If you are musically talented and lost all your friends because they’re sick and tired of listening to you talk about how real musicians can play the phrygian mode with their feet, have no fear; a robot is here. Two lucky people who may or may not suffer from the aforementioned problem, YouTuber MsPetiteGeek and her lab mate Tatsuhiko Itohara got a chance to spend some time with an HRP-2 robot from Kawada Industries. What did they do next? Just what anyone would do. They programmed it to listen to music, pick up the key, watch the human player to pick up the beat and then proceed to be the theremin player in a jam session.
It’s a pretty neat prospect. There’s some crazily robotic instruments out there, but as far as I know, none of them are open-minded enough (or able) to play with a normal meat-bag like you or me. Granted, it can only play a theremin for the moment, and everybody knows that theremin players are practically a dime a dozen. If it’s gullible enough to be willing to play bass though, the number of terrible high-school rock bands will increase exponentially. Check out a video of this programmed prodigy in action after the jump.
Second verse, same as the first, a little bit faster and a little bit worse!
(Robots Dreams via Hack a Day)
