Pittsburgh Guitar Hero Puts Musical Robots Centerstage

Even Eric Singer is astonished when his 35 musical robots can play a sold-out show at New York City's Town Hall, as they did on May 22.

It didn't hurt that guitar virtuoso Pat Metheny was literally playing the entire array by himself.

"When I see it in person, I'm still surprised it's doing what it's doing, even though I made it," says Singer, who has been fashioning his latest creations inside a Pittsburgh basement since he moved his family here in August. "It's still a bit of magic."

Even more important than the number of instruments, says Singer, "there are over 200 mechanisms at work"--beaters, scrapers, shakers and guitar picks, all at Metheny's control. The ride cymbal, for instance, has two sticks, a mallet and a brush poised to work independently or together. Every note on each mallet instrument--bells, vibraphone and marimba--has its own beater as well. "So it's possible that he could play over 200 notes at once--but it's possible he could blow the power at the venue."

A decade ago, Singer used his Carnegie Mellon University IT degree, plus his music technology education at Boston's Berklee College of Music, to create the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots with other like-minded souls. The formerly Brooklyn-based LEMUR attracted high-profile collaborators and composers in the last decade, including They Might Be Giants, and the attention of an adventurous Metheny.

Now Singer has provided Metheny with a stage full of mechanical, software-driven acoustic instruments linked to his guitar. Besides the three mallet instruments, they include 11 cymbals, 12 drums and other beater instruments, eight shakers and two GuitarBots (click here for a gigapan view and close-ups) .

Metheny composed an album's worth of songs for the instruments and improvises on them in concert too, all played from his MIDI-controlled guitar. They can be heard on Metheny's current one-man album, Orchestrion, and his solo tour whose last dates included the New York show.

If robot musicians had groupies, the GuitarBot would certainly attract the most screams. It is a sleek four strings, each on its own metal neck, with a fret-presser traveling up and down and four picks swinging on wheels to pluck the notes.

"They've been put to the hardest performing test yet," Singer says of his instruments, thanks to the rigors of hauling them all over the U.S. and Europe for Metheny's tour. "It says to me that what we're doing is no joke."

In fact, Singer was honored in May as the Pittsburgh Technology Council's Artist of the Year.

"We were thrilled to have Eric come to Pittsburgh as part of our growing creative and technology cluster," says Kim Chestney Harvey, a creative director at the PTC. "Art and technology are in fact merging and becoming each other. You'll hear people saying that the MFA is the new MBA."

"What it says to me is I better get back to work and make the next cool thing," Singer says of the award. "It's not too often that I'm honored for my work, because I think people don't understand it. When people see the work in person, they understand it and they think it's cool."

At 44, he moved to his Pittsburgh workspace--which looks more like high-school metal shop than a high-tech roboticist's lair--because it made economic sense.

"In Pittsburgh, I'm able to do all the same machining work at a fraction of the cost," he says. "It's a global world. Do I really need to be in New York? I just couldn't justify maintaining that studio and going broke."

Besides, Singer says, he knew before his arrival that Pittsburgh had its own technological art scene. He quickly became a part of HackPgh, which gathers locals interested in DIY projects – particularly those based on electronics--and Rossum's, which engages local robotic engineers and artists in work that "combines the digital and mechanical in embodied forms," as the group's website puts it.

"It's great to be associated with a bunch of people dedicated to using robotics in the service of art," Singer says. "One of the first things I did when I came to town was say, 'Where's the Dorkbot meeting?'"

Dorkbot Pittsburgh gets artists and techies together for just about anything they're mutually interested in exploring, says organizer Jet Townsend. Singer presented his own projects past and present to the group, including the GuitarBot, last October.

"He is an example of what many of us would like to see more of," says Townsend. "He can make physical things that look good, and he can make creative music at the same time. It's good for students--they can see they don't have to be just a musician or just a computer scientist."

Singer saw the intersection of the two areas early, at Berklee, studying alternative music controllers and cutting-edge music software. One of his professors "also introduced me to the concept that musical instruments could look like anything," he says.

He pulls his first creation from a shelf--a sonic banana. It's a two-foot long rubber tube that you play by bending. "The beauty of it is that my gestures can be mapped to any musical parameter you can think of"--any volume, tone, articulation, et cetera, and not just to notes but to sound effects, video effects, or the room's lights. "Change the software, you change what the instrument does."

He lifts a Sax-o-fish from a box on another shelf. It's a plastic red snapper with buttons, pressure sensors, a dial and a tube to blow into. His Slime-o-tron consists of toy slime re-rigged to conduct electricity, which is translated into sound by sensors as it is moved or squished inside a box. The Slink-o-tron creates similar effects from the bounce of this kid's toy.

Through LEMUR, Singer has since worked with more than 100 artists, linking them with computer scientists whose software drives the new instruments. Collaborations have involved theremin player Michael Hearst, computer music pioneer Morton Subotnick and the industrial artist Jim Thirlwell, formerly known as Foetus.

"With all these people, it was just a matter of, 'Hey, would you guys like to write some music for musical robots?' And they all said yes."

"I like to create a new instrument that has all the acoustic elements and all the robotic elements in one package," Singer muses. "It's another means of musical expression. It's very different from playing with a live band. I'm not going to say it's better or worse. When synthesizers first came out, we heard the same arguments that have come before--which had come with player pianos, I'm sure. 'Oh no, it's going to put musicians out of business.' Of course it didn't. Music technology creates more opportunities for musicians."

One such opportunity came on May 21, the night before the last Pat Metheny show. Violinist Todd Reynolds had composed a new piece for the Dogs of Desire--the Albany Symphony's official chamber group–-as well as about 15 of Singer's ModBots. They premiered the piece at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY.

ModBots are modular percussion instruments, "mostly homemade instruments made from interesting-sounding junk," Singer says.

"We will go to a hardware store and bang on things" or pick up items on the street or in the trash. Reynolds' ModBots included a round, galvanized steel vent cap from a dryer that sounded like a snare, scrapers made from springs and Altoid tins, and boxes of ball bearings that served as shakers.

The performance was "particularly a challenge when you have professionals playing traditional instruments," he observes. "To have [chamber group members] open to robots that are instruments--it's a new thing for them. Before they are played, the instruments are viewed with a bit of suspicion, but when [members] see them playing they go, 'Okay, they're just like one of us.'"

Not always, of course. For HackPgh, Singer taught a course this spring called "Build your own personal flame cannon." It's best described as a propane-based percussive instrument with a user-controllable drumbeat.

He's not sure exactly where it will debut yet. But he's hoping to finish it by next month.

"Then," he says, "I'm sure there'll be a secret test somewhere in Pittsburgh."

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Marty Levine is a Pittsburgh freelance writer trying to cover the waterfront from the water. Send feedback here.

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Photos:

Eric Singer in his workshop.

Singer's xylobot, a robotic xylophone.

Singer's hydrobowl, robotic instrument.

Singer in his workshop (courtesy of Eric Singer)

Detail of one of Singer's robotic instruments/

Detail from Singer's GuitarBot.

Photographs by Renee Rosensteel