SHIMEON

Watch A Robot Play An Improvised Jazz Set At A Music Festival

Struggling to find a band member for a gig?

Maybe you should stop asking mates and send Shimon the Robot a message instead.

A jazz specialist, Shimon is a musical robot, or jazz-bot, created by Gil Weinberg and his team at the Georgia Tech Centre for Music Technology.

Shimon made his/her/its debut seven years ago, but appeared again over the weekend at Moogfest in North Carolina, taking part in a marimba duo with a human player.

With four arms, the jazz-bot already has an unfair advantage over any musician, but despite the massive chops potential, the robot is designed to play with humans, listening to their ideas and responding to both dynamics and harmonisation appropriately.

In the video, the robot can be seen grooving out to the tune, moving its head like a real human would.

According to the centre’s website, “An embodied anthropomorphic robot can create familiar, acoustically rich, and visual interactions with humans … the visual connection between sound and motion can allow humans to anticipate, coordinate and synchronize[sic] their gestures with the robot.”

In other words, the movements of the robot are designed to help humans anticipate the robots next move.

Shimon isn’t the only artificial musician making waves at the moment.

A robotic arm for drumming amputees was also showcased at the festival, with the arm attached to muscles in the bicep that enable it to anticipate and respond to the movements of the player.

With Kaytranada also jumping on board the robot train, the future of music seems pretty evident – and it’s looking very robotic.

Image: cnn