As a trombone player for the past 17 years, I love everything about this. I initially clicked the thumbnail to see how you figured out the nuances of the lip control, I think the lack of control adds to the novelty of this project. I love your over-engineered noise machine.

Thank you! It means a lot coming from a trombone player! :D 

Completely agree with Cody - I love it! I've played with worse sounding players too ha ha

I think it'd be awesome if you could get this machine to play (or try to play) a sad trombone like tune :)  

It sure would! The original idea was to play this: https://youtu.be/CgHW02YF50s but given the state of the machine it would make more sense if it was sad! 

Replicating the lip vibration is hard. Terrible sound by human standards. Good start though.

Yes very hard! It’s a combination of lip tension and how the player shapes their mouth as a resonance chamber that makes the sound. I don’t think I’ll get it better than this without a ton if effort... 

I always thought the trombone would be the most difficult instrument to play since it's so analog -- not like a piano, with keys for each note, or a guitar, with frets and separate strings. The tiniest difference in slide position on a trombone means a different note, and replicating the position must be very difficult. Glad there's something we humans are still better at than robots.

Agreed! It’s a complex instrument. I chose it because I wanted the robot arm effect but I couldn’t manage anything resembling music...