuck E Cheese

It is not a band until they dramatically break up.

Given the context, one would hope that would be a catastrophic mechanical failure, ideally involving explosions.

That's not gonna happen until they do an AC/DC cover.

They break down instead, and they do break down all the time, no drugs needed

Is “robot” overused these days?

Headline: “Engineer builds robotic lawn care system”

Reality: A programable sprinkler valve timer.

In this case these are more like machines that play instruments than what most “common folk” would consider a robot.

This is certainly an interesting creation but for some reason the lack of sensors or some ability to respond to what it is doing or it’s environment seems to fall short of “robot”.

If we constantly have to change our technical terms to fit whatever misconceptions the "common folk" have... well that's a lot of pointless redefinition and recoining.

Which one of these counts as a "music playing robot"?

- Toyota Partner Bot [0] - A general purpose humanoid robot that can play a trumpet

- Automatica [1] - A group of assembly arms that can play instruments

- A Player Piano [2]

- A bunch of servos stuck to musical instruments

Arguably they're all robots - they use automation and mechanical means to actually play the instruments (not a synth reproduction of an instrument). But you'd be hard-pressed to convince someone that a player piano is a robot these days.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Partner_Robot [1] https://www.themusicman.uk/kuka-robot-nigel-stanford/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_piano

All of them are robots in my book. Robot is a technical term, and technical terms need precise definitions.

While I see the point that laypeople might not be convinced, I'm fine with that. I don't think redefining the term is actually useful for people who design and build robots. I'm not a roboticist, but I'm sure they already have various terms to denote varying levels of autonomy and active perception.

I have a 25 year old Yamaha electronic piano that can play itself using stored programs or controlled over MIDI.

Is it a robot?

They keys are not mechanically actuated when it auto-plays. Does that cause disqualification from the "robot" category?

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