Hi everyone, wow! 20,000,000 views! I think that makes this (at least one of) the most viewed Lego creations on KZfaq! Thanks to everyone who enjoyed it and showed it to their friends! One of the things that goes with getting 20,000,000 views, is that I get a lot of comments (over 10,000 now). I can’t reply to all of them, but a lot of the questions are repeated, so I’m going to do an FAQ on why this video / creation came about. I think a lot of Lego fans love it! Which is awesome - the purpose of sharing this video was to help spread ideas and hopefully inspire the creative spark in the minds of other people to create something unique themselves. After all, I, myself, bought myself a Mindstorms kit after seeing the Cubestormer and some of the very clever designs by other builders like akiyuky and JK. On the flipside, I think a lot of guitar players looking for covers end up with this video in their suggestions too, and they are often less than excited about the idea... I want to be clear - in no way do I think that this is the future of music, nor do I think we could / should replace a single musician with something like this - I am a music fan myself, and believe me, that is not the intention. I just like making stuff... Anyway, on with the FAQ! Q: But why? / You have too much spare time on your hands! A: Yes - I did! At the time I made this, I was off work with an injury for an extended period of time and could barely leave the house. So out came the Lego! I decided I wanted to challenge myself to make something using Mindstorms that nobody else had made. I wanted to do something a bit more productive with my downtime than just watching TV etc. Q: The motors are so loud! / Why didn’t you use an electric guitar? A: There are a few answers to that one: 1- Because I was stuck at home not working, I wanted to do this as cheaply as possible, so I bought the cheapest guitar I could find. Lucky for me, the fret board was nice and flat, the strings were nice and soft and roughly 1 Lego stud apart. Without these things, the project may never have been finished. 2- I filmed this with my phone which really picked up that motor frequency, and if you play back the video through a phone or tablet etc, it sounds even worse again. It sounded like a guitar in real life! You’ll just have to take my word for it :P 3- I didn’t get a chance to test it out, but I had been told you can’t have electric motors near electric guitar pickups - the pickups work on measuring vibration of the metal strings via changes in the magnetic field. An electric motor constantly stopping and starting causes interference with the pickups and you get unwanted noise anyway. There are a few guitars with optical pickups out there which are immune to magnetic interference, but that sort of money was well beyond the scope of this project. I just wanted it to work. Q: But it has no soul! A: Correct, it is literally made from a small pile of Lego. If you can build a Lego robot with a soul, please link in the replies below :P Q: Wouldn’t it have been easier to just learn to play the song yourself? A: Probably! But playing the song wasn’t the goal - building an original Lego creation was. Also, one of my hands was in a plaster cast up to my elbow so that wouldn’t have worked very well for me! Q: Yeah - it’s just 4 chords over and over! Modern pop music sucks - even a Lego robot can play these songs! A: Well, music taste is entirely individual and subjective and we're not here to argue about what constitutes "good music". What I gathered from looking at people’s interpretations of the lyrics, the song seems to be about depression and loss, which I’m sure resonates with a lot of people and means more to them than a guitar solo would... Anyway, in the studio recording of this song, the guitar is kinda just rhythm in the background and the song is predominantly the vocal and horn melodies - there is a bit more to it musically and lyrically than just the guitar... But I chose this song because it fit a very specific set of conditions that made the fretting and strumming mechanisms possible to build with Lego. A Mindstorms kit comes with 3 motors. You can control how fast those motors turn, and when. That’s about it. So making mechanisms that can turn the rotational motion of 3 motors into playing any song at all on a guitar is still a challenge and meant - among other restrictions - that I was limited to more of a rhythm guitar part. Q: But can it djent? A: Nope. Q: But can it play Slayer? A: Nope. But when Slayer releases a song with a 4 chord rhythm guitar part... The fans will not be impressed and neither will I. So double nope :P Q: This is the birth of Skynet! / Robots took er jerbs! / You need to stop!/ This is the end of humanity! A: That’s flattering and all, but Lego is a very restrictive media to work with. There are incredibly fast and accurate pick and place robots out there that are light years ahead in their capabilities compared to this. Watch this video: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/r9Kbabl-p7LWpoE.html of a motherboard manufacturing facility from about 4 mins in and you’ll see that if someone wanted to make a robot that could play the guitar, they could have made one - a very good one - by now. But nobody wants to see it, nobody wants to listen to it, and if you want to program music or produce it electronically, there are much easier ways to go about it. There will always be a place for guitarists. And keep in mind this motherboard manufacturing video is nearly 10 years old - Yer jerbs are safe. Q: Can I get some instructions / the program? A: Unfortunately no, if you watch this video explaining the workings of it - kzfaq.info/get/bejne/e7RdasZ-z9OqpmQ.html - you will see why. But long story short, it plays this song only, fits this guitar only, and that’s it. This was the first program I ever wrote in Mindstorms and it’s a bit of a mess and really hard to explain or adapt for your own use. You’d be better off starting from scratch. If you’re interested in Mindstorms programming, I have a walkthrough video and download of a more well-written program for my Daft Punk lyric video here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/qdlxq9R6udGtoIU.html Q: Why can't it stay in time with the backing track? A: Because this is a recording of human beings playing music, the tempo wanders a bit. Nobody can play in perfect time and exactly the same every time (no matter how talented the musician), so sometimes the chorus takes (for example) maybe 18.1 seconds, and other times it might take 17.9 seconds. It might not seem like much, but it adds up over the length of a song. The robot will play the chorus the same each time, so in a way it's actually more "correct" than the actual recording. But apart from timing the exact length of every bar, and including that timing in the programming, there's not much you can do about it. I'm sure there is software out there that could have time-aligned the two audio tracks after the video was filmed, but I don't have it :( I tried to make small cuts here and there, but gave up in the end. Well, I think that’s about it! And if you commented “awesome” or “nice work”, Thanks! If you liked and/or shared, Thanks! I can’t reply to everyone, but if you can look past the noise and see the engineering and design and appreciate that you’re watching a kid’s toy performing a complex task and think that’s pretty cool, then THANKYOU, nice to know some people get it! :) If you liked this creation, I have a couple more on my channel here: kzfaq.info/love/oNipcvUWi49uL-4qyr79WQ Let me know if I forgot anything! Peace!

20 % of the sound: guitar 80 %: machine

1:58 funniest moment

1960s: robots will take over the world in the future. 2010s: Mindstorm: So anyway, here's wonderwall

Imagine you’re at a party and this rolls up and starts playing songs

The squealing motors give it that much-needed industrial edge.

now a damn robot gonna take all the girls

When you don't know how to play a guitar and graduated as an Engineer

Guys plz dont mad at the machine sound. The machine is singing!

Everyone talking about how much noise the machine makes but honestly I don't think I can sing better than that

When you can't play an instrument worth a fuck, but you have an engineering degree...

I think it'd be cool to do this with an electric and plug it into an audio interface for recording, so you can get the raw input without the robot sounds. Then you could have a "bloopers" section and/or behind the scenes that shows how you made it, programmed it, struggles you encountered, and what it sounds like without using the audio interface.

2020 just got worse, even Lego knows more guitar chords than me!

uhhh this is actually astounding

does this count as electronic music?

girl: my love play something ... boy: I'm out of batteries sorry

This thing plays so much better than I do :D Puts so much emotion to it. Bravo!

Could.we take some time to appreciate the person who made this cause even I do programing and that is no easy feat!!👏

The skill to design and program this is fantastic. Well done. One wonders what those who knock this have achieved.

This is officially the most awesome thing I´ve seen in a long time ! Well Done Dude. Keep shredding ! :)

that must've felt so satisfying to finish and see it in action. great work

Play this on a electric guitar and interface to eliminate the sound of the legos

so much soul

*Wowwww.* okay this is absolutely *INCREDIBLE!!*

Congratulations! What a brilliant project to complete! Awesome! Thank you.

Now it's a electric guitar

When LEGO plays guitar better than me....

The good thing is the youtube algorithm is confused and does not delete the video for copyright reasons. :D

the new instrument is the robot because of its volume.

Verse: *Electronic whirring* Chorus: *All hell breaks loose*

When you can’t play the guitar, but want to impress the girl with your Engineering skills😂👍🏻

you guys just so much amazing. thank you!

After watching this i am very inspired *to sell my guitar*

The robot make much more noise 😜😜😁😁

"what is my purpose" you play bad indiepop "oh my god"

I found this video through a random yt recommendation years back, and I am still coming back to this vid to this day

The mechanical sounds have a beat of their own and I love it

This is how skynet starts.

The 20K people who disliked don’t realize how hard it is to do this

I was looking for a lyric video of this song and this video popped up. Damn, not disappointed one bit. 👍

Not bad at all! Your build is actually well done, which is quite amazing! Welcome to the ranks of Expert Builder! You ROCK!

Morty: Rick! The radio broke! Rick: One second

When you watch a movie while eating chips

Just came here after watching a SpitBrix video. This video is 10/10 because the programming was great, I love what you did, I know it was hard but that hard work is paid off.

The "best" Lego available when I was a kid was the first Technic sets, which had some pneumatics, and the ordinary Lego just started using 9v batteries with lights and sounds. This is on a whole other level. Just Wow. Amazing. =)

This is dope, I would love to see how you made this!

Imagine the robot playing for a girl "Oh I wasn't programmed to play that song, anyways here's wonderwall"

This is incredibly inspiring!

That’s awesome. Very creative

lego will conquer the world

Huge job! Great perfomance!

Insane invention! Really cool

but does it djent?

People saying they don't like the video because the song isn't to their taste makes me want to leave this planet.

wow it's really beautiful

this is so awesome 👍

Lets be honest we didn't search for this video.

Me: Spends years of learning guitar. Robot:

A true work of ingenuity 😀👍 greatwork 😎

So fun that sound

Dude , this is insane. Imagine people back in 1800 , never would’ve thought legos could be able to play a guitar. They could’ve never imagined legos either

This mechanism makes one understand how the complex the human being is.

Parabéns pelo trabalho,,, pela inteligência,,, Nunca tinha visto algo assim nesse nível, a NASA precisa de mentes assim.

wtf well done man, this is sick.

When you don't know how to play a guitar but you are an engineer xD

Thanks god my arm doesnt have this sounds when i move it

I think I've heard this song before. Thank you for this video.

bro this is gold

I am going to start the worlds most cost effective band with this.

A brick can play better then me ._.

Musicians , nothing to worry about . we cool

This is so cool

1:58 i'm dead 😂

Next: Van Halen Eruption.

Woaaaa its amazinggg!!

Really awesome!!!

I have a feeling people are more a fan of the lego than the music

That awkward moment when some plastic and motors can play guitar better than you...

Ingeniously!!!!

Fantastic !!!!

When the science teacher says the best project will win a chocolate

Did the legos develop calluses?

This is the most precise Lego machine I've ever seen.

Wow now I was mesmerized

Wakes up one morning and finds Lego has possessed his guitar

This machine needs oil.

Wonderful construction!

wooooow... .thats amazing

nice, but, put this on an electric guitar so we can hear the guitar louder instead of the machine noises

2:00 Sounds like Starwars Lazer Beam Fight

Amazing!!

*It's a Great!!! Just a Fantastic Construction!! I give you BIG LIKE for this!!!*

2:00 when everyone finally leaves the house

Can we just appreciate the patience and hard work in making something like this!

That's AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!

incredible

Hi everyone, thanks for the kind words. However, I don't have any building instructions for this. I built this bot to fit this particular guitar and to play this particular song and any variation on that would change the design significantly - the fretting part has been designed to play those 4 chords in that order, so different chords in a different order would need a different design etc. I've tried to do a few close ups of all the main working parts so you could incorporate those ideas into your own variations. Hopefully I've given you some ideas though!

I love it when that lego warrior goes full berserk

AWESOME !!

how genius do you have to be to create one of these masterpieces Nice job im subing