Robot Jazz Musician Performs In Public
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Monday, 27 of April , 2009 at 3:13 am
Back in November of last year, we posted some videos of robots improvising on drums and marimba along with human accompaniment. Since then, the marimba robot (named Shimon) has graduated from the lab and performed in public for the first time:
To recap:
Shimon, the robotic marimba player, joins the session, detecting the beat and improvising based on the analyzed scale played by as human piano player.
“The processing allows [the robots] to analyze and improvise,” said Weinberg via telephone. “In one of the applications, we use a genetic algorithm: You have a population of something, and then you do mutations to all of these little things , in my case it’s musical motifs , mutations and cross-breeding between the musical genes, in our case, and then you have a new population that better fits to the environment.
:It runs [about] 50 generations of mutations that are cross-bred between the genes and tests whether this is similar to a motif that the saxophone player played, for example. And it plays something back that is a combination of musical genes of what the saxophone player played, what the piano player played , something that is unique that only can be the product of genetic algorithm.”
The complete performance is available here.
Comments (4)
Category: Musical
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Comment by Donald Ravey
Made Thursday, 30 of April , 2009 at 9:23 pm
Most interesting, because the accompaniment produced does not sound at all mechanical, there seems to be a very spontaneous quality to it. The genetic algorithms do a great job, in my opinion.
Comment by michael
Made Tuesday, 22 of December , 2009 at 3:46 pm
Great stuff! I play with a geeky sort of band called Colonizing the Cosmos (I warned you). We love hearing about the marriage of science and music. Keep it up!
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Made Monday, 21 of November , 2011 at 5:36 pm
Can I simply say what a relief to find someone who truly knows what they’re talking about on the internet.
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Made Monday, 28 of November , 2011 at 10:25 am
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