Robot musicians play heavy metal and release albums. Video

There have already been a lot of projects connecting robots and music. Most of them belong to the category of "one-day" and quickly bother the public. But several robo-groups stand out from this mass - they exist (or have existed) for quite a long time, regularly give concerts and release real music albums. About them will be discussed.



Real Compressorhead Heavy Metal







The authors of the project: try not to advertise themselves, but the campaign on Kickstarter (about it further) was launched on behalf of Frank Barnes, Marcus Kolb and Stoke Plame



Place of birth: Berlin



Compressorhead’s first YouTube posts date back to 2013. Like many, this group started with the execution of covers on Motorhead, AC / DC and Black Sabbath. Now Compressorhead can be called the first professional robot band - in the sense that they earn their music. The group has given many high-profile concerts and performs at private parties (according to the information on their website , there is an opportunity to order such a performance). Their positioning is also good. On the same site we read: “These robots are willing to use their schemes to play for clusters of meat bags, bringing pleasure from mechanical madness.” ! ”).



In 2014, the group came to Moscow, where, among others, she played a cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit (it is noteworthy that they had a joint concert with Kurtney Love's ex-wife in Milan the following year).



Then there were only 4 members in the band: Stickboy drummer, Fingers guitar player, Bones bass guitar player and the smallest robot, J.Schmidt, who plays hi-hat. In 2015, a campaign was launched on Kickstarter to collect a robot vocalist and record the first album. She failed miserably: a little more than 40 thousand were raised from the claimed 290 thousand euros. Nevertheless, the developers still found the money: in addition to the brutal Mega-Watson, the group was supplemented by a female robot Helga Tarr.





Mega-Watson (robot weight - 350 kg)



In November, Compressorhead released their first album, Party Machine. It consists of 15 songs written mostly by John Wright. On the album, we’ll find a cover for Nancy Sinatra (These boots are made for rocking), as well as songs Zombies vs. Robots, My Girlfriend`sa Robot and Fleisch (“meat”). You can listen here . By the way, each of the singing robots had their own “coach” in vocal.



The group is actively touring - you can follow the movements in the official group in FB . Besides Moscow, concerts have already been held in Germany, Norway, Mexico, Luxembourg and Lithuania. Traveling musicians in this form:









Alkoroboty Z-Machines







The authors of the project: engineers of the University of Tokyo, with the financial support of the manufacturer of alcoholic beverages Zima



Place of birth: Tokyo



Another group that appeared in 2013, but, unlike Compressorhead, has already finished its career (or took a long time out). Z-Machines included three participants: a guitarist Mach with 78 fingers, a six-armed drummer Ashura (can play four times faster than a man) and a keyboard player Cosmo. The developers hoped that one day their robots could play in space.









The Z-Machines project was sponsored by alcohol producer Zima. The robots were programmed to react to the public's behavior: when at a concert, visitors picked up Zima bottles, the robots started to produce a more powerful sound.



In 2014, the group gave several concerts and released a mini-album of 5 songs Music For Robots (recorded in collaboration with the British electronic musician Squarepusher - aka Thomas Jenkinson). Obviously, after this, Zima lost interest in the project: the latest Z-Machines posts on YouTube date back to 2014, and the last post in the official FB community was in 2015.



Automatica: not only humanoids







Project author: Nigel Stanford



Place of birth: new york



The video clip of the Automatica project appeared on YouTube in early autumn. Together with him was released a full-length album of 13 songs (sold here ). Unlike the previous two groups, Kuka industrial robots play on musical instruments in this project. Nigel somehow managed to convince the company to lend him three robots, and within a month he trained them in his garage. According to him, all the settings he did completely independently.



For the native of New Zealand, Nigel Stanford, this is not the first experimental project. In 2014, he released the album Solar Echoes and filmed the Cymatics clip for his promotion (stunningly beautiful - if you haven't seen it then look ).



The release of the second album, Automatica, seems doubtful: the novelty effect will disappear, and Nigel will try to surprise us with something else.



Shimon's modest innovator







The authors of the project: engineers of the Center for Music Technology, Georgia University of Technology



Place of birth: Atlanta



Robot musician Shimon plays the marimba, an African type of xylophone. It was created 7 years ago to accompany jazz musicians. Since then, he has been featured in Munich, Washington, Seattle, San Francisco and Tokyo. But the most important thing in this work is not his concert fees, but the recently acquired opportunity to “compose music”.



This year, Shimon learned improvisation: he is the only compilation composing his own melodies. He was taught this by the example of 5,000 songs and 2 million musical passages. Samples belonged to different musical styles: pop music, jazz and classical. For example, the base for learning included the works of Lady Gaga, The Beatles and Beethoven. Now, according to the notes set by musicians, Shimon can generate musical passages 30 seconds long.



Thanks to this improvement, Shimon now appears at conferences more often than at music festivals.







Does the world need musician robots and why waste time on their training when there are so many living groups eager for fame? Maybe not needed. But the show with their participation looks really spectacular - in any case, until the effect of novelty passes. And for emotions and sincerity you can go to the concert of your favorite group of "human bags."