Arpeggio, the “Piano SuperDroid,” is designed to roll up to any piano and align itself 88 “fingers” on the right keys and its “feet” on the pedals.

    The machine is capable of playing with over 1,000 levels of individual keynote expressions and 256 pedal positions and it reproduces human piano performances just as they were recorded.

    Arpeggio is the brainchild of Nick Morris, owner of Majestic Piano Works located in California, the U.S.

    Arpeggio operates on Wayne Stahnke’s Live Performance LX reproducing system, which allows it to reproduce human piano performances just as they were recorded by the original artist.

    “There are several different programs that Arpeggio uses to playback,” said Morris.

    “The first and more advanced is a high-resolution playback program. When an artist plays a piano they play with feeling or what we call expression.”

    They can play extremely soft passages followed by thundering loud fortissimo* playing.

    “After a recording has been made on one of these high-resolution type pianos, the data is stored. When wirelessly sent to Arpeggio, it will playback the performance with extreme accuracy. The other form which is more commonly used are MIDI files. Arpeggio can playback general MIDI files as well however they do not have the delicacies of the above mentioned programs. From a visual standpoint we often compare it to watching analog tv versus HD TV.”

    Arpeggio is similar in height to the stool that a pianist sits on. It rolls up to the instrument and places its “fingers” on the correct keys — all without human interruption.

    It also has extension at the bottom, which allows it to push both sustained and softer pedals.

    (SD-Agencies)