Eric Singer's robotic device proves a mechanical and musical success
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Eric Singer with his instrument, the Xylobot.
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The Pied Piper of musical robots has led his mechanical children to Pittsburgh.
Eric Singer spent the past 10 years running the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots in Brooklyn, attracting high-tech collaborators, including They Might Be Giants, while making musical instruments out of plastic fish, flamethrowers and toy slime in his spare time.
Now his workshop is a Squirrel Hill basement, where Singer's latest GuitarBot is under construction. Two other computer-driven guitars are currently on a world tour with Pat Metheny, alongside a software-run marimba, vibraphone, orchestra bells and other percussion instruments -- 40 in all -- that Singer mechanized for the jazz guitarist's latest album.
The 1988 Carnegie Mellon University grad moved his wife, young daughter and in-laws here in August, and he has hooked up with local roboticists and musicians.
"If there's a brain drain going on it's in the direction of Pittsburgh right now, and I like that a lot," he says.
LEMUR's work has already been featured here at First Night and the Children's Museum.
Following CMU and a "not very interesting IT job," Singer decided to work on his saxophone playing at Berklee College of Music. "It didn't take me long to sniff out the music technology department. I kept playing the sax, but I never looked back."
By 2007, LEMUR's work had attracted the attention of Metheny, who was intent on composing for a new kind of one-man band. Singer developed the instruments and joined him for rehearsals in a rented Brooklyn church in 2008. The "Orchestrion" album -- named for a 19th-century mechanical orchestra akin to a player piano -- was released last month.
"I know Pat has had a lot of people from his past bands come in to see what he's doing and think it's pretty cool. In fact, [vibraphonist] Gary Burton and [drummer] Jack DeJohnette have contributed instruments to the project" -- instruments Singer mechanized for Metheny to control.
Computer MIDI technology and solenoids -- a piston-like mechanism that allows a clothes washer to switch cycles, for instance -- do the rest.
The GuitarBot looks more like four short metal skis mounted next to each other than a musical instrument. Each silver plank holds a steel guitar string, with a sliding bridge to control the pitch moving like a guitarist's fingers up and down the neck. A wheel with four picks rotates to pluck each string near the bottom, while a damper stops the sound. Software allows the player to control everything from a note's length to its "rubberiness," in Singer's words. The whole thing is mounted on a short metal stalk that lets the instrument vibrate and sway.
First Published February 22, 2010 12:00 am
