If music technology has ever made you dream of autonomous musical robots, crawling around the floor making sound like a Juilliard of mechanical insect prodigies, I’ve got great news for you.

While we’re on the subject of DIY electronics, here are some words of encouragement: the designer who made that fantastic drum machine robot making the rounds on the Web says he’s got a day job, and you, too, can do what he did.

Yes, you.

First, check out the autonomous, banging-on-stuff and sampling drummer robot pictured above, if you haven’t seen it yet:

Robot Drum Machine Roams, Samples, Bangs On Stuff

Creator Frits Lyneborg (aka fristl) writes CDM (after hurdling our spam filters — sorry about that):

Hi there - Yes I am out there, and next to me is some sticks & wires & some yellow belt tracks :D

Thanks for all the street-credit etc, thank you so very much. I hope my next robot / next weekend can live up to this, lol!

I am CEO of bee3.com - consider this brilliant company next time you want a website. Well - what else to do with my 15 minutes of fame, if not an ad for my company ;)

Anyway - it is very easy to make these robots, seriously; I do not have much of a clue, I just have plenty of glue. Hey - what a little fame can bring up in you, rhyming now, so muzical :)

i have made a walk through on how to make a quite capable robot, that uses all the same basics, and it only takes 2 hours once you got the parts send by mail.. letsmakerobots.com

Trust me; it is fun and easy to build robots!

Still skeptical? Here’s an even simpler design:

This has been making the blog-o-rounds, but if you haven’t seen it, the Yellow Drum Machine is a brilliant musical robot — brilliantly musical, and brilliantly simply technologically. (There’s something to be said for elegant design.) It rolls around, looks for objects nearby, bangs on them, and samples that sound. (Hmm, it’s like a little robotic equivalent of me around my apartment.) As seen on MAKE.

The specs are terrific:

• Cost to build: $120
• Time to build: 20 hours
• Actuators / output devices: 6 geared motors in total, 2 speakers, sound sampler
• Control method: autonomous (very)
• CPU: Picaxe 28
• Operating system: Picaxe basic
• Power source: 4 AA batteries
• Programming language: Picaxe basic
• Sensors / input devices: SRF05, microphone
• Target environment: where ever there is something to play on

By “fritsl” — fritsl, if you’re out there (or anyone else), want to let us in on who you are?

Previously:

Robots on CDM

Robot Drummers, Compared: Like Musicians, Robots are Better When They Listen

Robot Drummer Responds to Human Playing; How They Did It (speaking of which, Gil and company at Georgia Tech, perhaps it’s time for a Haile Mobile?)

Got something cool like this and can get to San Francisco in April? I hope you’re entering our competition!

Just in case mastering the subtleties of playing a Theremin isn’t hard enough for you, you’re in luck: you can master the subtleties of building a robot that has to then master the subtleties of playing the Theremin.

Sarah Angliss, a human Thereminist in the UK, sends us this video of a creepy doll robot playing the Theremin. (If you’re prone to the jeebilies, you may not want to watch. Sarah writes, “I’ve posted my latest jam with Clara 2.0, the theremin playing robot doll, on YouTube. Hope you enjoy watching her talents (or lack of them).” (Technical details after the jump.)

Our friend Ranjit promises this week he’ll bring his Theremin-playing bots to Handmade Music, so if you’re in the NYC area and free this Thursday, you can meet them in person. If not, here they are on YouTube playing “Crazy”. Ranjit describes thusly:

ROBOT BAND! LEV the thereminbot and his newly-built pal thumpbot play “Crazy” with help from a 20-year-old MT32 synthesizer. OK, Lev’s a bit out of tune, but hey, ROBOTS. A tribute to The Ether & Aether Experiment’s marvelous performance.

I don’t know. I’m nervous. I think we’d better whip up some Theremin Laws of Robotics quickly. (Wait — on second thought, those conflicting laws don’t work out very well, do they?)

More technical details on how Sarah pulled off her creeptacularly brilliant robo-Thereminist:

The Keepon is a cute, yellow robot that dances to music you may have seen bopping on YouTube. It shows how subtle changes could make robotics friendlier in the near future.

Foremost among those changes: show a little skin. By wrapping the robot’s armature with soft, rubber skin, the Keepon is both squeezable and more lifelike. (After all, how many people / pets / creature friends do you know who don’t have a skeleton and skin? Yes, you with the pet beetle, you’re an exception.)

Second, and earning the Keepon YouTube fame and glory, the BeatBots know how to shake their groove thing. Like smart puppeteers, the Keepon’s designers have kept motions simple but expressive: turning, nodding, rocking, and bobbing, the Keepon’s motions themselves are realistic, and convey attention. Those decisions were conceived to let the Keepon interact with children, but all people respond well to attention as emotional connection. Our friend Keith Lang of Plasq was recently musing on the importance of attention and eyes on his blog, as a way of contemplating software UI design. Looking into your eyes is powerful is the short version of that; big-eyed Anime characters, puppy dogs, and glaring looks from enemies all grow out of that.

Talking about it is one thing; here’s the robot in action with its creators, dancing to Spoon:

Of course, to make that work, the Keepon needs a good sense of rhythm — better than, say, that erratically flopping fish you got at the local convenience store as a gag gift. To do that, the Keepon’s creators are using music/multimedia software Max/MSP to prototype their “architecture for rhythmic social interaction.” It’s not the first time we’ve seen people programming robotic rhythmic interactions in Max: Georgian robot Haile drums in response to a human player using Max-programmed interactions.

Hey, you’re not listening any more, are you? You’re still watching that video over and over again. This is important! This is rhythmic social interaction! Though I guess if you are still distracted, the magic works.

Keepon on Tour: The Keepon has gigs in Denmark and Korea this week, followed by a set of LA appearances next month in association with Wired Magazine. They’ll even be doing a benefit concert for Creative Commons with Spoon. Details at the Keepon site:
Keepon & the Beatbots

Previously:
Robot Drummers, Compared: Like Musicians, Robots are Better When They Listen

We’ve seen robotic Guitar Hero players and robotic guitars as art installation; now, one last set of robots for the week — robotic drummers.

The Motoman robots take up taiko drumming at a 400-year-old festival in Japan. An impressive display, but you may immediately notice they lack a certain … something. (That something is definitely not creepiness, for the robotophobic.

‘Motoman’ bot shows it’s got rhythm [Cnet Crave Blog]

What you won’t see here is anything truly live or interactive. For that, Georgia Tech trumps the Japanese engineers, with the robot Haile, which we first covered nearly two years ago. Haile is an interactive robot that listens to what a human drummer has played. Rather than simply echoing rhythms, Haile is able to intelligently “improvise” responses. The results may still be early in the evolution of musical robotics, but they go far beyond the example above. Here, robots are able to extend, rather than replace, human abilities; they embody the compositional ideas of the programmer, and engage the human player’s traditional musicianship.

In other words, like a good musician, a good robot listens and makes you play better.

Robot Drummer Responds to Human Playing; How They Did It

It’s a music-generating bobbing bird! It’s a plane full of interaction designers! It’s a green multi-touch … thing! It’s the global gathering of innovative music technologists gathering to share alternative visions of the future of music making, known simply as “NIME.” (Rhymes with … rhyme.) And our friend Patrick, visiting the NY conference from the MET Lab (Music & Entertainment Technology) of the Electrical and Computer Engineering program at Drexel University (phew!), was kind enough to write up the whole thing, complete with videos and pictures. Enjoy, even if you weren’t there… -PK

The New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) 2007 Conference, held at NYU’s campus, was an exciting and stimulating convergence of ideas and technology in the world of digital music. The conference’s umbrella “Interfaces for Musical Expression” brings together creatives from all over the artistic and engineering world: from music runtime software (MaxMSP, PureData, ChucK to), designers for alternate controller hardware (M-Audio, Making Things, i-cubeX, Photon Wind Research), and educators for music and electronic arts (Columbia Computer Music Center, Harvestworks, NYU’s TischITP) and art galleries/shops (LEMURplex, Eyebeam), just to name a few.

Robosonic Eclectic: Morton Subotnik, They Might Be Giants, and robotic musical instruments on the same bill? That … doesn’t happen very often. But it does happen this weekend, starting tonight.

With a lineup that includes They Might Be Giants, JG Thirlwell, Mort Subotnick, George Lewis, R. Luke DuBois and J. Brendan Adamson, Lemurplex is kicking off what looks like a really packed couple of weeks of music and research into new instruments here in New York this weekend. Check out the TMBG video and JG Thirwell clip for a teaser of what’s to come. I’ll be there, so say hi if you, uh, know what I look like. (And thanks to all of you who’ve been saying hello at various events. It’s always great to know who’s out there reading.)

League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots

Lemurplex, incidentally, is a terrific place to go learn this stuff if you can find a way to come to New York — not only musical robotics, but music tech in general. See also Harvestworks, which regularly has people in from other lands around the world for residencies / learning / etc. Not everything happens in New York, of course; I hope to put together an up-to-date list of educational venues beyond academia around the globe soon.

Flyer after the jump.