Today I wanted to write about a device that in the future will be able to help those who lack a live percussionist. Perhaps, those who have ever played in a band with a drummer who is crooked and does not have a sense of rhythm, will also see the emergence of this robotic gadget with keen interest.
We are talking about an electromechanical drum machine for playing kahon music, a Peruvian percussion instrument that is rapidly gaining popularity. Japanese developers have created a percussion robot that can play pre-recorded rhythms. The project is similar to the tool called Cabot. Announced a kickstarter fundraiser. Under the cut a few words about the tool, the robot and its creator.
How smart is Cabot and how does it work?
My attention to this unusual drama machine was attracted by a small note on stereo.ru, where in the title of the robot they called it “Smart”. I had a sinful deed that the robot would be controlled by some clever neural network that would select the desired rhythm without the user's participation or adjust it to the performed work.
Unfortunately, everything turned out to be much more trivial. The gadget is not so smart, at least for now. Now Japanese percussion Shaitan represents an electromechanical system that is capable of playing a pre-recorded rhythm on a kahon, looping it into loops or playing it like a regular track. The brains of the robot is a smartphone with an installed application.
In addition to the standard set of rhythms, the application has an editor that allows you to create your own rhythm. For effective switching of rhythmic patterns in the process of performance, a specially designed foot switch is used.
Also, the device can be controlled as a midi instrument and is compatible with an ordinary PC.
Some optimism suggests that developers in advertising on the kickstarter promise to make efforts to make the gadget more intelligent, but which way the robot will get smarter is not known.
A few words about kahon
It is known that Kahon appeared in Peru. Legend has it that African slaves who worked on plantations used wooden fruit crates as a percussion instrument. Traditional drums were banned by the colonial Spanish authorities and these improvised instruments eventually transformed into kahon.
The first peak of the instrument's popularity also happened in the 19th century, it was used quite widely in Latin America. It is known that it was rooted as a national instrument in Peru, in Cuba and Puerto Rico. Somewhat later, he came to the United States and Europe, where he was used as a tool for street musicians, and occasionally as a jazz percussion.
Thanks to the composer Paco de Lucia kahon became associated with the Spanish musical tradition and flamenco. Visiting Peru, the composer was struck by its sound and widely used in the 70s - 80s of the last century.
A cajon is a wooden box with 5 walls (side and top), equipped with a hole. In modern models, the hole is combined with a bass-reflex tube. The impact wall of the kahon is usually thinner and is made of 3-4 layers of veneer.
Today, the instrument is more often made of plastic and plywood, more expensive, in accordance with tradition, made of solid wood (which is not a guarantee of better sound).
It is known that there is only a percussion version of the instrument, as well as a kahon with strings.
Campaign and other project features
The developers emphasize the fact that their robot plays on a real acoustic instrument and thus makes it possible to extract the same “live” sound. To get the robot with the app and the pedal console, you need to sacrifice the “dead American president” to the Kickstarter 653. Investments of $ 848 will also be rewarded with steep kahon from the well-known Japanese artist Hidetoshi Hamasaki, widely known in narrow circles.
The project team works under the direction of a certain Seda, who, as in the song, is a “guitarist and singer” and, accordingly, the author of the idea. They have already created a working prototype and showed it at the South by Southwest exhibition in Austin, Texas, where, according to my American friends, country ʻand`nd`vernn lovers mostly gather.
Sad emphasizes that he created a robot for himself, or rather, in order to: “increase my solo performance”. And then I decided to cut money on the robot. And judging by what can be seen on the video from the exhibitions, the technical problem he managed.
The campaign page states that the project works with SHARP Corporation, which will help make Design for Manufacturing. This very DFM is just not enough for a full launch of the robot in the series.
Total
I find it difficult to predict the future of the project. I wish the idea was implemented with an over-fulfillment of the plan and Cabot became truly clever. That is, so that the robot understands the rhythm of the piece, and chooses something from the memory, drives the tempo. I'm not sure that the developers are planning this, the promise to “make smarter” inspires some optimism.
Of the $ 42,000 that were announced in the kickstarter
campaign , $ 10,999 is currently collected, a month is left to complete the fees. I would appreciate your opinions in the comments.
Jeans and links
It is possible that if the project is implemented, Cabot will appear in our catalog , among other musical instruments that are presented there today.