Moritz Simon Geist created the MR-808 – described as ‘the first drum robot that reproduces the drum sounds of the 80′s. The installation is a version of the famous Roland TR-808 ? but with robots playing the drum sounds!
“I decided to go back to the roots of sound generation ? the physical sound generation ? but combine it with the electronic music structure,” explains Geist. “I couldn?t stop building my own drum robots, and ended up replacing all the electronic sounds of a whole drum computer, placed in a 3,3 x 1,7m² case.
Here’s a music video, Science Fiction Children’s Rise of the Toys, that features the MR-808:
Technical details below:
- MR-808 – mechanic sound robot (all drums, miced)
- A mechanic relay controlled via arduino (bass sound)
- Gameboy – Arduinoboy hardware (8 bit chiptune sound)
- Everything was programmed in Ableton, only equing and compression has been applied.
See the Sonic Robot site for more details.
amazing! I would love to see this live.
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Errr I can just do this on a VST!
just kidding.
Freaking love this machine
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I’m sure having that in the corner of the living room would be an excellent conversation starter!
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My wife would start the conversation by saying “Get that giant beat box out of the living room”
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Wow. That is really inventive and amazing. Good stuff.
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Cool stuff!
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what no pitch change???????,.. only joking.
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This is crazy – I wish I had this kind of time on my hands / got paid to do stuff like this!
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somehow it kinda reminds me of the Herbie Hancock “rockit” video from 1983!
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Cold Fashioned nailed it.
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