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.
Errr I can just do this on a VST!
just kidding.
Freaking love this machine
I’m sure having that in the corner of the living room would be an excellent conversation starter!
My wife would start the conversation by saying “Get that giant beat box out of the living room”
Wow. That is really inventive and amazing. Good stuff.
Cool stuff!
what no pitch change???????,.. only joking.
This is crazy – I wish I had this kind of time on my hands / got paid to do stuff like this!
somehow it kinda reminds me of the Herbie Hancock “rockit” video from 1983!
Cold Fashioned nailed it.