“When you think of ‘futuristic instruments’ you probably think of synthesizers,” writes Jonathan Kesh in Friday’s (6/22) OuterPlaces.com. “But for an Italian electronic musician named Leonardo Barbadoro, synths aren’t quite the sound he wants for his next project. Which is why he’s attempting to put a new spin on ‘futuristic instruments’ by creating an album with entirely robotic musicians. The instruments—saxophones, clarinets, pianos, a sousaphone—are all normal fare, but he’s attaching all of them to robotic devices which can potentially play them just as well as any human…. He’s still in the Kickstarter stage of his album, entitled Musica Automata, and it’s ambitious: the full robot orchestra has 50 members, and he can control each of them from his laptop. This way, despite being nearly electronic music as we know it, it’ll sound as close as possible to a full human orchestra…. Barbdoro is hoping to get the album released sometime in 2019. It’ll be an especially unusual sort of electronic music, since it won’t sound like electronic music at all. There won’t be any theremins or Blade Runner-styled synths to give it a futuristic sound, but that’s the point: we have robots playing these instruments today.”
Posted June 26, 2018
