Cyborg Drummer Uses Bionic Arm for Superhuman Beats

Cognimancer

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Jun 13, 2012
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Cyborg Drummer Uses Bionic Arm for Superhuman Beats


This bionic drumming prosthetic transcends the physical limits of all but the sickest jams.

One of the greatest regrets of drummers everywhere is that we have only two hands to drum with. So when musician Jason Barnes lost half of his right arm in an accident, he thought his drumming days were over. However, an experimental prosthetic arm from the Georgia Institute of Technology has restored Barnes' ability to make music - and even given him an advantage over every other drummer on the planet. Thanks to his robotic arm, he can play beats with three sticks at once.

The bionic arm holds two drumsticks, controlled independently. The primary stick is moved by a mechanism called electromyography, which reads electrical signals from the skeletal muscles in the upper arm and changes the behavior of the prosthetic "hand" accordingly. This allows Barnes to play with his right hand in a somewhat natural way. The other stick, interestingly, has a mind of its own. Built-in sensors listen to what Barnes is playing, and the on-board motors complement his rhythms with secondary beats.

Barnes succinctly describes the device as "pretty awesome." The second stick's autonomy does mean that he has a little less control over his notes, but at the same time it lets him play in ways that nobody else could replicate. Some die-hard drummers will probably call it cheating, but it works for Barnes; he's making a new musical debut later this month, playing alongside musical robots built by the same man who designed the prosthetic. If all goes well, it looks like "transhuman jazz" could be the world's newest music genre.

Source: The Independent [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25142-bionic-arm-gives-cyborg-drummer-superhuman-skills.html?cmpid=RSS%7CNSNS%7C2012-GLOBAL%7Conline-news#.UxpxCvmICSp]

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Vivi22

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Cognimancer said:
Some die-hard drummers will probably call it cheating, but it works for Barnes;
Speaking as a drummer, if I ever saw another drummer saying a guy who was missing half his right arm was cheating by using a robotic prosthetic to be able to play again, I'd happily punch them in the face and tell them to take a hike.
 

Hero in a half shell

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So it begins.
The machines are already taking over,

but don't worry, he's a drummer, so he's long overdue a bizarre gardening accident, spontaneous human combustion or choking on vomit (but not his own vomit)
 

Erttheking

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You know what? This is beautiful. Technology has given this man the ability to explore his passion again. I want to see more of this. I want to see limbs that can act as fully functional limbs, just as good as the ones we're born with.
 

Ryan Hughes

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Cool. On this same topic, sort of, have you guys heard of Cornell Hirsca-Munn? He is a disabled drummer out of Romania, but he has been missing his arms since birth.

 

Dogstile

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Vivi22 said:
Cognimancer said:
Some die-hard drummers will probably call it cheating, but it works for Barnes;
Speaking as a drummer, if I ever saw another drummer saying a guy who was missing half his right arm was cheating by using a robotic prosthetic to be able to play again, I'd happily punch them in the face and tell them to take a hike.
Agreed. Like, how the fuck else is he going to play anyway?
 

Vivi22

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Ryan Hughes said:
Cool. On this same topic, sort of, have you guys heard of Cornell Hirsca-Munn? He is a disabled drummer out of Romania, but he has been missing his arms since birth.

I hadn't heard of him, but now that I have he's badass.

Dogstile said:
Vivi22 said:
Cognimancer said:
Some die-hard drummers will probably call it cheating, but it works for Barnes;
Speaking as a drummer, if I ever saw another drummer saying a guy who was missing half his right arm was cheating by using a robotic prosthetic to be able to play again, I'd happily punch them in the face and tell them to take a hike.
Agreed. Like, how the fuck else is he going to play anyway?
If I lost my arm I know I'd want a prosthetic like that. Hard to replicate the dexterity you get from more than a dozen joints he doesn't have any more working together without coming up with a nifty device like that.
 

Kieve

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ForumSafari said:
Umm...biotic? Are we sure it's biotic?

As a second point he's also not a cyborg.
Yeah... I wondered about that too.
Cognimancer, can we get a fix on that title? Let's not be confusing biotic [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotic] with bionic [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bionic] please.
...Unless we've discovered eezo [http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Biotics] and no one's mentioned it before this?
 

ThreeWords

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ForumSafari said:
As a second point he's also not a cyborg.
How would you define a cyborg?

Generally, the term is used outside of fiction to mean "augmented by technology". Even if you take this to mean "going beyond normal human abilities", that's exactly what he's doing; he plays music in a way that is not usually possible.
 

ForumSafari

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ThreeWords said:
How would you define a cyborg?

Generally, the term is used outside of fiction to mean "augmented by technology". Even if you take this to mean "going beyond normal human abilities", that's exactly what he's doing; he plays music in a way that is not usually possible.
A cyborg, as opposed to a person with a prosthesis, is an organism with a mixture of mechanical and organic components in which both types of components are reliant on the other for functioning. Cyborgs are people with a machine that keeps them alive and is involved in physiological processes rather than someone that uses a machine as a tool like a false limb.
 

Cognimancer

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Kieve said:
ForumSafari said:
Umm...biotic? Are we sure it's biotic?

As a second point he's also not a cyborg.
Yeah... I wondered about that too.
Cognimancer, can we get a fix on that title? Let's not be confusing biotic [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotic] with bionic [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bionic] please.
...Unless we've discovered eezo [http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Biotics] and no one's mentioned it before this?
You're absolutely right. I must have had a little too much Mass Effect on the brain! (fixed now)
 

Ryan Hughes

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Vivi22 said:
I hadn't heard of him, but now that I have he's badass.

Dogstile said:
Vivi22 said:
Cognimancer said:
Some die-hard drummers will probably call it cheating, but it works for Barnes;
Speaking as a drummer, if I ever saw another drummer saying a guy who was missing half his right arm was cheating by using a robotic prosthetic to be able to play again, I'd happily punch them in the face and tell them to take a hike.
Agreed. Like, how the fuck else is he going to play anyway?
If I lost my arm I know I'd want a prosthetic like that. Hard to replicate the dexterity you get from more than a dozen joints he doesn't have any more working together without coming up with a nifty device like that.
Hrisca-Munn is one of my favorite youtubers. He is also just a awesome guy in general, as he is in college studying philosophy, and he now just gets to laugh maniacally at the people who told he could never be a drummer. He does other types of music, too, and like all good drummers, he can take a bad song and make it into something great.

I'm not sure any sane person would accuse Mr. Barnes of cheating. Though, since Oscar Pistoras is now on trial for murder, maybe people's attitudes have changed.
 

michael87cn

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Very interesting, but sounds very mechanical, even though being performed by a human being.

I think the same unique sounds could just be done with a computer program unfortunately.
 

William Ossiss

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At this point I feel mislead at the title. Superhuman beats? I had assumed it would be played at a crazy speed.

Still cool that this guy can get back into drumming... Though Rick Allen has been doing this for years without the use of a prosthetic. People tend to forget the mainstream now-a-days...