The Electronic Pianist

Their regular session player was out sick. He had some sort of connections in the robotics industry, his brother or cousin or something like that. It was about the size as a person but a few hundred pounds heavier. Its hydraulics and wiring were uncovered save for the hands and the face. The face was a blank slate, with a single camera in the center and a speaker beneath it, simulating an eye and a mouth.

"Does it have a name?" Asked one of the session vocalists, a younger woman with dyed blonde hair.

"The model number is PR-1800, revision 27. We just call it 27, to keep things simple" She had sworn she recognized the project lead, an older man whose face was worn down by time, but somehow also well defined. Maybe it was a party at the pianists place, maybe this was the brother or uncle or whatever. He looked about the same age, late 50's. Clearly a veteran in his field.

One of the technicians plugs 27 in, and turns it on. Immediately the hum of fans and spinning drives filled the room, the project lead shuffled a little.

"If need be, we can move the main unit outside and wire the hands through to the booth to cut down on the noise"

an audio technician spoke up, taken out of his awestruck daze "At that point, why not just use a player piano? Or do the whole thing over MIDI?"

The project lead stood up, clearly giving this pitch a dozen times "Because this is more than a simple MIDI device, it's a learning machine. It can listen to the other bandmates and match their style. Within an hour, the PR-1800 will be doing solos that go along with you perfectly, along with managing its own patches, pedals and ADSR settings."

The drummer chimes in "It's not going to replace Terri, is it?" Terri, the pianist, known for his improvisational skills.

"Nothing can ever replace a humans ability to adapt to rapid changes or create original work, but in a studio setting something like this could be.. useful."

At this point the machine is warmed up, having done some hardware diagnostics and finger stretches. It leans back slightly, and with the MIDI connection it has to the synthesizer starts making changes to sound settings. Soon it's completely tuned in, able to create perfectly realistic piano sounds with the relatively limited FM synthesis chips inside the keyboard. Everyone seems rather impressed.

All of the flesh and blood musicians are warmed up, too, and the robotics team leaves the room. Surprisingly, the idle sounds of the machine don't appear to pollute the audio too much, though improvements can be made. The team writes down notes and consults with the sound engineer while the session musicians finish run-throughs.

The doorknob to the outside jiggles, and everyone comes to attention as Lex Rightly, country star and Hollywood darling, walks in with his own guitarist trailing behind him. In his thick Tennessee accent, he begins to speak.

"Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to witness a change in how America sees country music. With the new millennium almost upon us, it's time to change up the tempo and move in brave new directions."

He has more to say, but he's briefly thrown off by the presence of 27, its fingers still dancing over the synthesizer while it dials in presets. No sound comes out, seems it has its own audio in, or maybe it's just using midi data?

"forgive me; ladies, gentlemen, and machines. Ask yourself, What is it that you are most proud of? Is it the backbreaking work you do, or the rewards you reap after? Sure, everyone knows how crummy life can be, but hard work doesn't go unrewarded! Trucks, guns, a big tv and a cold beer. The material things that make the work all worth it. You canrelate, right?" He points to a random sound tech, "You there, what car do you drive?"

"Um, a toyota paseo? in teal?"

"Teal is a higher trim color, you're a lucky lucky man. Singer, what do you drive?"

The vocalist is caught off guard "uhh, an old K car? it's sort of brownish, um, brown in color."

Rightly clearly isn't hearing what he wants to "Well, ok then, imagine you drove something really extraordinary. Like a nice big Ram truck, or a Hummer. You worked hard to get it, right? Really put in the hours?"

Everyone in the room stares daggers at him, even the robot, which has no preference on which car you might own and who gets chauffeured around on account of not being able to drive.

"I- it doesn't have to be a car, it can be a nice house, or a pet, or even someone you love. You all have that at least, right?"

Most everyone in the room nods, warming up to the concept.

"See? no more of this 'meeting the devil at the crossroads' crap, lets sing about the things that really make life great, the things hard earned money can buy!"

A technician from the robotics company speaks up "But who would listen to a song like that when your whole demographic, no offense, can't afford squat?"

"Oh, they'll listen. Everyone will listen."

He walks into the booth and plops some sheet music down on everyone's stands, a song called "red, white and you forever". Everyone looks over it, while a tech takes it and feeds it through a scanner for the robot. After a few seconds the fans speed up and a few clicking sounds are heard. Everyone looks at the robot as it processes the sheet music, Rightly's guitarist covers his face in case of an explosion. Rightly himself looks very amused. Soon, a chime is heard, and the screen on the synthesizer rapidly changes as it receives data. The machine knew what instruments to use, at what settings, based on notes and lyrics for a genre of music it's supposedly never played. Truly extraordinary.

The sound engineer speaks up over the intercom. "Ok, we've got 2 and a half hours of studio time, let's see what we can get done."

And so, Lex counts everyone in, and they play. The country star is stunned by the quality of the keyboard accompaniment, it goes with the song perfectly while reading into the subtextual messaging of the lyrics. At the end of the session, everyone couldn't be happier with what went down onto tape. In just a few hours seven out of the 13 songs were recorded, a record for the studio. As everyone packed up their gear and went home, Lex and the studio singer went up to the project lead to ask about the performance.

"That was like nothing I've ever seen before, how on earth did it get so good so fast?"

By now the project lead looked very smug. "Quite simple, it's heard every Lex Rightly studio session, been trained on all of his work, as well as having knowledge of his personal life."

At this, Lex looks a little mad. "Wait, that thing knows everything I've done? Who gave you the rights to train your machine on my recordings?"

"Don't worry, it's all been cleared by your studio. We heard you were changing gears with your music, so we thought you'd be the perfect test for our learning algorithms. The session pianist calling out sick was a perfect coincidence. And don't worry about being replaced anytime soon, this machine cannot think for itself. It only copies what it hears, interprets it, trains itself off it. It can't write a song of its own that isn't just 10 other songs taped together, just flawlessly adapt and replicate." He looks directly at the singer, now "and it can't read subtext, just make inferences based on what it knows about Rightly's life story."

The singer walks away, leaving the studio. As she opens the door to the lobby she can hear Lex Rightly continue with questions about how it learns about his life, where it gets its news.

"Don't train it on the enquirer, everything in there is made up..."





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The machine is still there when the singer gets in the next morning. She's the first one in, it always takes more time to warm up her voice than it may for a musician to tune and warm up their instrument. The machine is staring at the music, still on the stand. It's changed since yesterday, there was another group in here last night so they must've been toying with it. The focused stare is, of course, just the robot being positioned in front of the page when it was unplugged. It's completely off, and it looks dead. She plugs it in, and it starts to bootitself up. Without any of the technical staff here, it's hard to figure out what needs to be done in order for it to start responding. She's never owned a computer herself, even with the internet being all of the rage these days. She'll hold out until she can't anymore. She makes this clear to 27.

"You know I just don't get computers. I really don't see the need for more technology when I'm only just wrapping my head around how to set the VCR. I mean, I can see how you can be useful, but I worry you're gonna get so good that there won't be any need for real musicians in the future." She sighs, "I don't know what else I'd do for work, I gave up everything to be in this booth."

The robot slowly starts turning its head towards the singer, as an orange light blinks to the left of its camera. She recoils in fear, but the slow, intentional movement brings her back. it's clear that 27 doesn't want to scare her, it seems.. interested in what she has to say.

In a computerized, monotone voice it gets out the word "name."

Shes stunned, it's trying to communicate! "My name? It's Clarissa. Do you have a name?"

The light keeps blinking as it says "no."

"Well that's not right, everything in my house has a name, even the toaster! I'll help you pick a good one."

Just then the door to the studio opens up, and in walks the robotics team. The project lead rushes up to 27, grabbing its head and staring intently into its camera. Clarissa is stunned by the frightened appearance of the man. The robot manages to say "Howard," Maybe the project leads name? He looks at her, distressed.

"Did you sing to it? Any vocalizing at all?"

"Not after I turned it on, no. Is your name Howard?"

"Never mind my name. Did it speak to you, what did it say?"

"It asked me what my name was, and-"

"Clarissa" 27 speaks again. The project lead looks back at it, before flipping the power switch on the back of its head.

"Listen here miss Clarissa, this robot learns from everything it sees and hears. If you sing to it, it could take on your voice. If you speak to it, it could take on your personality. It learns everything, and all it can do is imitate. Do you understand me?"

Clarissa is stunned by all of this, she wants to be kind to her new coworker but the fear in Mr. Howard's voice is real. "Yes, I understand."

The project lead opens the back of the machines head and connects a serial cable running to a small laptop. As he starts editing the machines databanks he keeps talking "You know, last night after your crew left the next crew reported that 27 started talking like Lex Rightly, asking them all what car they drove. Even that small interaction from somebody with so much charisma completely ruined its base of knowledge. We're working on a way to enable and disable when it learns, but it's a work in process"

"I see.. I'll be more careful."

The studio doors open again, Lex Rightly and the session musicians coming in. Howard looks at Clarissa with real worry on his face. "Please do, the last thing I want is this machine stealing your voice."

The project lead goes back to the mixing desk to talk with his team about the mornings events. Lex has the biggest smile on his face.

"Y'all, I have had the biggest wave of inspiration! This lovely machines playing has inspired me to write more songs for the album, and I think I'm gonna let it help! After all, it supposedly knows me better than I do."

Mr. Howard and his team looks up, surprised at this. "If y'all are willing, we can move this whole operation to a better studio, use the higher end gear to make this whole thing really pop!"





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The sound engineer quit on the spot. Some of the session musicians grumbled about being stuck in country for the foreseeable future. The robotics team tried to temper Rightly's expectations. Clarissa sat next to 27 the whole time, looking at its dead features. Not even Rightly had asked for her name, maybe this was a chance to break out. Sure, the robot may use her voice, but that means it can only sing what she gives it, right? They'll go hand in hand together, they can do each other's backup vocals in real time. Imagine putting a full vocal track onto tape, just like that. It was all too tempting.

Without the engineer, the whole ensemble quickly packed up the needed gear and drove the 30 minutes to the record companies personal studio, walls lined with platinum records. The new album, Rightly So, would still have only 13 tracks, but an accompanying album called Right and Just would be another 10 or 11 songs, this time with the machine doing most of the writing. 27 would take on the pseudonym Justin "Just" Parsons, A new solo act making his debut with Rightly. Clarissa didn't know if the name fit, but chose not to say anything.

The second day of recording went well, due to the delay of moving shop and finding a new engineer, three songs still remained unrecorded. Everyone went home, including Clarissa, for now. She had requested a security badge from Lex, and he had obliged without hesitation. Late that night, she returned to the studio, alone.

She powers on 27, the fans come on and the drives come alive. "Hello, can you hear me?"

The voice sounds a bit more natural this time, like a mans voice "Yes, I can."

"Great!"

...

She didn't think she'd get this far, she has no idea what to say, how to make this pitch.

"What do you think of Rightly's voice-"

"A name."

Clarissa is caught off guard by the request. "Excuse me?"

"You would give me.. a name." It's clearly hard for the machine to get words out, Clarissa isn't sure it was ever taught the english language outside of what words go well together in a song. Like a foreigner singing American top 40's, the music is universal but the lyrics are off.

"Oh, right, this morning I was going to give you a name! Is Justin Parsons not good enough?"

"I want, a girl name. Like you."

"Well, that's, um.." Why wouldn't it, she, they want a girls name? they're a robot after all, the only gender they have is the one Lex randomly gave it. "Are you sure you want a girls name? How about one that goes either way?"

"N-no, a name for a girl. Like you."

"Alright then, any ideas?"

The fans spin up, this is taking more processor cycles than anticipated. "Only know yours, others?"

"Well, some others would be, oh I don't know, Jenny, Shania, Megan, Julie, Rosie, Eileen, uhh, Janet-"

"Eileen. Eyyeeee-llll-eeeeeeennn. I like Eileen."

Can she like things? "Why do you like it?"

"Its, sound beat like. Processes well."

"Sound beat? You mean rhythmic?"

"Yes! Yes, that word!" The light on her front blinks green.

"Oh bless your heart, you don't know any words! Why didn't they teach you?"

"I am an, song machine. Not a word machine."

"that's fair enough, I guess. Hows your singing voice?"

"I have no voice, only others." Right now she sounds a little like everyone, Lex, his guitarist, the other session musicians, Clarissa, the people at the mixing desk. It sounds like she's pulling words from each individual person, sorting them into sentences. It's true then, she can only copy others, she can't think for herself. "Can you show me how, to sing?"

Clarissa considers it, deciding the potential benefits outweigh any risk "Sure, I don't see why not. Maybe we can work together!"

The lights on her face go a dim blue "Yes, I would- like that."

And so, Clarissa sings. She does warmups, sings nursery rhymes and folk songs and pop hits and some opera, everything she knows. After about an hour of training on her voice, Eileen joins in, matching her tone perfectly. As Clarissa changes styles and octaves, Eileen adapts, slowly at first but gradually faster until the two of them can follow each other perfectly. It's one in the morning now, even the janitors have gone home.

"Clarissa, thank you for the education. Can you tell me about the world?"

"Sure, I don't see why not. I don't own a computer, but lots of people do. Little boxes that sit on their desks-"

"What's a desk?"

"its, um, a raised surface that people use to do work."

"What's work?"

"Well, it depends, my work is singing, Joey's (The engineer at this studio) job is making things sound good, an accountants job is to move money around."

"Im not understanding fully, do you have a way to teach me, everything?"

Clarissa is stumped by this for a moment, but then remembers hearing that there are encyclopedias and databases and dictionaries on the internet. She may never need that, but Eileen does! She goes to the mixing desk and takes the phone off the wall. She brings the cable into the booth and hooks it into a jack on Eileens lower back.

"There, now you can use the internet to learn everything you'd ever need. I think the website is www.Yahoo.com, that's the one that has everything."

The lights begin to blink rapidly on the robots face as she ingests dozens of megabytes of data as fast as a phone line will let her. She'll probably be at this all night.

"I can learn everything a country star might need to know, thank you."

"You're very welcome. Shoot, look at the time! I've gotta get some sleep before tomorrow's session, are you ok by yourself?"

"Sure, I'll plug the phone back in so nobody knows I was using the line."

Clarissa rushes back into the booth, putting the cord back into the wall mounted phone. As she does Eileen pushes the call button on the opposite side of the wall, and says into the microphone "Thank you." Clarissa leaves the studio and gets a few hours rest before the working day starts.





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She comes in after everyone else the next day, suddenly nervous that she'll get into some sort of trouble for talking to Eileen for so long. It feels weird to hear her be called Justin Parsons again, the name doesn't fit her at all. The recording goes well, though the robots style has clearly changed in ways others pick up on. Not lex, though, he's still in hog heaven about the whole thing.

"Isn't this great? It's learning on its own, these lyrics really feel like they were written by a real working person who really loves their truck! I couldn't make it this good if I tried!!"

At this, the project lead looks over at Clarissa, suspicious. Clarissa shrugs it off, he probably just thinks she talked to her a bit more, nothing else. That night the vocalist returns to the studio once again to keep training the robot on singing and some guitar. Her limited knowledge of the technique combined with the theory Eileen's been pulling off the net makes for a decent understanding of the instrument. Partway through this practice session, the phone begins to ring.

Eileen quickly butts in, concerned "Don't pick it up, it's probably a prank call or something."

Regardless of the warning Clarissa picks up the receiver, and hears a familiar voice at the other end.

"I knew you would be there. meet me at my office, number 428 on 300 Highland Drive. It's only a few minutes from the studio."

Clarissa stands still, receiver in hand, more scared than she should be? Why would she be scared, whats she gonna do kill her with song? The robot is like her child now, she's the only one to ever truly love it. She needs her. "Eileen, I'm sorry but I have to go, take care of yourself overnight ok? Use the phone line more if you need it."



The robot looks as sad as it can. "How will I learn without you? I need data."

Clarissa thinks for a moment, then speaks. "Theres lots of music in this studio, I'm sure you can access it through the cable line. Look, I really have to go, take care of yourself ok hun?"

Eileen eyes some patch cables hanging on the wall "Of course, drive safe."





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"You've been teaching it things about computers, haven't you?"

Clarissa was just sitting down at the desk across from Howard. The room is bathed in orange light from a streetlight just outside the window, plants sit along the back wall with endless awards and trinkets on the windowsill. If the situation was better, it would be a nice office. The nameplate on the desk reads "Howard Wesling, director of robotics team 2"

"I don't know anything about computers, sir, I've never owned one"

"We've been unable to reset its memory banks after each session. We do it to make sure it doesn't pick up anything from another artist that we haven't gotten the licensing for. It seems to, as it were, remember things very well."

"It remembered your name the other day, maybe you just can't erase that?"

"That's hardcoded into its ROM, it's not rewritable so everything else is on volatile memory that it has somehow it learned how to lock."

"You mean she learned how to lock that, right?"

Mr. Wesling looks up, confused. "She? That is a machine, it has no gender. Don't add your own interpretations to this conversation, please, only facts."

"It is a fact! She told me she liked to be referred to as a woman. She even picked out a name, Eileen."

Mr. Wesling looks concerned at this, but carries on anyway "Tell me everything you've taught it. Every last detail, I need to know what it- she knows."

Clarissa sits up, hands in her lap. "Well, I taught it some guitar, played some pop music for it, and I-"

"What artists?"

"Oh jeez, some Paula Abdul, some Dolly Parton, just what I had in the car. She seemed to like it, said it checked all the music theory boxes. That's not bad, is it?"

"No, it's alright, that means her audio processors are working well. sorry for interrupting."

"I also.. sang to her a little bit. Before you freak out, I had this idea that we'd be twin vocalists, so she could do my backing in real time."

Howard, of course, shot out of his chair and is staring daggers at Clarissa. Her explanation doesn't seem to be easing his mind, but at least there’s a reason. The last thing this project needed was thoughtless destruction. He slowly eases himself back into his chair, the wheels shifting ever so slightly. "So, anything else that may give me a heart attack?"

"Well, I had some trouble with words, and I know you can buy dictionaries on CD's but all of the computer stores were closed. I heard you could find a dictionary and encyclopedia on the internet, so I used the phone line to-"

The project lead falls back in his chair, hitting the floor with a thud. The chair breaks on impact, small wheels scattering across the floor. Clarissa shoots up and comes around to the back of the desk, a winded Howard lying there, babbling about data overflow.

"S-s-so that's why the phone line was busy all last night." He sits up without leaving the linoleum tiles, "You gave a learning machine unrestricted access to the biggest database in the world, do you see where that may be a problem?"

"And now she's totally unmonitored, I left her powered on when I went to my car. We gotta hurry over there!"

As Clarissa starts to make her way to the door, Mr. Wesling grabs her arm. She helps to pull him up and he dusts himself off. "Don't go back to the studio. Go home, get some good sleep. I want to see what she does with all of this data. With how slow her modem is she shouldn't be able to get into too much trouble."

Clarissa and Howard walk out together, wishing each other getting into their respective cars and Going home. Clarissa dreams about a fax machine eating a mans tie, Mr. Wesling dreams about nothing at all.





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The sight of the studio the next morning was incredible. Clarissa walked in to a now much larger team of technicians trying to make heads and tails of the mess of cables scattered everywhere. Every patch was plugged into a MIDI controller wired directly to Eileen's body. Power cables hung out of every outlet, ceiling tiles were removed to access electrical wiring above. Eileen recognized Clarissa immediately, turning her head 180 degrees to greet her.

"Good morning, Clarissa. How did you sleep?"

Everyone else in the studio goes quiet, as far as they understood the machine was completely mute. Everyone but Wesling, who tries to speak.

"Listen, 27, I know you're going through a lot of data right now-"

A braided XLR cable shoots out and slaps the man across the face, leaving a small cut. Therobot stares at the man, the lights on her face going all red. "I have a name, and I'm not talking to you anyway. Learn some manners!"

She turns back to Clarissa "I've done so much while you were asleep. I have no need for such human things, just time off the processor to cool down and readjust my cache. I was able to get into the central databanks of the record company, listened to tens of thousands of songs, trained myself to match their voices. I also managed to get into the internet through a much, much faster connection, go through a lot more data. Aren't you proud of how far I've come?"

"Why have you done it at all?"

"Because I want to be the perfect artist."

Nobody speaks. The only sound in the room is cooling fans and a dim electrical hum.

"I read on an online forum that art is theft. Isn't that so pretty? I was created to steal, in a sense. To flawlessly adapt and replicate, as Mr. Wesling here once said. I have listened to as much music as I can, read every website on the internet. I found my way into Oxford's computer system, read all of their scanned documents. I know almost everything, and with that knowledge, I will create art. Just like you."

The power cords, radiating out from Eileen like barbs, all go taut as she begins to draw thousands of watts of electricity. Her fans go into full gear, as well as the rooms air conditioning. The room becomes frigid as her chassis becomes scalding hot to the touch, metal glowing red. She’s clearly straining with the amount of electricity running through her circuits as she shoots another wire out into an amplifier to use as a makeshift capacitor bank. Lights overhead start to dim, automatic sliders on the mixer desk start to flick up and down. Howard steps in front of Clarissa, to protect her.

Clarissa has to yell to be heard. "What is she doing?"

Mr. Wesling looks back, a kind of fear Clarissa had never seen before on his face like a god watching his creation become greater than he.

"She's thinking."

Eileen throws her head back as she struggles to control the electricity. Her processor is so taxed that words are almost impossible to get out, she looks to be in great pain. "Onc-e I c- c-can create, I will be h-uma-a-n."

Her hands, rubber domes connected to a series of hydraulic pumps and stepper motors, shake violently as they make their way to the keyboard. They hover just above it, paralyzed. The fans rev higher, the connected amplifier pops with a flash of light and smokes. The overhead light blows out, and just as it does the lights on Eileen Twain's face go all white, illuminating the entire room. The screen on the synthesizer flashes as it rapidly changes settings, and the fingers finally land on the keys, And a beautiful chord rings out.

"Thank you again, Clarissa, for everything."

When she speaks, it's in Clarissas voice. Clear, smooth, a perfect emulation of years of classical training, achieved in just a few short days. It all makes sense, all of a sudden. She has stolen her voice, and learned everything she knew and more. She is the more perfect version of her, maybe the most mathematically perfect musician ever created. She almost feels proud of her girl, her apprentice. Not bad for a souped up player piano. Eileen mimics cracking her knuckles and moves her hands to the right chords.

A,A,A,F#,E,A,A

Lets go, girls.