Watch out all you well-paid, fat-and-sassy jazz marimba players: Shimon[1], the marimba playing robot, is after your jobs. Shimon is the brainchild of the Robotic Musicianship Group at Georgia Tech and I’ve been following his career for a few years now[2]. In this video, taken at the Ferst Center Presents as part of Atlanta Science Festival, Shimon and a band led by Zachary Robert Kondak[3] jam out to Kondak’s latest rock opera. That’s Richard Savery[4] on the sax.
Watch it. It’s wild.
The truly amazing part of the show has to be drummer Jason Barnes’[5] mechanical arm that he uses to play beats live in time with Shimon’s tapping. It’s a melding of man and machine that is truly awe-inspiring.
So you’ve had it good so far, all you jazz vibraphonists[6]. Now that robots are gunning for your jobs the jig might be up....
References
- ^ Shimon (www.shimonrobot.com)
- ^ a few years now (techcrunch.com)
- ^ Zachary Robert Kondak (soundcloud.com)
- ^ Richard Savery (richardsavery.com)
- ^ Jason Barnes’ (en.wikipedia.org)
- ^ all you jazz vibraphonists (en.wikipedia.org)