A former NASA engineer made the piano speak English and play the world's most difficult music by itself, so fast that it smokes
Jin Lei from Aofei Temple
Quantum Bit | Public Account QbitAI
What kind of sparks will be created when a former NASA engineer meets a piano ?
Thought it was just playing the piano?
Younger.
He can make this piano Speak ! English ! ! ! !
Look, this is the modified piano Chopstix . The dialogue style with him is like this:
And not only can they speak English, Chopsticks can also easily play the most difficult piano piece in the world
(the kind that is so fast that it smokes)
:
The piano can be so "crazy" that it attracted many netizens to watch:
But you may ask, isn't the sound it makes still the sound of a piano? How can it be considered "speaking English"?
Don’t worry, we’ll take a look at it right away.
Using Fourier Transform to Make the Piano Speak English
This former NASA engineer and YouTube blogger is called Mark Rober (hereinafter referred to as "Mark Rober") .
In his opinion, our human speech can be visualized using waveforms, such as this:
But if you zoom in on a small section of it, you can easily see that the pattern of this waveform seems to be "repeating rhythmically":
Xiao Ma Ge said that for almost any signal, it can be expressed as the sum of pure sine waves.
Then he thought of using one of the most popular tools in the field of signal processing - the Fourier transform .
So, Xiao Ma Ge used Fourier transform in his piano project:
Only the peaks corresponding to the notes are considered to reproduce the sound.
By analogy, Xiao Ma processed the entire piano sound in this way and obtained the corresponding approximate (not exact) signal.
If this method is used correctly, you can get the following result. For example, Xiao Ma said to the piano:
Hey Chopstix!Repeat after me!
Then "Chopsticks" will repeat the sentence with the sound of piano:
Of course, during this period, Xiao Ma Ge admitted that he "cheated" in the process - taking advantage of a bug in the human brain.
In other words, if we close our eyes and just listen to the sound of the "chopsticks", it is difficult for us to understand what it is saying.
But when combined with the subtitles that you see with your eyes, it makes people feel that "it seems to be true."
Xiao Ma explained:
80% of the information the human brain collects about the surrounding environment comes from vision.
Even when we hear and see at the same time, vision is still the dominant sense.
……
In addition to "speaking English", as a piano, "Chopsticks" also performs well in its main job.
Easily master the world's most difficult songs
When it comes to playing, Xiao Ma Ge picked a song for "Chopsticks" that is almost impossible for humans to play - "Rush E" .
Just look at the score to see how outrageous this song is:
As we all know, after pressing a key on the piano, the sound will be prolonged even after the finger is released.
In order to make the sound of the piano clear and crisp enough, Xiao Ma Ge made some improvements to the piano.
If you only want to make a sound, the simplest structure is this: just press it down and hit the strings:
In order to stop the sound the moment the key is released, it now looks like this:
Then it was time to let the "chopsticks" play by themselves .
Xiao Ma Ge said that more than 100 years ago, someone realized the function of making the piano play by itself. The method at that time was to use a rolling piece of paper with holes on it to control the piano keys:
But the disadvantage of this method is that the timing cannot be precisely controlled, and the force of pressing the keys is "full force".
Therefore, Xiao Ma Ge made a row of "solenoids" and installed them one by one under the improved parts:
This solenoid can not only precisely control the timing, but also provide 127 levels of playing force, which can approach human sound effects.
Therefore, with the blessing of various improvements, "Chopsticks" has the famous scene of easily mastering the extremely difficult "Rush E" shown at the beginning:
But in fact, the smoke at the end was just the effect created by Xiao Ma Ge.
After acquiring multiple abilities, "Chopsticks" can also play and sing by itself :
(A Rick rolled song for everyone)
Netizen: Dream come true
Netizens expressed their feelings about such a piano.
For example, some people said that their "dream has come true" :
That's crazy, I've always wanted to see Rush E play really fast.
Some netizens also said, "This is also the first time I have been rolled by a talking piano Rick":
But to be honest, this is not the first time that Xiao Ma Ge has done something so imaginative.
After all, as a former NASA engineer, he has strong technical skills. In order to retaliate against those who stole express parcels, he made a "fart bomb" and made the thieves suffer...
If you want to know more interesting projects of Xiao Ma Ge, you can check out his personal homepage.
Reference Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBEL3YVzMwk
Homepage:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY1kMZp36IQSyNx_9h4mpCg
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