A Guitar Robot That Can Really Shred 88
botPatrol writes "As reported today by Create Digital Music and the Wired blog, PAM (Polytangent Automatic (multi-)Monochord) is a robot who has discovered a love for vintage Metallica riffs, and can churn them out non-stop at superhuman speeds without ever requiring anger management therapy or treatment for drug abuse."
(Read more, below.)
"Her younger sister MARIE, a road-ready robotic ensemble of wind and string instruments, promises to be even more of a musical badass. STEIM (STudio for Electro Instrumental Music), a leading international research center for the development of new musical instruments, will play host to MARIE this spring, and has posted a story on the revolutionary nature of this new musical robot. PAM and MARIE creators Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI) are calling on metal- and tech-heads alike to push their Kickstarter fund raising campaign over the top in its final few days, to fund the MARIE prototype and "help thwart the imminent robot vs. human wars by demonstrating how fun, cool, and sonically interesting it can be when humans and robots combine their powers for good.""
Re:Superhuman speed? (Score:4, Interesting)
Even worse - it's missing more than half the sound qualities of true guitar playing:
string thickness
string/fret choice for note
string bends
finger slide noises
pluck style (pick, hammer-on, pull-off, etc)
pluck position on string
muting / hf filter
high-order harmonic generation / lf filter
'whammy' bar
string-to-string interaction
pickup choice, switching
pedalboard activity
Synth guitar emulations can guess on a lot of these and inject sound changes, but really, nothing compares to a well-skilled guitarist playing a purposefully created good solo.
Not news (Score:5, Interesting)