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Most of us have seen online robots conducting orchestras playing musical instruments including the piano. How will this affect performance by human beings. Will it cause us to treasure music in the home, perhaps a love of acoustic piano and piano buying will increase. Surely we need an escape from technology or will there be no affect at all?

I have never seen a robot conducting an orchestra. Hard to imagine anything worse.

53 fingers? Keep him away from the pie.

I was going to say a robot conductor is akin to a click track for a rock band, only with also signaling for expression and dynamics, but it's more like the counterpart of a conductor training with recordings at home...


About the video:
"And this, a robot will not understand yet."
The day a robot understands that (emotion and the pressure of getting it right), the robot will be one of us. Maybe then it will not compete against us, but join us.
Or maybe I'm too much in an Asimov vibe today.

Looks like Disklavier (or PianoDisc or QRS or ...) assembled outside of the acoustic key bed and some facial expression devices added.
With AI and more advanced robotics things may start to become less than just a MIDI-performance reproduction, who knows when.
Still, as the pianist said at the end of the video: "music is about emotions" and this is still exclusively for living things only.
And TBH: I prefer watching fellow piano virtuosos performing rather than just an automated records being playback by whatsoever...

Maybe 40 or so years ago, there was a robot that someone made that was connected to a player piano, so it would look like someone was playing it. It was far more visually fetching than this version.

I can only hope for General Grievous's debut as a conductor. At least, he's organic inside.


I am conducted by a robot too. It's called electronic metronome.

I do not know hardly anything about computers but I suppose the music is programmed into the machine. I do not think "they" read the music and make use of complex, subtle movements with "their hands" Having 53 fingers is .. ..could just have a player piano. Can one get a player cello?

I am waiting for a few Robot soloists in an opera, 🙂 something like The Marriage of Figaro. They sound odd when they speak, so let them (no, not eat cake!) but SING!

Robot playing Mozart but he can't play octaves yet. Still it's creepy.

A robot and a human pianist discuss interpretation of a Chopin Nocturne.

Looks like Pepe the frog mixed with the guy with cybernetic fingers from Ghost in the Shell



Not piano related, but I'm not gonna lie, I find Compressorhead entertaining. A metal band comprised of robots. Like, literally, a metal band.

Wow 😲 that's really wild! 😴

It's basically rather like a mechanical organ from the 18th century, such as Mozart wrote music for.

Like this:

Thanks David,
Here it talks about these strange instruments. I believe at this stage in life he also wrote ethereal sounding pieces sounding pieces for a Glass Harmonica played by a young blind woman who performed these pieces all over Europe. They have become part of the piano repertoire. There seems to be an error AGAIN with sharing some information.

The Adagio from the two pieces for the glass harmonica is the easy one to play. The other one, cannot remember the name, has been played in recitals and recorded. I cannot find anything here. Although originally set for glass harmonica and other instruments they appear
in a Henle Urtext book as original solo pieces for piano. Yet obviously has been adapted for solo piano. Perhaps they have a performance history?

Yes there is a similarity between the playing of the mechanical organ to the way the Rondo Alla Turca is playef. Very accurately in time, yet the one mechanical
the other electronic. Was this mechanical organ used in a fancy clock in some building, like the ones seen in Europe, Prague for instance?

The other Mozart harmonica piece is the Adagio and Rondo with flute, oboe, viola and cello. Another famous piece is the Aquarium from Carnival of the Animals.

I found the Henle Urtext book, I had it wrong! The Adagio K616 is in the book for piano. The other one is an Andante also 616 for a little organ? Both of these have become part of the repertoire for the piano. The one is titled Andante fur eine Walze in eine kleine Orgel.
The other is called the Adagio fur Glasharmonika, yet they are both given the Opus K616? It's possible they are both for the Glass Harmonica.

It tells you a little about these pieces and another for
the G. Harmonica and the performer on this Wikipedia site.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adagio_and_Rondo_for_glass_harmonica,_flute,_oboe,_viola_and_cello