June 2016 34
Pianola & player piano
Made first public at the world expibition fair in 1876 and invented by Forneaux, the pianola or player piano is an automatic version of a normal piano. It uses paper rolls with imprinted notes to play the piece. The pianola was advertised which resulted in peak sales in 1920s. With the invention of the phongraf and other recording equipment sales droped. Now, rthe only available self-playing piano is the Yamaha Disklavier.
Festo & Roland Olbeter – Pneumatic robot
Valve supplier FESTO has a sense for upcoming trends and gave robot art specialist Roland Olbeter free access to Festo’s stockroom. He came out with a nice automated electrical string quartet and one drum, which he presented on Hannover Messe 2008.
The Trons – self playing band
The heavily featured New Zealand based self playing robot band “The Trons” by Greg Locke is one of the most popular robot-only band.
RobOrchestra – vibraphone robots
TeamDARE – Panflute and other robots
Founded at the University of Eindhoven, Team Dare develops musical robots since 2002 with a focus on the technical layout. They also have the only pan-flute robot we know of!
Link
Godfried-Willem Raes & Logos – Music Robots
Godfried-Willem Raes is together with Pierre Bastien on of the godfathers of european music robots. Not only did he build robots for Aphex Twin lately, he also developed more than 50 instruments in the last decades.
Logos is his belgish artist group, providing more then 50 several robotic instruments like pipes, organs, beat-makers and drums. They also have some of the most detailed technical paper on robotics for musical instruments explaining the progress and details of his machines and electronics.
Link
Steve 3PO – robotic drummer
Jeremy Bush, drummer of the christian rock band “David Crowder Band” developed this fully functioning pneumatic drumbot called “Steve 3PO” with engineers Josh Caldwell and Eli Hernandez. Link
Lexademin – russian guitar robot
M@P Group – Robot Guitar
The M@P Group from the technologic college from which is dedicated to “Music, Electronic and Passion” made this wonderful classical guitar robot.
The device is a robot that can play a fully automated acustic guitar. The commands are transmitted by an android smartphone,that by the means of a terminal Bluetooth send the code to Arduino, this code corresponds to the song to perform. Arduino decodes the received code and processes the program corresponding to one of the tasks stored in memory, providing the actuators (motor steppers and servomotors) the necessary instructions for the correct function of the robot. The guitar is placed horizontally on a smooth and regular surface where all the handcrafted supports are to support the various actuators.
Physical String Synthesizer – Autotuned String Robot
The Milwaukee Servoelectric Guitar Project is a volunteer effort to promote the advancement of servo electric guitars and their design.
Several approaches to automatic playing and self tuning string instruments are shown, with detailed info. link
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