Robot Drummer

02004-10-16 | Music | 5 comments

Build Your Own Drum-Playing Robot: “libertynews writes “Here is a project called P.E.A.R.T. where EE students constructed a drum playing robot using USB controlled pneumatic actuators and MIDI files.“”
(Via Slashdot.)

Shhh, don’t tell Robby and Ron…

5 Comments

  1. Carol

    And we have a player piano. No reason for any human to touch the keys again…

    Reply
  2. Victor

    I think a robot would self-destruct trying to keep up with Robby and Ron!

    Reply
  3. Adam Solomon

    I don’t know, at this rate of constant computerization and crappy pop music everywhere, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the most popular music in perhaps a few years was all computerized, through MIDI….lol

    Reply
  4. Panj

    HEAR! HEAR!, Victor

    Reply
  5. Tyler Love

    I find two flaws with this specific version of this…

    First being the drum set they used sounds horrible.

    Second being, you can tell that a human is not playing it, regardless of how hard the hits are, they don’t sound like a human due to the fact that the weight of a human arm isn’t behind the hit. Also since the sticks are only positioned to hit in one spot of each drum it will never sound real, because a human never hits in the same spot twice.

    As for the whole, pop-music midi issue. Midi can be a musicians best friend. Especially for someone like me, I can’t afford a $5,000+ drum set, and I can’t afford $20,000+ of mics to record a good drum set, or $20,000 of pre-amps to make the mics sound good, and another $10,000 for compressors and other various processing equipment to add to that. Yet I can (actually “I did”) buy something like fxpansions BFD and with midi, program some drums for one of my songs that will sound almost as good as if I had all the gear.If you know what you are doing by setting individual midi velocities and other humanizing tricks the normal human ear would never know the drum track was programmed, and you might be able to trick a few experts…if your good.

    So midi isn’t as bad as some might think.

    Reply

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