I wonder who woke up one morning and thought “I need to build a machine that can beat out rhythms really fast and really loud on that old drum I’ve got in the garage”?

Troy Rogers, Steven Kemper and Scott Barton of Expressive Machines Musical Instruments, that’s who.

They’ve created Madi (the Multi Mallet Automatic Drumming Instrument) which uses various brushes and sticks connected to a controller to beat out one heck of a cacophony of noise.

“We are a group of composers seeking new modes of acoustic sound generation. Our goal is to develop and compose for instruments that maximize temporal, timbral, dynamic, and harmonic possibilities. This quest has led us to create robotic musical instruments.”

Nice work, guys, and I’m sure you could get it to calm down a bit for more genuine performances. In the meantime, you’ve built a great device for getting your own back on those neighbors in the next block who woke you up at 4am with their drunken hollering.

(Via Hacked Gadgets)