Is there anything Siri can't do? Now you can add piano playing to her long list of talents, thanks to a clever hack by Craig Knudsen.
In the video we see Siri controlling the piano in real time using MIDI commands. The piano is a Yamaha Disklavier, a kind of modern-day player piano as Knudsen puts it. The iPhone is loaded with special song files, which have been converted from MIDI files but which retain their MIDI data. When you tell Siri to play the song, it is streamed like any other song over Wi-Fi, to a waiting Airport Express.
A cable runs from the Express's audio-out jack to the analog MIDI inputs of the Disklavier, and the piano starts to play, with the keys and pedals moving as if there was an invisible human sat there in front of it. Thus, Siri plays the piano.
The original purpose of the tech behind the "player piano" was to move the keys so that a student could follow along and learn how to play. But if it can do that, why not skip the human completely, and just use an artificial person instead? I, for one, welcome our new musically-talented robot overlords. Hey, at least humanity's enslavement will have a great soundtrack.
Play It Again, Siri - A smartphone plays the piano [YouTube. Thanks, Maha!]
