Now If Only Someone Could Invent A Mechanical Lead Singer...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
Due to my recent (and ongoing) fascination with electronic music via electromechanical means, this video piqued my interest. (Or “peaked,” maybe, since this is, after all, the internet.) While the music in the video is, both objectively and subjectively, atrocious (apparently it is a Muse song? Not a fan…) the concept itself, which should be readily apparent, is not.
The MechBass is essentially four bass strings with servo-driven plectrums and dampers, and a fretting mechanism controlled by stepper motors, the whole thing driven by an ATMega328 doing MIDI-to-’bot conversion. Many technical details at this Hack-A-Day page, but I think you get the general idea. Obviously, throwing a bunch of motors around the string would create a ridiculous amount of magnetic interference, and he got around that by using some permutation of the LightWave infra-red pickups (not sure if he made his own, or just parted out a stock LightWave pickup.)
Anyhow, cool idea. A hybrid electro-rock band could totally get away with using this on stage; in fact, it would be pretty slick. (Although perhaps a bit gimmicky in the short run.) I should mention that bass is the instrument I am best at playing, and I’m fully aware that there is no possible way a rig like this could even begin to approach reproducing what is a surprisingly complicated and dynamic instrument. But it’s pretty neat. And it looks cool. Other than player pianos, what other easily controllable electro-mechanical drunk band member replacements are out there?
26 comments
captured by robots replaces them al!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7o2yiAlKd0&feature=related
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i know you're not a fan of Pat Metheny but, he has kind of explored this fairly extensively:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VymAn8QJNQ
regardless of what you think of the music, he has invested in some interesting, and musical, machines...
MR808 - mechanical recreation of an 808 -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ot3sQkRCB4
There's also the wacky mohawk robot drummer, but not as precise as the bass.
I like this guy's DIY approach - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtjFoV0afuY&feature=related
Re Muse -- no accounting for taste. I don't mind Muse that much, as Radiohead-lite bands go.
Re the project: It's cool, but really want you want is one of those MIDI grand pianos. Try selling the wife on that. Didn't Moog make some crazy device that sits on the keyboard?
captured by robots replaces them al!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7o2yiAlKd0&feature=related
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Moog Pianobar. But that goes in the other direction. It's a piano keyboard -> MIDI sensor. I wouldn't mind one of the Yamaha MIDI upright grands, specifically the MPX1Z. (That's the one that Richard James uses for the piano stuff on Drukqs, etc. If I recall correctly, he has two of them.) I could easily talk the wife in to it; where gear is concerned, she is very understanding, and in fact is usually more gung-ho about me buying new shit than I am.
-CR
they're gonna skip the mechanical lead singers and just go for the hologram like the tupac thing... or all the J-pop
I understand the Furby is back in production, so the lead singer is covered.
there's a cool pitchfork tv video of dan deacon recording bromst with a player piano, and exceeding the note resolution of the system, so having to multitrack so the solenoids can keep up
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i know you're not a fan of Pat Metheny but, he has kind of explored this fairly extensively:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VymAn8QJNQ
regardless of what you think of the music, he has invested in some interesting, and musical, machines...
I'm with boobs.
I'm not a fan of Pat Metheny (I don't know anything about him, but still...) but I wanted to see that tour. As usual, laziness prevailed.
bb
MR808 - mechanical recreation of an 808 -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ot3sQkRCB4
There's also the wacky mohawk robot drummer, but not as precise as the bass.
I like this guy's DIY approach - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtjFoV0afuY&feature=related
@nedorama: While that 808 contraption is kind of fun from a visual standpoint, there's nothing terribly interesting about it, technically. People have been using MIDI-controlled solenoids to whack drums forever and a day. (I'm trying to remember the first time I saw that used in live performance; it had to be '88 at the earliest.)
Technically speaking, that's what all these MIDI-controlled player pianos are; it's not really anything groundbreaking or even new. Ditto for the Pat Metheny thing.
-CR
Octant (a Seattle "band") had a robot controlled drum kit in the 1990s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBTFTQ4er3Q
Disclaimer: I just skimmed the video to refresh my memory that, yet, those drums were played by a robot. I make no claims as to the quality of the music therein.
Same thing: solenoid drum whacking. That sort of thing has the weird distinction of being something you only see once in a while, so you think "hey, that was unique as fuck!"
It's not.
-CR
So how about an Analog Industries electromechanical challenge?
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Somewhere in the Chicago suburbs is an old mansion full of incredible mechanical band type contraptions built from the late 1800s to 1940s. They were collected by the inheritor of a robber baron era fortune who was fascinated with them. The current owners would like to open the mansion as a museum, but the fact is people would expect the mechanical bands to work, and fixing even a small percentage of them would be prohibitively expensive, so they're just sitting there collecting dust like it's the mansion of some Addams family relatives ...
Anyway what was most impressive about those antique mechanical bands was the staggering scale of the larger ones ... some of them were huge, and attempted to emulate an entire big band type ensemble.
The idea when it was an ongoing industry from about 1890 to 1950 was that they would pay for themselves by being a coin-operated novelty. It turned out that only the largest and most elaborate mechanical bands attracted a lot of traffic, but those were so expensive to maintain in working order that it was difficult to turn a profit on one.
But for a while, there was an arms race between the manufacturers of mechanical bands to see who could produce the most elaborate, and those were pretty mind blowing examples of a bizarre technological competition. And then they bitched about their industry being killed by jukeboxes, like people in the 80s bitched about video killing the radio star, or today it's MP3s killing the record industry, or whatever.
I'm too lazy to Googlefy it right now, but WTTW did a TV segment on it a few years ago that might be out there on the intertubes ...
With regard to mechanical fretted instruments, the antique ones I previously referred to kept it simple by not having a "fretting hand" mechanism, but rather were like mechanical harps with a damping mechanism so notes could be muted. In other words, they had a string for every playable note, typically about 36 strings for a mechanical "guitar". So imagine keeping that alone in tune, and then imagine it as an ensemble with mechanical piano, 28 string mechanical banjo, mechanical tuba or giant low harp for bass and around a dozen other mechanical horns ... It's out of tune by the time you're done tuning it. Kept a small army of technicians busy for a few decades though!
In Spring Green, WI there's a place called House on the Rock.
They have huge musical contraptions that are amazing like the ones Tonehead talks about.
Tourist trap, but a rather neat trap...
Just so they have a name besides those "huge musical contraptions," they are called orchestrions. For that matter, so is what Pat Metheny had made for his jassion fuzzak Note-A-Thon.
-CR
YES i saw Captured by Robots open for the Faint in Tucson Arizona. Fantastic show. CBR sequenced his whole show (at the time) off of a Yamaha Rm1x to a second device triggering the pistons.
@tonehead- Unless you're referring to something else entirely, the Planter's Peanut estate is home to one of the world's largest collections of mechanical musical instruments. I was fortunate enough to tour it and it's so mind blowing that it's hard to put into words. The main house (which is a mere 50,000 square feet) has hundreds of player pianos and all manner of other "player" instruments including some very rare "player violin" instruments of German descent (most of which were destroyed in WWII). They also have a warehouse full of the aforementioned orchestrons, all completely functional (as well as a fully restored 19th century French carousel that makes plenty of its own musical racket!).
As a bass player, I just have to say this...why a robot bass? are the bass players the biggest problem in the band? how about we make a robot guitar player with the built-in function of being able to turn it's amp's volume down, or a robotic drummer that doesn't take 45 minutes to set up it's own kit? how about a singer who doesn't need a hitch a ride to the gig and lives across town?
just food for thought...maybe there will be a software solution one day...audiodamage VST maybe?
"As a bass player, I just have to say . . . ."
*insert* (much pointing out of dust motes in the eyes of colleagues)
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