Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008 - (Page 50) New Notes: The Beat Goes Tech nology. Our students will be able to create the music players of the future, the recording studios of the future, the musical instruments of the future. Georgia Tech being an engineering university, we have students with the skills to invent this technology, not just use such inventions.” In its first incarnation, Haile was no more than a metal arm attached to a two-by-four. A wooden frame of a body was later constructed for it in the Institute’s Advanced Wood Products Laboratory. The anthropomorphized Haile provides its bandmates with the visual cues that are so important in improvisational music. In addition to enhancing the work of its fellow musicians by providing accompaniment, Haile also creates music that you may never hear from humans, Weinberg says. “When humans play, they don’t tend to process genetic algorithms. They don’t think about fractals or calculate cellular automata,” he says. “But genetic algorithms, fractals and cellular automata can produce interesting and sometimes beautiful aesthetical results, especially when they are shaped by humans’ expressive input. Robots can also pull out simple fun tricks such as playing a motif 10 minutes after it was first introduced by a human, just in reverse, or even just play very, very fast. “My interest was to see how my music would sound if I interact with such a device and if it can lead to the creation of new music that cannot be created by traditional means.” Students now are reprogramming the robot to have it play as they would like and, in the process, are gaining a better understanding of how they themselves play and compose music. As for bands composed entirely of robotic musicians, Weinberg sees them perhaps as experiments. “Some reporters ask me, ‘Why build a musical robot at all? Do you want to replace musicians?’” Weinberg says. “My answer is that robots will never be able to create music the way humans do. They can enhance humans’ music but never replace. The big promise is for robots to collaborate with humans. The sparks that I want to create can happen when humans bring what they’re good at — emotions and expression — and robots bring what they’re good at — processing power and mechanical abilities. These sparks can then lead to new music.” And the Beat Goes On his is a great gesture,” Weinberg says as he drums a beat on the top of his desk with his fingers. He then lifts his left hand and presses his fingers against the imaginary frets of an air guitar, the fingers of his right hand strumming the strings. “All of these gestures are defined by the instruments we play. How about this gesture?” he asks, squeezing his hands as if to clutch some invisible object. “It’s also very expressive, but we just don’t have the instruments to play it.” >>> Gil Weinberg and his students are exploring ways to compose music using today’s technology to help more people “get immediate access to the expressive and creative aspects of creating music.” O The Beat of a Different Drummer ne musician to come out of Tech’s Music Technology Group has a name recognized across the globe. During a world tour in 2006, the drummer Haile performed to crowds in Israel, Paris and Germany. Haile’s had airtime on CNN and the Discovery Channel and has been covered by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and PC Magazine. Haile is not your average drummer — it’s a robot. A robotic percussionist designed by Weinberg and Scott Driscoll, MS ME 05, MS Arch 07, Haile listens to the music of live players through microphones installed in their drums, analyzes it in real time using perceptual models and through algorithmic processes plays along in an improvisational fashion. “I thought that this can really enhance the whole idea of computer-generated music, because now we can have computer-generated acoustic sound,” Weinberg says. “There’s nothing that can replace the richness of acoustic sound.” While studying at MIT, Weinberg had designed software and musical instruments that helped novices to learn, play and compose music. When he arrived at Tech, he realized he could take his research a step further with help from students in the mechanical engineering department. T 50 Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2008
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