Yuri Suzuki gives Raymond Scott's Electronium electronic sequencer an AI makeover

Japanese designer Yuri Suzuki has reimagined a sixty-year-old electronic sequencer machine as a physical piece of music software that uses artificial intelligence to generate melodies.
Conceived by musician Raymond Scott in 1959, the Electronium, which is regarded as the world's first electronic sequencer, was made up of three switchboards mounted on a wooden cabinet.
Although the machine was never completed, it was meant to allow users to perform and compose music simultaneously.
Using pre-programmed algorithms, it would turn a snippet of any given melody into a full composition while enabling users to add embellishments over the top.
Presented at the upcoming Barbican exhibition AI: More Than Human, Suzuki - who is a partner at Pentagram - wanted to recreate the landmark machine using musical AI software Google Magenta.
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[@szabolcs__]

ok but we want to see in action

[@briankehew579]

This is a wonderfully ambitions project, because no one really knows how the Electronium worked: Ray's documentation was secretive (there is no schematic for the whole thing, for example.) So this is using software developed for another composing program to approximate what the Electronium did. We have a team of people who will be taking the original Scottronium (the only version he completed and sold to Motown in the 70s) and back-engineering it to see how it actually worked.
When done, it's possible the original is too old to function perfectly, but we can make replica circuits or software to do what it did. Or even drive the original voice cards from software that behaves exactly as the instrument once did. It will take a long time, but it will be an interesting project, to say the least!

[@stevemurrell6167]

....and it seriously appears they still don't know how it works.....or what it does. This was no help at all.

[@TheScreamingFrog916]

I would love to see this effort bear fruit.
Next, an iPad app please 🙂

[@lutheranshorts]

Wonderful.

[@mudsh4rk]

I don't think the Electronium is widely considered the world's first electronic seqencer, since Scott built the Circle Machine over a decade earlier and the Moog sequencers had been around for quite a while by the time Scott started working on this in 1969 (not '59). Plus the RCA MKI was built in 1955.
I'm not sure when the first electromechanical player pianos were introduced, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was in the 1940s.

[@oliviermalhomme9923]

Funny you need AI to remake a 50's machine....

[@briankehew579]

It's a 70s machine really, but same deal. They are doing what they can to approximate it.

[@lantrick]

When the creator kept most of it in his head. lol pretty much.

[@machinelearning4376]

Wow

[@davidtourangeau]

wow