No comment on this one just yet; I’ll have to pick my jaw up off the floor. Amidst a sea of new robotic percussion, this Wii-remote-controlled, Max/MSP-based mini-ensemble of wooden African percussion is musical, expressive, and downright stunning. I love the mechanical (literally and musically) grooves, and with a single human controlling it live, it’s true to the one-man-band history of these sorts of instruments. “One human, three machines, rhythm,” says the video description. I hope to do some research and share more soon, but I can’t resist sharing the results now.

Thanks to Patrick Flanagan for the tip on his work. Patrick predicts that “this is the beginning of steamfunk.”

Note: please see comments for more on what’s happening; Patrick is using robotics to effectively augment his own personal performance and improvisation, allowing him to play multiple instruments at once. He is actually playing in one of the available modes, however, and has some nice reflections on what he’s doing. I’ll follow up with more details – as I said, wanted to give you a peek at the video first. So, before you jump to conclusions, ask about what’s unclear or what you’d like to know. We’ve got the artist here to discuss.

The Body, The Circuit, The Computer and The Voice: robot cowboy from STEIM Amsterdam on Vimeo.

If you want to look for some of the roots of live electronic musical performance, STEIM is one place to start. Founded in 1969 by a group of Dutch composers (Misha Mengelberg, Louis Andriessen, Peter Schat, Dick Raaymakers, Jan van Vlijmen, Reinbert de Leeuw, and Konrad Boehmer), and led by the late “founding father” Michel Waisvisz, it has remained an important hub for inventing music technologies. It was one of the first places that gave an indication that these kind of experiments could extend beyond academic labs into grassroots DIY movements and DJ/VJ club culture alike.

Amsterdam has been looking to do a Handmade Music series for a while, and this Wednesday we kick it off. There’s a huge lineup, so I’m packing two video cameras and one audio recorder into my luggage today before flying out.

You can check out the whole lineup on the STEIM blog, for a sense of what the Dutch DIY community is up to:
Feb 17 2010: Hotpot Lab #2 – Handmade Music Amsterdam

The event is Wednesday night; doors open at 20:00 and it’s free. See the STEIM concerts page.

I’ll also be doing an informal “State of the Union” address on the state of DIY tech, where things might go, and where people may get involved – and most importantly, what we can do to make these developments musically productive. One of the things that came out of comments last week is that we need better documentation. If people want to get involved in a broader community, outside even our traditional music community, DIY platforms for software and hardware must first be better documented, more usable, and more accessible.

Anyway, I’m thrilled to have a chance to bridge New Amsterdam (NYC) with Old Amsterdam, and start that conversation by listening and learning from a great group of people. Stay tuned.

We’ll have some guest posts through the week while I’m traveling, as well, and I’ll be back on home soil next week.

The Machine Orchestra explodes the idea of a laptop orchestra, building a full-blown machine ensemble of the future. We turn to guest writer Jordan, a member of the ensemble, to look behind the scenes in a couple of articles. Rejoin us for part two later this week. -Ed.

Welcome to the world of Dr. Ajay Kapur and Michael Darling, the two California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) professors behind a novel laptop powered ensemble, the KarmetiK Machine Orchestra. Inspired by the work of visionary laptop ensemble pioneers and long-time friends Dan Trueman, Perry Cook (PLORk) and Ge Wang (SLOrk), Kapur has assembled a powerhouse of technical minds and creative musicians to create a laptop group unique in its own right. Backed by Kapur’s background in Musical Robotics and sensor systems, and Darling’s years of experience in technical theater design and mechanical engineering, the Machine Orchestra is taking the “laptop ensemble” into new territories.

With both the recent posts on musical robotics here on CDM and the debut of the Machine Orchestra at REDCAT / Walt Disney Theatre (LA) just days away, what better time to introduce the Machine Orchestra? The following is the first of a series of posts which I will be guest-writing here at CDM on the creation of the Machine Orchestra, the artists behind it, and the all-new undergraduate powerhouse that is the CalArts Music Technology: Intelligence, Interaction, and Design (MTIID) program.

For today’s article, I got to sit down and pick the minds of the conductors themselves, so without further ado, welcome Ajay Kapur and Michael Darling.

KarmetiK Machine Orchestra – REDCAT Preview from KarmetiK on Vimeo.

Legendary artist Pat Metheny has gone to robotics for his next album, and you can finally see a first glimpse at what the results look like. The Orchestrion is a project by the musical robotic specialists LEMUR (League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots).

That’s all I’ll say for now, but I definitely will be working to cover this story in more detail.

So, your human drummer can’t bang out the elaborate breakcore beats you’ve composed, huh? Build your own robotic replacement, putting the magic of positronics into rhythm.

That’s what the folks of Texas Central Positronics and the David Crowder Band have done with Steve_3po, the robotic drummer. It brings new meaning to “drum machine,” blending acoustic sound with programmed rhythms.

The secret to controlling this machine with MIDI is none other than one of our favorite kits, Highly Liquid’s MIDI Decoder. For more on that side of things, see the recent story by Mike Una here on CDM:

DIY MIDI In, MIDI Out For Your Gear: New Kits from HighlyLiquid

The challenging part, of course, is building the robotics. The talented creators at Texas State Technical College, including mechanical engineers Josh Caldwell and Eli Hernandez, worked with “bwack” (the father and son Bwack team) to create Steve. You can read the complete story at Texas Central Positronics, in a post from October:

Introducing – Steve

“bwack” has done other terrific work in the past, including a 760-pound, large-format MPC that stands seven feet tall. And they say drum machines have no soul.

Thanks to Richard Devine for finding this, and Simon Stansfield for bringing it to our attention.

This instrument is not alone among robotic drummers, of course; here are a couple of other top picks: