Comments on: McBlare: a robot bagpipe player

By: theincrediblenoone

theincrediblenoone — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:28:27 +0000

reminds me of bedknobs and broomsticks, the pipers in the enchanted army fighting off the nazis.

By: Kbko

Kbko — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 20:54:16 +0000

Please, somebody can tune the drones and the chanter????? Argggghhhhhh.!!!!

By: merrick

merrick — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 08:30:12 +0000

Dan,+ Jaded,

Check out Gordon Duncan, Stuart Liddel, 78th Frasier Highlanders, Oran Mor, or any other top rated/graded pipers/pipebands to listen to mechanical precision with human feeling.

Nothing against McBlare’s designers, they could have just used some better midi files!

By: Dan Fruzzetti

Dan Fruzzetti — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 04:35:37 +0000

I feel the ornamentations are -too- congruent. with a human one would expect more variations especially due to the variations in fingers even with the best technique.

By: mig

mig — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:14:40 +0000

i for one welcome out new tartan-clad robot overlords.

By: Richard

Richard — Sun, 31 May 2009 18:44:18 +0000

human pipers are painful enough to listen to, but at least you know that sooner or later they’ll die and peace will reign once more.

robot ones that don’t need to stop, ever?

i think hell has just dug a new, deeper, darker basement of pain.

;-)

By: jaded

jaded — Sun, 31 May 2009 00:53:21 +0000

Q: What’s the difference between a bagpipe and a raw onion?
A: Nobody cries when you chop up a bagpipe.

Anyway, @merrick and @Josh, I agree totally. This sounds like old MIDI-generated music of the early 90s — very robotic, very precise, utterly dead. They might improve its sound if they recorded a human instead of just sequencing notes out of a machine, but I think the solenoid nature of the fingering will prevent this from ever sounding good. Bagpipes are one of the most “analog” instruments ever, and digitally precise notes don’t become it.

Maybe if they had used stepper motors or something else to more closely mimic human fingers, it’d help improve the sound greatly. But then again, this is “hack-a-day”, not “build-a-useful-musical-instrument-a-day”.

By: merrick

merrick — Sat, 30 May 2009 14:12:32 +0000

As a piper myself (and geek), I will say that it is definitely the quality of playing people are pissed at, NOT the fact it’s a robot. In fact, if McBlare went open source I’d have a battalion of these!

By: James Lewin

James Lewin — Sat, 30 May 2009 04:33:52 +0000

You may want to check out this Synthtopia post, too: The Complete Guide To MIDI Bagpipes; Covering Practice Pipes, Robotic Bagpipers & The Frankenpipe

By: Josh

Josh — Sat, 30 May 2009 04:19:23 +0000

They really need to pipe the note information through something to add changes in speed, and timing. Many years ago it was part of my Sound Engineering course to take MIDI music and make it sound more natural in this way. It was very involved, but paid off; the bagpipe recordings sounds completely artificial.

By: h_2_o

h_2_o — Sat, 30 May 2009 02:50:04 +0000

when i see this all i can think is some guy at activision thinking to himself…….I bet we can turn this into “bagpipe hero” and a billion idiot kids will buy it.

By: np

np — Sat, 30 May 2009 00:13:28 +0000

As a student at CMU, I’m accustomed to hearing the bagpipes play on campus but one day I heard bagpipes coming from another area.

Sounded human, turned out to be a robot. Best surprise ever.

Really, though, it sounds fantastic and looks awesome in person.

By: stunmonkey

stunmonkey — Sat, 30 May 2009 00:07:36 +0000

@zero

Already been done! Twice at least I think, once with a really creepy baby doll. Wish I could remember the links. It’s actually pretty easy – you should definitely try it!

By: zero

zero — Fri, 29 May 2009 23:13:47 +0000

Hmmm…. now get to work on a robotic theremin!

By: Ben Jackson

Ben Jackson — Fri, 29 May 2009 21:50:03 +0000

Can a robotic accordion be far behind??