Mechanism behind trumpet playing robot?

It sounds synthesized to me. Are you sure "he" is actually playing the horn? Randy

I had the opposite feeling. It looks like he (it) is blowing air through it, and pressing keys on a real horn. With the polymers available these days it would be quite easy to make the proper interface to the horn's mouthpiece (along with the vibrations our lips make when we do it), and the programming to press the keys/buttons on the horn is trivial.

I'm pretty sure he is. I think the "synthness" you're hearing is the fact that you've never heard a trumpet played without the "flaws" inherent with the way humans generate tones on a brass instrument. The articulations, the vibrato.

Could be. Maybe a bad recording too? Randy

The University of Edinburgh made a set of artificial lips for experimenting with trombone design. It was two lengths of rubber tube with pressurised water in them. Increasing or decreasing the pressure changed the note. Air was blown through these lips to make the buzz

Someone got a PHd out of the project:

And here is her entire doctoral thesis:

I wonder how big Mikey's doctoral thesis is? Can we read it online?

On a sunny day (Sat, 22 Dec 2007 21:25:36 -0000) it happened "Gordon Hudson" wrote in :

I have played trumpet once upon a time, but my ears did not get blue. I did almost pass out once however, as it took all oxygen from my head....

I waited until the end of the movie to see if it would take the trumpet down, so I could see the 'lips'. Unfortunately not. For the rest it is pretty good:-) And it likely does not spit so much as we do :-) Could add that as a feature though!

The spit.

I have to vote for the synthetic lips.

I was waiting for the robot to wave the other hand while playing!

Angelo Campanella

Pretty damn cool document!

Before I even started the video I was saying that I bet the robot was big enough to contain an actual person.

It was

--Obliquely of interest: here's a wind-instrument player a friend of mine made many moons ago:

The air doesn't make the sound, the trumpet player's lips have to vibrate, similar to a reed instrument - the trumpet tunes the vibrating column of air and couples it, via the horn, to the environment. Lips/breath are excitation, length of pipe is the tuned circuit, horn is the impedance matching element.

Now getting a robot to do it? A trumpet player starts the note by pressurizing the mouth, tensing the lips, then suddenly removing the tongue to start the note - similar to spitting material off the tip of one's tongue.

Without those elements it is bound to sound different even if a robot is producing the sound by blowing air into the instrument. - the cheap easy way would be to add a reed to the mouthpiece and that would make it sound more like an alto sax?

I do know for a fact that there's a church in NYC that has a few dozen trumpet - bugle pipes (one for each note) on the pipe organ and it does sound like a trumpet so there must be an organ maker that knows how to do it. Strictly speaking, it wouldn't be a trumpet any more if it had a reed in it.

Lip tension and pressure will get four notes per valve or combination of valves - 4 solid notes; with good players able to hit several higher notes per valving. A bugle is basically a four note instrument, a valve bugle is an eight note instrument.

Not if you examine the joints on his limbs. There is no way a person could be in there.

There is a big difference between blowing air across an opening, such as that used in a flute, and blowing reverberated air through a horn's mouthpiece.

Both the flute, and woodwind instruments would be far easier to construct and perform upon than those of the horn section.

This is Usenet, not email, try to refrain from top posting.

Bullshit. They do not need their tongue at all.

If you had any brains, you could tell by the sound that it was a horn sound, and that there was no reed involved in making the reverberations.

Why would you make a remark as if fact, then finish it with a question mark?

Except that it wasn't a bugle, it was a trumpet.

I did. Plenty of room.

Well idiot, its like this, I played a trumpet, but never a sax. I know a trumpet needs the lips as the vibration source, I can only imagine what a trumpet with a reed would sound like so the question mark. Idiot.

I played in a few bands and orchestras and sampled a few instruments. Clarinet, Bassoon, Saxophone, use reeds. French horn, Trumpet, Trombone use lips. And air . . . and tension to achieve different notes

While the trumpet only has 4 notes per valve combination it is possible to "slur" from one to the next, and a good player can make it seem seamless - but can't stop and hold a note between two normal notes. Maybe Winton Marsalis can, but I seriously doubt it.

A clarinet, sax, virtuoso can slur and more easily hit illegal notes because the valves can open part way - trumpets not so lucky.

And I built a few pipe organs, idiot. The pipe organ is a flute with one pipe per note. There are also reed pipes and are used in pipe organs (with tunable reeds - but the pipe length and volume determine the note) Reeds alone are used in smaller organs - similar to an accordion or harmonica in design - both reed instruments.

A pipe organ with flute toned pipes uses combinations of pipes to make different sounds - emulating human voices or other string or wind instruments (different "stops" or multiple linked valves in the "wind chest") - but to make a pipe organ that sounds like a reed instrument you really need a reed at the base of the pipe.

A reed has all the warmth of a electromechanical seatbelt buzzer until you add the pipe.

ChairmanOfTheBored thou doth be a vicious troll.