OT: A Robot Named Shimon Wants To Jam With You
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A Robot Named Shimon Wants To Jam With You
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[5 min 31 sec] on All Things Consideredadd to playlist
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Shimon jams on the marimba. Its head nods in time with the music, the way a
human's would. Click here, or on the photo above, to watch video of Shimon
in action.
Watch Shimon play with Atlanta hip-hop artist Lotto.
� December 22, 2009 - What was billed as the first intercontinental
musical interaction between humans and robots took place the weekend of Dec.
17. It involved humans in Japan using an application called ZoozBeat on
their iPhones and a robot named Shimon in Atlanta.
According to its makers, unlike other robots that can play music, Shimon is
perceptual. The robot can listen to what is played, analyze it and then
improvise. And it has been taught to improvise like some jazz masters.
Gil Weinberg of Georgia Tech's music technology program recently spoke to
NPR's Robert Siegel from Japan, where he witnessed the historic interaction.
Weinberg says the result is music meant to inspire people � not an effort to
turn our music-making over to robots.
"The whole idea is to use computer algorithms to create music in ways that
humans will never create," Weinberg says. "Our motto is, 'Listen like a
human, but improvise like a machine.' "
Weinberg programmed Shimon to play like Thelonious Monk. He says that,
though he and his team were trying to teach the robot to play like a
machine, they first had to teach it how a human plays. To do that, they used
statistics and analysis of Monk's improvisation. Once they had a statistical
model of the pianist, they could program the robot to improvise in that
model.
Weinberg says the robot won't play everything exactly like the bebop
pianist � or any other jazz master � would, though he says, "It probably
will keep the nature and the character of [the musician's] style."
"It's difficult to predict exactly what they would do in every single moment
in time," he says. "But our algorithm pretty much looks at the past several
notes that it plays and, based on that, it sees what is the probability of
the next note to be, based on all of this analysis of a large corpus of
transcribed improvisation."
Some musicians are harder to program than others. Weinberg says Ornette
Coleman would require a much larger body of transcribed work than Monk did.
"In a sense, it kind of reduces music to numbers and statistics," Weinberg
says. Given enough tweaking to the algorithms that the program uses, he says
he thinks they'll be able to create something "very similar to the jazz
master."
But Weinberg says he doesn't think the robot should try to play just like a
human.
"In all the emotional and expressive energy, I don't think a robot can
capture [it]," Weinberg says. Maybe someday a computer program could, but at
least right now, Weinberg says, "I don't think we have the math for that. We
have some math to get the notes and the rhythm and the scales. Whether this
can capture the genius of Thelonious Monk, I hope not. But maybe."
Robot Music: Play It Again, Shimon
12:20 pm
December 22, 2009
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By Shereen Meraji
Gil Weinberg, the director of the music technology program at Georgia Tech,
spends much of his life researching ways technology can expand musical
expression. Weinberg created a robot, Shimon, that plays the marimba and can
improvise like Thelonious Monk.
"The whole idea is to use computer algorithms to create music in a way that
humans would never create," says Weinberg to All Things Considered's Robert
Siegel. "Our motto is: listen like a human, but improvise like a machine."
Siegel spoke with Weinberg about a recent event billed as the first
intercontinental musical interaction between humans and a robot. The people
were in Japan and Shimon (the robot) was at home in Atlanta, Georgia with
its marimba. (Interesting... usually the robots are in Japan.)
Shimon is pretty extraordinary, it does this funky head bob when it
registers a musical beat. It's that head bob you're familiar with if you've
ever watched a jazz drummer or a DJ spinning a good hip-hop record.
Anyone with access to an iPhone can jam with Shimon, that's all the
musicians in Japan were using. And you don't even have to be a musician.
Basically, you create a track using the iPhone app, ZOOZbeat, play it for
Shimon, Shimon repeats it and then starts gettin' super funky with the
marimba.
Watch Shimon get down and let us know if he can jam like a jazz great, or if
he has the musical ability of a soulless machine. NPR Music's jazz expert,
Patrick Jarenwattananon says, "the answer, of course, is both."