You're confusing machines with robots. There's a difference. Although definitions may vary depending on the field we're talking about, a robot should at least be able to things on his own. Although most scientists would also agree that it should be able to make decisions.

A piano is as much a robot as a vacuum cleaner is. It's a tool you can use, nothing more.

A player-piano is indeed a primitive robot. You are right about that. Ever heard of conlon Nancarrow? One of the more interesting American composers who made music for player piano all his life. Here's a link to one of his pieces: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPdX85cv_D8 But one of the disadvantages is that because of the way it's built, a player piano can't do dynamics. You can only play louder if you play more notes at the same time.

Yamaha Disklavier and such CAN be used as robots. They're machines on their own, but if you feed them real time information by using a computer with sensors and a custom made program they can indeed react to their environment. About sounding mechanical, that's an illusion. When making a piano robot, there are only two parameters that count: the the timing and the pressure you use to push down a key. compared to windblowers, this is very simple, because you won't have to modify the sound a string after it has been beaten. If a Disklavier sounds mechanical, it is because of the way the piece of music is programmed, not because of the limitations of the instrument itself. If you want it to play some music you can either program it to play exactly what it says on the score, or build in some errors, like a human player would make. Slight deviations in timing and velocity. The first way would make the music a bit mechanically. The second way can sound perfectly realistic, if you do it right. But then you have to ask yourself what the point of making robots is, if you're asking them to make the same mistakes as humans do.

Now that robot clarinet is an interesting experiment. But not finished at all. It is interesting because it shows that much more research is needed in this area. It is very impressing to do a crude version of 'flight of the bumble bee' but it only shows that the fingering mechanism is working ok. Now that part is quite comparable with a technology used by a disklavier. Not that new at all, you just need smaller electromagnets. The real challenge lies with the mouthpiece, and they're not there yet. For now, the instrument plays everything at the same volume, and I have reason to believe it won't be able to make breaks between two notes. There's certainly no articulation at all, and just that is what makes a clarinet sound real. So it's a good project, but they haven't figured it all out, just as the people who are doing this project have not figured it all out.

The "figuring out" part is a challenge for every instrument you're trying to turn into a robot. And the video you watched is the result of an earlier experiment, where they tried to emulate an electrical guitar. If read a bit further, you'll see that they're working on wind- and string instruments AND on the interaction with human players. That's still a bit more complicated than the examples you gave.

Of course they're not the first trying to make a musical robot. One of them studied in Belgium for a year (also mentioned in the article) at Logos foundation. Here's their website, it has a small introduction video on the right: http://www.logosfoundation.org/mnm/index.html. And here's a recent video of their current robot orchestra improvising with two human performers: http://vimeo.com/11487694

What you will notice is that this orchestra doesn't have a string instrument. Simply because it's very complicated to make one. So what these people are trying to do is quite new indeed.

About the poor pitch and intonation you mentioned: you shouldn't think that western tuning is the only one that's right. It just sounds more right to you because that's what you've listened to your whole life. That's why you think music sounds out of tune when it doesn't follow this tuning system. But it's really dependant on the culture you grew up in. Or perhaps you're convinced a Chinese gamelan orchestra plays 'out of tune' because the players just like to terrorize their own ears?

There's more to music than playing in a band. Also, acoustical sound is more directional than a stereo setup.

Yeah, I know about that. Pat also came to visit Logos foundation in Ghent, Belgium last june. That place also has more than 40 robots in an orchestra and exists a lot longer than Pat's orchestra. He liked it a lot. Thing is, Pat has a lot of programmers in his service for this project, and their goal is to make the music sound like he wants it to sound. Nothing wrong with that of course. But it's hardly fair that this project isn't new because someone else has made music with robots already.

First of all, every robot is different. Even 80 years ago, organ robots existed. Ever heard the music of Nancarrow for player piano? Kind of a robot too, but with 'punch cards'. But there's still a lot of research to do concerning string instruments, or windblowers even.

And second, it's not enough to have just one robot of every type. That's like saying "ok, we have three computers in the world now, that will be enough." (IBM chairman in the 50's?) If you want talented people to really get to know the possibilities of these robots and make new music with them, you'll need thousands. And it won't hurt to try a lot of different approaches at this point. And from what I have seen, this approach is very different from Pat Metheny's. But of course this difference might be hard to see when you're not an insider. As goes for every sort of new technology.

I think some people are missing the point here.

Robot instruments are not to replace humans, but to provide an alternative approach to music. Sure, people can do lots of stuff robots won't be able to do in the near future, but robots are also capable of doing things people would find impossible. You can make a robot react to movement sensors, light, touchpads etc. It can use information from databases or the internet. Let me see a human who can do that in real time.

Humans use a technique to play an instrument that has been perfected over hundreds of years. With robots, we first have to develop the robot. Once that is done, we can try all possible options to make interesting music with it. But this includes a learning curve. It's not very fair to compare the tried and tested technique of humans with robotic instruments at this point.

As for the fact that some people think it hurts their ears: there's is more music in the world than the pop-rock-jazz-blues stuff we hear on the radio. Not that I have anything against it, but if one is serious about new ways of making music, why stick to the 1000 year old idea of using chords? And while it makes sense that humans like steady beats to play together, why not try a 3th degree math function as the rhythmical basis of your piece if you have robots to perform it, and explore from there? No, it won't sound like pop music, but that doesn't make it less interesting. Some musicians, and not the least among them, were trying to do that even a hundred years ago. I think they would have been delighted to have a musical robot to try out their ideas.

No, robots will probably never be able to play some kinds of 'humanoid' music with the same feel. But if that would be the goal of making robots, we would better stop making them. People make robots to explore new possibilities. Ok, there is the sony project to make a humanoid robots, and I guess that kind of stuff will always be there. It appeals to many people's imagination. And the less people know about technology, the more they are fascinated by this kind of robot. But the real challenge lies with exploring new ways of doing things. This goes for scientific robots as well as musical ones.

It's the same as with writeable cd's and such (don't know about the states, but in europe there is a copyright charge on empty cd's). If you charge people money for the illegal music they're gonna put onto the medium, while in effect there is no proof that is what they're gonna do, you're actually fining them before they committed the crime. I mean, it is still illegal to copy music, but now you're gonna pay for it because you're probably doing it anyway.

If musicians would be honest, they would be the first to react to this. After all, as a musician you're most likely to use the medium to carry your own music around. But you still have to pay this fee.

I guess this completely depends on where you're standing. I'm working with windows at the office and spending my free time programming in linux, mostly on the same software. Adding new libraries and such is a breeze in linux, whereas windows always seems trouble to me. I'm spending much more time figuring out how to do something on my windows machine, than I need for that on Linux, with its easy apt-get or configure-make system.

And it's not only the building of libraries you need, also the winapi itself is something I'd rather stay far away from. And hell, even boost is easier to install in linux than it is in windows if you ask me.

Every industry has its rise and fall. If people don't want to buy your product anymore, stop making it, instead of forbidding people the way they use it. People had plenty of entertainment before there was an entertainment industry, and there will be plenty of it after the industry is gone. In fact, I think the most populist and brain-dead entertainment would snuff it first, so i'd rather like this to happen.

now really... Since when is a phone capable of being dull? And if you're not dull yourself, why bother if people think your cellphone is? Seems to me some people are trying to compensate for their own lack of being interesting by needing a cellphone that isn't 'dull'. Hardly shocking news of course...

True, but what if games like World of Warcraft start to adapt to this standard in the future? If they want the logo, they'll have to. But I sure like the gaming style that needs about every key on my keyboard. A whole category of gameplaying seems in danger if this really gets a standard.