Trumpet-Playing Robot
Ken Fung
William Graham
"Ken Fung" <fkm_n...@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:4050871f$1...@newsgate.hknet.com...
> http://www.andante.com/article/article.cfm?id=23400
>
It's apparent to me that the long awaited obsolence of human beings is
lurking just over the horizon........
We're ready for our swan song, guys!
Greg Evans
> It's apparent to me that the long awaited obsolence of human beings is
> lurking just over the horizon........
> We're ready for our swan song, guys!
It'll never replace us unless they make the head bigger, to hold a proper
trumpet-player's ego!
Robert DeSavage
wrote:
I think it was the Conn Company that had a primitive version 'named'
Hot Lips Harry that was used as part of the design process of new
models. It did 'play' trumpets in the 'natural' way. This was some
fifty years back.
Mike TERRY
lip-synching.
The brief demo I saw on cable news this morning didn't appear that the
robot was even pressing the correct valves.
And, for them to develop an artificial embouchre capable of minute
changes as well as air pressure to create that kind of sound seems
totally impossible.
This is some kind of spoof.
Regards, Mike Terry
William Graham
"Mike TERRY" <MTE...@webtv.net> wrote in message
news:20481-405...@storefull-3135.bay.webtv.net...
more I think about it, the more I think it's impossible to make a robot that
can actually play the trumpet......Believe it or not, guys, what we do is
uniquely human.....
Doc
> http://www.andante.com/article/article.cfm?id=23400
Any pics on the net? I haven't found any so far.
Gordon Hudson
"William Graham" <we...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:juf4c.13557$C51.72267@attbi_s52...
Edinburgh University has been using a similar set up for research for a few
years.
Two soft plastic tubes with liquid in them, when you increase the pressure
of the liquid and the speed
of liquid through the "lips" the not changes.
Gordon
JoeGuy
due to lack of buglars at military funerals- even though taps is a simple
tune to play....
"Gordon Hudson" <gor...@usenet.hostroute.co.uk> wrote in message
news:c2sco8$app$1$8302...@news.demon.co.uk...
jazz...@hotmail.com
>
> It'll never replace us unless they make the head bigger, to hold a proper
> trumpet-player's ego!
You'd have to teach it how to screw up the bridge to Cherokee, too.
--
Jeff Helgesen
http://www.shout.net/~jmh/
cc
recorded sound instead of actually buzzing into a horn. It's a much
simpler device.
cc
jazz...@hotmail.com
> I think the electronic bugle that plays taps does so by amplifying a
> recorded sound instead of actually buzzing into a horn. It's a much
> simpler device.
Correct.
William Graham
"Gordon Hudson" <gor...@usenet.hostroute.co.uk> wrote in message
news:c2sco8$app$1$8302...@news.demon.co.uk...
>
of artificial lips. I just can't believe that they can get any tone quality,
or make all the little sound variations that any decent trumpeter is capable
of....There is one big missing ingredeant....The lip-ear feedback that all
trumpet players use to perfect their tone quality over a period of several
years. But, if the valve action wasn't in sync with the music, (as Mike
says) then you know the whole thing must be a scam......
William Graham
"JoeGuy" <johnsh...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:hfk4c.42$zP2...@bignews5.bellsouth.net...
> i know i seen on CBS Sunday Morning, a bugle that plays taps
electrinically;
> due to lack of buglars at military funerals- even though taps is a simple
> tune to play....
>
And what is the advantage of this over a tape or CD of any good professional
trumpeter?
William Graham
<jazz...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:c2smni$nc$1...@roundup.shout.net...
> cc <c...@none.com> wrote:
> > I think the electronic bugle that plays taps does so by amplifying a
> > recorded sound instead of actually buzzing into a horn. It's a much
> > simpler device.
>
> Correct.
>
Marine's dress uniform........
Robert DeSavage
jazz...@hotmail.com
>
> And what is the advantage of this over a tape or CD of any good professional
> trumpeter?
Well, you don't need a trumpet player to stand there and put the faux
bugle up to your chops and have taps come out. Buglers (and trumpeters)
are notoriously hard to get for veteran funerals, of which there are many
right now.
And I think there's a desire for the appearance of a bugler over pressing
the play button on a CD player.
Ron Jimison
visit www.buglesacrossamerica.org
and then join!
Ron
Annie
<f0c1bc20.04031...@posting.google.com> 12 Mar 2004 05:01:52 -0800
>Any pics on the net? I haven't found any so far.
http://response.jp/issue/2004/0311/article58539_1.images/63216.html
http://www.toyota.co.jp/jp/special/robot/index.html
http://www.toyota.co.jp/jp/special/robot/3_300k.asx
http://www.toyota.co.jp/jp/special/robot/4_300k.asx
--
Annie
mailto:ann...@104.net
Randy Crawford
The top URL shows the mouthpiece adapter. Apparently, it *does* buzz on
its own. According to this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/15/technology/15robotic.html
"Developing artificial lips flexible enough to play a trumpet was a
major engineering challenge, according to Mr. Cho."
Now I want to hear it play, especially its Trumpeter's Holiday (sic).
Randy
--
Randy Crawford http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~rand rand AT rice DOT edu
William Graham
"Annie" <ann...@104.net> wrote in message
news:c34kn4$ie7$1...@caraway.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp...
> docsa...@yahoo.com (Doc) wrote in message
> <f0c1bc20.04031...@posting.google.com> 12 Mar 2004
05:01:52 -0800
> >Any pics on the net? I haven't found any so far.
>
> http://response.jp/issue/2004/0311/article58539_1.images/63216.html
From this photograph, you can see that the mouthpiece of the robot's trumpet
has been altered so that it is just a pipe that fits into a hole in the
robots "lips". The, "buzz" that creates the sound must be some kind of
recording inside the body of the robot, or, what is more likely the case,
the recording isn't a buzz at all, but just the sound of a trumpet
playing.....I say this because Mike Terry said that in the animation he saw,
the valve action didn't match the notes produced by the robot, so a simple
buzz, wouldn't do it. That means the, "trumpet" is really just a mechanical
amplifier, like the horns on old Victrola record players before the advent
of electricity.....Looks like a scam to me........
Doc
> From this photograph, you can see that the mouthpiece of the robot's
trumpet
> has been altered so that it is just a pipe that fits into a hole in the
> robots "lips". The, "buzz" that creates the sound must be some kind of
> recording inside the body of the robot, or, what is more likely the case,
> the recording isn't a buzz at all, but just the sound of a trumpet
> playing.....
> Looks like a scam to me........
Maybe not. The buzz doesn't have to be created by lips. It could be created
by some sort of high-tech reed(s) or perhaps some sort of electronic
oscillator, which would create a true trumpet sound. I jury-rigged an oboe
reed to a trumpet once. It wasn't the biggest sound in the world but it
worked. I can easily envision with a more carefully designed setup how it
could be made to work quite well. Perhaps the vibrations from a series of
pitched reeds transferred to the trumpet via an interface appropriate for
the task.
Tim Gill
> From this photograph, you can see that the mouthpiece of the robot's
trumpet
> has been altered so that it is just a pipe that fits into a hole in the
> robots "lips".
Looks to me that the real trick of the sound production is actually
contained inside the mouthpiece (perhaps a type of reed or apeture that
buzzes) and the robot just omits an airstream to propel it.
?
-TG
William Graham
"Doc" <docsavage20Remo...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:gby5c.5497$GQ3....@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net...
Yeah....I'd sure like to see it play a scale or something, so I could watch
it operate the valves myself.....Actually, I don't understand exactly why
they couldn't let us hear it. What copyright would be infringed by
publishing the sound?
jazz...@hotmail.com
>
> Actually, I don't understand exactly why
> they couldn't let us hear it. What copyright would be infringed by
> publishing the sound?
My understanding is that the music the robot was programmed to play was
"When You Wish Upon A Star", which is not in the public domain.
William Graham
<jazz...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:c39oi2$cks$1...@roundup.shout.net...
Oh, well then, there's no problem....Any robot that can play, "When You Wish
Upon a Star" should be able to play, "Red River Valley", or "Sewanee River",
so why don't they just ask it to play one of those?
Robert DeSavage
wrote:
>
"I don't take requests!"
jazz...@hotmail.com
>
> Oh, well then, there's no problem....Any robot that can play, "When You Wish
> Upon a Star" should be able to play, "Red River Valley", or "Sewanee River",
> so why don't they just ask it to play one of those?
I assume that the carmaker didn't think to consider copyright issues when
they programmed the thing to play, and didn't consider it to be a big
enough deal to reprogram it just to get a sound clip.
You sound skeptical...there have already been mechanisms built to buzz
artifical lips; assuming fluid mechanics would allow you to establish
precise compression, it seems to me it'd be trivial to mechanize a trumpet
playing device. The problem's much simpler than it is for humans, where
the variables are harder to control (how many psi is the air in my lungs
under? when will the lips begin to respond? am I using more pressure
today than i did yesterday? where is my underwear?)...
William Graham
<jazz...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:c3aicm$lac$1...@roundup.shout.net...
I don't think it's complicated to get a machine to make trumpet
sounds....Any CD or tape player can do that, and you can route the sound
through a trumpet bell, and put it all on a store window dummy.....But I
think its far from trivial to get a machine to play the trumpet like a human
being does....To make the lip buzz sound, and route it through a real
trumpet, and operate the valves in sync with the buzz to produce a realistic
trumpet sound......I'm afraid that I won't really believe they did this
until I see/hear it myself......That's why I tend to think (I'm guessing, of
course) that this robot is probably a hybrid. I think that perhaps the lip
buzz is really just a recording, and that the rest is real. (at best) And,
perhaps even that isn't true.....There is no lip buzz at all, and the whole
thing is just the recording, routed through a real horn with the internal
valve parts disconnected, so the spring loaded valve buttons don't really
change the length of the horn at all, and they are just there for
show....This would seem to be the case if what Mike Terry said was
true....That the valve fingering didn't match the sound in the sample that
he saw......
Doc
> Yeah....I'd sure like to see it play a scale or something, so I could
watch
> it operate the valves myself.....Actually, I don't understand exactly why
> they couldn't let us hear it. What copyright would be infringed by
> publishing the sound?
I think Disney might own the rights to the song, and they're certainly an
entity who has NO sense of humor when it comes to their property rights.
Tim Gill
From an aperture so small as is on that robot in the picture, a simple audio
recording would be loud enough/have enough presence to stand up to
comparison, even to an uneducated audience. To prove a point, try humming an
open tone through your horn, even with the valves out- sounds muffled and
much unlike the human voice on the other end of the horn. Besides, what
exactly would be the point of currying such fanfare (no pun intended) for an
outright sham? Automated trumpet playing isn't exactly a lucrative
buisiness, so it seems to me that toyota wouldn't benefit from producing a
fake. Too much trouble to fake it, and no apparent reason to do so.
When you get right down to it, playing a trumpet is an extremely
quantifiable and simple process. A pair of meaty tissue buzz at a certain
frequency, driven by wind. When I play Bb and you play Bb, we are both
buzzing the same frequency (assuming we are in tune!). Others have remarked
on the complexity of muscle control and coordination that it requires- yes,
but that is our own means to an end. The complexity of a human producing a
buzz of a certain frequency lies not in the properties of the buzzing sound,
but of the requirements of the manipulation of the human body to do so. The
individuality and uniqueness of human trumpet playing lies in freedom and
execution of expression and interpretation, something that an automation
will never be able to produce.
Trumpet playing robot? Sure, I believe it. However, as I said in an earlier
post, the picture of the robot's special mouthpiece lends me to believe that
it may be of some integral help to the robot's playing. Hmmmm.....
-TG
"William Graham" <we...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:c256c.33383$po.294038@attbi_s52...
Pawel Paron
> Automated trumpet playing isn't exactly a lucrative
> buisiness, so it seems to me that toyota wouldn't benefit from producing a
> fake. Too much trouble to fake it, and no apparent reason to do so.
It's rather advertising that matters here. How much would they have to pay
for worldwide commercials like that? I saw this robot even in dumb tabloids,
distributed for free in my underground station. It's something new, nobody
has seen such robot before, and people will recognize the company as a
"innovative" one: "you know, those guys who build those fancy robots...". In
my opinion the trumpet is the least important thing here, could be also
painting portraits or whatever, that hasn't been done before. And it's not a
real trumpet, as you can see in one of those pictures, the mouthpiece is
modified so a human couldn't play this "trumpet".
Regards
Pawel
William Graham
"Pawel Paron" <pawelp...@freeland.lublin.pl> wrote in message
news:slrnc5ir7a.eqg...@154-moo-7.acn.waw.pl...
I saw that ad on TV where they had these painting robots that were out of
work, so they had them report to the crash test site.......Now, they taught
one of them to play the trumpet......
Just kidding, Pawel......Have you gotten the Renuzit air fresheners
yet? - Bill
Pawel Paron
> Just kidding, Pawel......Have you gotten the Renuzit air fresheners
> yet?
Sure I have, just today in the morning, as I wrote to you, thanks a lot. I'd
never find such a container, that fits so perfectly. Now I've got an idea to
make some kind of poor man's "silent brass", by putting a tiny electret
microphone inside the mute and building a small amplifier, with low and high
tone regulation.
With just the mute alone I realized that I try to blow much too hard, would
be nice to have some amplification, so I could better hear myself, while
not disturbing others.
Regards
Pawel
William Graham
For a while I tried to mike my peacemaker plastic mute....I could fit a
condenser mike down the hole in the end by reaming the hole out just a
fraction of an inch larger....(perhaps 1/32" larger) so I did this.....But
the miked sound wasn't very good, so I abandoned the idea.....I think if I
had a big variety of mikes to try, I might be able to find one that would
work.....My idea was to mute the natural sound of the trumpet entirely, so
that I would only have the miked sound to work with, and that I could run
through amplification and special effects....Right now, I do this with a
clip-on mike, and it sounds great, but it is mixed about 50-50 with the
natural sound that comes out of the bell.....
JoeGuy
ferguson has to worry. could it be they are trying to sell this thing to
disney?
"Pawel Paron" <pawelp...@freeland.lublin.pl> wrote in message
news:slrnc5ltfq.n2s...@154-moo-7.acn.waw.pl...