Hang on, let me boot up my rhythm section…

By David J. Hahn
New York, NY

The Australian website iTnews reported a story tonight that a researcher at Queensland University of Technology has invented a new robotic musician named “Jambot.” And this robot has something that previous models were made without.

It improvises.

According to the report, “Jambot is said to combine recent discoveries in audio music perception with newly developed algorithms to keep up with musicians as they play.”

That’s right, it can actually listen to you play and play along with you. If you change tempo, or key, or song – it reportedly can follow you wherever you go. It’s your robo-sideman.

Silly scientists. Why are these guys always trying to reduce music to zeros and ones? And why do people allow themselves to be convinced that it can be done?

The truth is that this kind of technology, the kind that separates music into its divisible parts then rebuilds it into a wax-museum-like replica, will only become more and more prevalent as time goes on. The same technological revolution that allowed each of us to have a hard disc recording system in our basement also gave birth to these MIDI-on-steroids programs that the lecherous non-musicians who run our gigs will use as an excuse to hire less of us, disregarding the degenerate musical quality in deference to almighty Technology.

And as we can see in this sophomorically-named “Jambot,” the technology will only get better (although I very sincerely doubt that this program would be able to follow musicians in any but the most unaffected situations).

Personally, I think the solution for musicians is to continue learning, growing and innovating. If the musical culture of our times has become so stagnant that it can be imitated with zeros and ones, then maybe we deserve to lose our jobs. If people can’t tell the difference between us and Jambot, or don’t care one way or another, then we must take some of that blame for passively watching music be bullied into the packaged and shellac’d product that uninspired corporations decided it should become.

In a culture that increasingly floats the idea that live musicians are optional, we have to make sure they understand why that is wrong. It’s not (yet) that there aren’t any jobs for musicians, it’s just that there’s no room for slackers. The image of a musician as a lazy, smoke-pot-and-watch-TV freeloader is part of the distant, never-to-return-again past. Now we work! We hustle for gigs, we write songs, we make recordings, we schedule, re-schedule and sometimes double-book our whole lives!

Let’s face it; there’s no time to freeload when we have to compete against an Australian named Jambot.

About the author

David J. Hahn is a freelance music director, accompanist and writer. Originally from the Chicago area, he now lives in New York City and works primarily in musical theatre. Find out more at his website and follow him on Twitter.

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