Guitarists, your Days are Numbered

spackbace writes "Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a mechanical guitar playing robot, named the Crazy J. The guitar player is composed of two mechanical systems that interact to play a range of 29 musical notes. A plucking mechanism with six independently controlled picks is mounted over the body of the guitar and a fingering mechanism with an array of 23 fingertips is mounted over the first four frets of the fingerboard."

*Yawn*

[smittyoneeach]

While not modern enough for a full-on web site, you can see a museum of such in Germany [sibmas.org]
The pneumatic piano with the drum holding four violins, in particular, was interesting, if only from a mechanical engineering perspective.
At any rate, when your gadget can move Mt. Fuji [slashdot.org], you shall have accomplished something.

hmmm?

[sstation]

http://www.capturedbyrobots.com/ [capturedbyrobots.com]

Re:No, no, no!

[rogue555]

I've taken the class. Yes, yes it does. It plays any MIDI file with a guitar part to it. It also plays "Layla" and flight of the bumblebee. What is really amazing is that it was put together in a quarter by three students.

Re:Days are numbered?

[PeterPumpkin]

Heh, almost as long as Crazy J has been around. If you look at the URL, you can see that this is a project for a class in Fall 2000.

Also, peeking at the source gives:
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 3.0">

Re:Days are numbered?

[Zaknafein500]

You just need to look harder.

http://www.johnpetrucci.com/ [johnpetrucci.com] just to name one.

Re:It's nothing to fret about!

[mr_tenor]

"Give a man a Les Paul, and he doesn't become an Eric Clapton"? Eric Clapton doesn't characteristically play a Les Paul ;)

Nice try.. but no Hendrix

[clockwise_music]

As an engineer, this is way cool. However as a guitarist - have you noticed just how mechanical the whole thing sounds? Here's why:

• String muting - a big problem here. When playing guitar you can mute the strings that you're not playing with either your left or right hand. Notice how all of the strings "ring out" after playing a note? A key change on this thing would not sound good.
• Bending - half the fun of playing the guitar is that you can bend notes. Bending and sliding is what can make a guitar 'sing' - similar to a voice.
• Tremolo - to make your playing have any sense of feeling you need to be able to tremolo a note. That means slightly varying the pitch of it. This can be done in a few different ways - none that are possible here.
• Strumming - ask it to strum a chord. It can't. Individual picks for each string is kind of cool, but won't sound any good when playing any songs recorded in the past 80 years.
• Harmonics - can it play a one?
• String selection - a good guitarist will pick particular strings for playing a particular note. These sound completely different because of a few reasons - an A on the bottom E string (fifth fret) compared with playing an A on the A string (open) will have a very different timbre. Doesn't look like that's possible here.
• Range - the guitar actually has a very large range compared to other instruments. Doesn't look like you can get past the 5th fret here.
• Legato, hammerons and pulloffs - can it 'flutter' between two notes?

All of these things are particular to an acoustic guitar. As for trying to duplicate an electric guitar with distortion - that would be freaking cool but very hard.

Re:It's nothing to fret about!

[farrellj]

Not this decade...Back in the 1960's, when the Roger Waters quote is from, he played a Les Paul.

ttyl
Farrell

Re:still no

[terriblecertainty]

Mowing? Why didn't you say so:

http://www.friendlyrobotics.com/NewSite/robomow.ht m [friendlyrobotics.com]

A friend actually has one. Part of his loyal robot army.

Re:Days are numbered?

[Mattcelt]

Eric Johnson [ericjohnson.com] and Trevor Rabin [tripod.com] come to mind immediately. Both do songwriting, composing (as in film scores), and improv guitar (mostly solos).

And some wikis to add flavor - Eric's wiki page [wikipedia.org] and Trevor's wiki page. [wikipedia.org]

Re:It's nothing to fret about!

[cc5150]

Actually, although he's mostly a Strat player these days (since the mid-1970's), Clapton was known as a Gibson guy in the 60's. His red sunburst Les Paul was quite famous (he eventually gave it to George Harrison, I think) and, while in Cream, he also became associated with a red ES-335 and a psychedlic SG.

Considering the timing of the Waters quote, it fits.

Aglaopheme, the guitar player

[rjolly]

An automatic guitar had already been build, by Nicolas Anatol Baginsky ; with the additional ability to learn. Now there's even a band:
http://www.the-three-sirens.info/ [the-three-sirens.info]
Here are two samples:
http://www.baginsky.de/agl/snd/tton7.mov [baginsky.de]
http://www.baginsky.de/agl/snd/aglclip.mov [baginsky.de]
It doesn't sound bad, does it ?

Re:Nice try.. but no Hendrix

[guitaristx]

A quick tutorial on what "tremolo" means in guitar terminology:
Tremolo [wikipedia.org]
Locking Tremolo [wikipedia.org]

A little background Info

[akmech]

Hello,

I am the development TA for this mechatronics class.

The Crazy J guitar was made by three students, Jason, Susan, and Turner over the course of one quarter (not semester) five years ago.

Their prior knowledge about Mechatronics was limited before they took the class. They learned basic microcontrollers, assembly for the HC11, and basic electronics in class lectures and laboratory lectures at the same time they were constructing their project.

Everything was hand made by they alone. The mechanics were designed, machined,and sandblasted by them. They designed the circuits and actually made them using a circuit board router and soldering Iron. Of course the program for the HC11 was written by them.

After the end of the course, they are able to apply in control theory in a real physical system instead of playing around with simulations.

This project's scope was limited due to the time constraint of one quarter. Of course they are off to a great start so who knows what they will come up with in the future.

If you want to see a movie of the guitar playing, more projects, or lab exercises for the course. Go to http://www.me.gatech.edu/mechatronics_lab [gatech.edu]

Thanks,
Akio