This blog post brings together two of my favorite things: Pat Metheny and robots. Metheny's new album Orchestrion, due out January 25, is technically a solo act. That's because the members aren't human. Each instrument is a kind of robot that plays itself. Metheny calls the ensemble an Orchestrion, and as Andrew Purcell writes in the Guardian, it combines "old-fashioned, unamplified live performance with his restless urge to innovate."
Imagine a player piano pimped out for the 21st Century. Metheny enlisted the help of several inventors, including Eric Singer of the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots. Unlike the old player pianos that used compressed air and therefore had no dynamic range, the new robotic instruments rely on solenoids that can open and close with varying degrees of velocity.
Purcell writes:
Metheny came up with the album's instrumental parts on his own, with his guitar as a trigger device. Using MIDI technology, a computer recorded which notes he played, how hard he hit them, and how long he held each note for. When he performs live, this information is transmitted to the marimba, bass, piano and drums, meaning that he is being accompanied by himself – one "guitar" part being played by the vibraphone, another by the cymbals, and so on.
Metheny explains on his Web site:
Over the years I have dreamed of coming up with an environment to write that uses the "front end" of modern music technology while harnessing the power of actual acoustic instruments.
Photo: Orchestrion cover art; Pat Metheny, Nonesuch
In the video below, Metheny describes his Orchestrion.
Tags: Engineering, Inventions, Music, Robots
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