The next frontier for robotics? Jazz marimba

Watch out all you well-paid, fat-and-sassy jazz marimba players: Shimon, the marimba playing robot, is after your jobs. Shimon is the brainchild of the Robotic Musicianship Group at Georgia Tech and I’ve been following his career for a few years now. In this video, taken at the Ferst Center Presents as part of Atlanta Science Festival, Shimon and a band led by Zachary Robert Kondak jam out to Kondak’s latest rock opera. That’s Richard Savery on the sax.

Watch it. It’s wild.

The truly amazing part of the show has to be drummer Jason Barnes’ mechanical arm that he uses to play beats live in time with Shimon’s tapping. It’s a melding of man and machine that is truly awe-inspiring.

So you’ve had it good so far, all you jazz vibraphonists. Now that robots are gunning for your jobs the jig might be up.

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