Not mechanical, so much lower resolution... but you might have recently seen the History of Japan video being linked around... the guy who did that, Bill Wurtz also did this:
P.S. In case you missed it this is the History of Japan one again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh5LY4Mz15o If you watch it again, you can hear him using that technique of harmonizing with his own spoken voice in the background music of that video.
Something awesome happened to me. I've known the album well but I didn't know the track was from Bambi. It was a weird track. Some time later I decided to watch Bambi because I was into animation classics and it was awesome all the time thinking "where have I heard this before?" Thank you for making me remember this awesome experience I've had.
It's like with those "Play X backwards to hear the Devil" type videos. You understand it perfectly with subtitles, but close your eyes and it's gibberish.
I remember when this first came out there was some discussion (possibly here on HN?) that even the sound in the video was post-processed by overlaying some of the original voice. Although I can't seem to find it now, there's a recording of the piano without this editing, and it's far less comprehensible. In other words, they're cheating a little.
I always though this was amazing, and a great disappointment that there weren't more videos and documentation about the project. It clearly took a lot of effort, and it's a shame that there's nothing more than a news report to show for it.
I don't have a specific recommendation, but Lansky sounds a lot like the Tape Musician's of the 50's. Said musicians would slice and glue together countless snippets of sound recordings of real objects or spoken voice to create their compositions.
Today, the same can be accomplished digitally. Here is a recent example (though a little pop-music like):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAwR6w2TgxY
I'm really curious about the build of the bot. Are the "fingers" that press the keys pneumatic? I'm about to start an unrelated project but it does need fast responding "pressers", which might be classified as actuators. What are the benefits of using air powered vs electric? Does a bot like this have a huge can of compressed air or need to be hooked up to a pressurized line?
Consider the low resolution of this piano speech. Pay attention at how many notes are used to create that low resolution speech, then imagine how many notes/frequencies are really used in natural speech.
As an amateur singer it's amazing and frightening how big is the range to sing out of tune.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBI-nZTUgf8
There's an entire subreddit of this stuff as I guess it's really good practice for playing by ear:
https://www.reddit.com/r/zappafied
It includes this awesome Palin one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBI-nZTUgf8
P.S. In case you missed it this is the History of Japan one again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh5LY4Mz15o If you watch it again, you can hear him using that technique of harmonizing with his own spoken voice in the background music of that video.