Are Robot Musicians taking over the stage?

[Farrell Jackson]

I came across this article/video this morning and was a bit shocked at how far robotics was coming along. I knew there were robots being used in the medical world to perform delicate procedures and other things in the work place but this video surprised and angered me a bit. What do you think about it this advancement....does Compressorhead rock or not?

Here's the link:

http://illusionofmore.com/whose-future-is-it/

Farrell

[Oldrottenhead]

wow they are better than the ramones lmao.

[Gnasty]

wow they are better than the ramones lmao.

They are the Ramones. Their spirits live within the robots. The new Ramones Transformers from Mattel.

[64Guitars]

Robotics have advanced a lot but robots are not yet sentient. So the music was created by a person at some point and recorded (most likely via MIDI). The robots are just a means of playing back those recordings. As a music playback system for MIDI, I think a band of robots is much more interesting and entertaining than a sound generator (Roland Sound Canvas or INTEGRA-7, for example), synth, or computer. However, they're no match for human musicians who can alter their performance according to audience feedback or how they feel at the time.

But someday (not likely in our lifetimes, unfortunately), robots will no doubt become sentient. When that happens, I think their music will be just as legitimate as a human's because it will come from their own thoughts and experiences. I'd be interested to hear music from any sentient being, whether human, alien, or robot. In fact, I think I'd be more interested to hear music from an alien or sentient robot because it would come from something beyond the possibilities of my own experiences and thoughts. At the very least, I'd be quite curious about it.

As for Compressorhead, I think the big question is how was the music created? We know it was created by a person, but did they actually play all the instruments in real time and record their performance to a MIDI sequencer? Or did they merely program the music into a computer? I think the latter is less interesting from a musical standpoint and a bit of a cheat. Music should be played, not programmed. I'd have a lot more respect for the musician(s) behind Compressorhead's performance if I knew that they actually played the instruments into the MIDI sequencer rather than just programming it or, worse still, using a MIDI file downloaded from the internet to control the robots' perfromance.

[dasilvasings]

don't care. All fine by me, unless they do some stage diving!