A pianist demonstrates the Skywalker project

Changing Music with Technology

Changing Music with Technology

The Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology aims to transform the ways we create and experience music, and to create the next generation of technology for composition, performance, consumption, and education.

About the Center
A photo of the Segulharpa.

Listen to Five of the World’s Newest, Wildest Instruments

The New York Times highlights five of the 2021 Guthman Musical Instrument Competition finalists in an article that focuses on invention and musical motivation. Get music critic Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim's take on the competitors' inventions.

Read the Full Story at the New York Times See All the Winners
Sheet music wrapped to form a heart. Credit: Dragan Todorovic Getty Images

Music Heals the Heart

Music and the heart are intertwined. Musical works are influenced by arrhythmias, music listening induces physiological changes, performing music effects heartbeat pattern, and hearing heartbeats elicits empathy. Dr. Grace Leslie, director of the Brain Music Lab, co-authored an article published in Scientific American detailing the connection between music and an individual's cognitive and cardiac states.

Read the Article at Scientific American Brain Music Lab
Georgia Tech Research Shows Listening to Heartbeats ‘Boosts’ Empathy

Listening to Heartbeats ‘Boosts’ Empathy

New auditory technique changing emotional perception and connection

Lead investigator and recent Georgia Tech Ph.D. graduate, Mike Winters conducted the research in the newly formed Brain Music Lab, led by Grace Leslie in the Georgia Tech School of Music. The study applied knowledge of the well-known emotional effects of musical tempo with applied knowledge in sonification and experimental design that Winters had picked up working with Bruce Walker in the Sonification Lab.

Read the Story Brain Music Lab
Jason and the team at Georgia Tech doing gesture recognition and training.

Leading the Change

New auditory technique changing emotional perception and connection

Since 2013, Jason has been working with Gil Weinberg, a renowned roboticist and founding director of the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, to develop the world’s most advanced robotic drumming arm. Their latest design uses Google’s open source machine learning platform, TensorFlow.

Learn More About Jason's Work Ways to Get Involved

First Place: Segulharpa

The Segulharpa, created by Ulfur Hansson, is new and unique among electro-acoustic instruments. This large circular walnut instrument holds 25 steel strings, which are "bowed" by powerful magnetic fields. Touch sensors are embedded into the grain of the wood, and as the player touches the surface, wonderfully complex interactions are created inside. 

Watch the Video See All the Winners
A woman plays a modified trombone to a crowd of smiling students.

The 2021 Moog Hackathon

Hosted by Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology and the Georgia Tech School of Music,  the 2021 Moog Hackathon came to life through a virtual format from February 12-21. For it's 7th annual edition, the Moog Hackathon welcomed 12 student teams that accepted the challenge to design and build novel musical instruments using Moog platforms and other software and hardware prototyping tools.

In collaboration with the Georgia Tech Invention Studio, Moog Hackathon participants competed for $6,000 in prizes. Check out this year's teams and their projects.

Visit the Hackathon Page on the Guthman Website

Making Music with Brain Waves and Heartbeats

Georgia Tech School of Music professor Grace Leslie was recently featured on Science Friday, a program that spotlights entertaining and educational stories about science and technology. In the video, she discusses how she uses her brain and body to compose music, and how she develops new technologies in her research.

 

Prosthetic Drumming Arm Sets Record

Jason Barnes, a one-armed drummer, sets a Guinness World Record with 2,400 beats a minute with the help of a prosthetic drumming arm invented by researchers at the Center for Music Technology. The prosthesis includes two drumsticks: The first is controlled both physically by the musician's arm and electronically using electromyography (EMG) muscle sensors; the second “listens” to the music being played and improvises.

Watch the Guinness World Record Video
A woman performs on the drums as Shimon improvises with her.

Inventions Featured on 'The Age of AI'

Gil Weinberg, founding director of the Center for Music Technology, and the Robotic Musicianship group were featured on the YouTube original series "The Age of AI." Hosted by Robert Downey Jr., the first episode highlighted three of the group's inventions: Shimon, an improvising robotic marimba player; Skywalker, a prosthetic hand that allows amputees to play the piano; and the prosthetic drumming arm.

Watch the Episode on YouTube

Our Research

Our research focuses on creating innovative musical technologies that transform the ways in which we create, experience, and learn music.

Robotic musicians perform with humans.

Robotic Musicianship

Facilitating meaningful musical interactions between humans and machines.
Colleagues converse at a dry erase board.

Music Informatics

Designing the next generation of intelligent music software.
Two people conversing at a computer.

Computational Music for All

Seeking to engage a broad and diverse public in creative and collaborative music-making.
A student uses a brain scanner in an experiment.

Brain Music

Combining brainwave data and other physiological measurement techniques with new music technologies.
An image of a musical score and graph to illustrate computational and cognitive musicology.

Computational and Cognitive Musicology

Using scientific methodology to answer questions about how people respond to musical structure and organization.

See and Hear What We Do

Watch and listen to recent work that displays the various ways in which we create and experience the next generation of technology for musical composition, performance, consumption, and education.

Robotic Musician Performance

Skywalker Hand Demonstration

Live EarSketch Demo

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