gizmag.com: If you're a fan of 1980s music, then there's a very good chance that you'll already be familiar with the electronic beats provided by what's widely regarded as the drum machine that started it all, Roland's TR-808. It set the mood for Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healing, fired shots at David Byrne in the concert movie Stop Making Sense and was the inspiration for the naming of the band 808 State. In his own homage to the iconic device, electronic music tinkerer Moritz Simon Geist has mechanically reproduced 11 of its key sounds using real instruments played by robots within the supersized, wall-filling frame of the stunning MR-808.
5 comments:
It's a pretty ambitious task to take on recreating the timeless sounds of the TR-808! I am always fascinated by solenoid-driven instruments that start to bridge the gap between digitally sequenced music and acoustically played instruments in real life. I would like to know more about what challenges Geist ran into in terms of latency issues, as that always comes up when one makes their own computer-controlled instruments.
This is a huge project. I know down at the robotics club they have a robotic orchestra, however there are only a few instruments and they are these big clunky machines that are not very finely tuned. Very cool.
I am curious to know what people's opinions about this are. Is a drum machine still a machine if the noises that are created are actual live sound effects versus pre-recorded digitally-altered effects? I imagine one could argue that because the drum heads are being hit by robotic arms they are still live sounds. The instruments are still subject to the same changes in humidity, elevation, and temperature that these instruments would typically be vulnerable to. On any given day, pushing the same button on the machine could give you different qualities of sound. Does that make it any less a machine?
This is so impressive! That is quite an undertaking and the result is really cool. I love that it is getting a lot of use both on display and as a large part in a band. I can only imagine a concert with the band using the instrument. I only wish I could see it live. I love how it combines several very advanced technologies to create a digitally and electronically motivated acoustic sound. The building of this piece must have required a level of precision that I find difficult to fathom.
Automatic drum machine playing real drums! What could be cooler! This is a very cool contraption. The video at the end of the article is very cool looking, and sounding. The idea of a totally robotic band playing computer generated music on real instruments is very interesting. I'm glad that the article talked a little bit about the inner workings of the robots. Even more information in that area would be fun. There was one line in the article about latency that got me wondering if there is a problem with lag in the machine. The guy who made this should try to make more robot instruments to go with it.
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