Can Lego play the drums? [video]

What is so fascinating about this? The Internet hasn't been a meritocracy since sometime around the turn of the millennium.

It's a music box, a very impressive one. But you don't need the Roland kit Lego even has sound modules for it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mspB1BmO-F0

Ha ha, I suspect the little bit of flex in the Lego plastic, other imperfections adds a "humanization" to the drum pattern that is output.

It was funny after electronic drums started to gain steam that software sequencers started adding a "humanization" attribute to take the robotic perfection out of drum sequences. Sort of the opposite of auto-tune.

We have found the exception to Betteridge's Law.

Or, perhaps, there is a Lego proviso to Betterige's Law, where any question with Lego in the headline is always "yes."

I used a Roland R8 in the late 80s and loved/hated it for the humanization functions they added to the instrument; it could subtly modify the sound parameters at each hit to make it sound like it came from a real person hitting a drum or cymbal in different areas, however it lacked the most important one: timing. A human drummer will never be accurate to the millisecond, but rather will apply very small anticipations/delays at each note, with good drummers capable of doing it on purpose within given limits. Adding such a feature would make it sound even more real. Nothing compared to a real drumset played by a real drummer, however: the number of variables is just too high to be accurately emulated by today's technology. AI might help with that, but don't forget about latency: when drumming live, a few milliseconds is already too much delay.