Music Technology Students Innovate, Spring 2019

Electronic Product Design for Music and Audio, lead by Professor Steven Litt, debuted during Spring 2019. In this multidisciplinary course, students with previous experience in analog and digital electronics, put their ideas and skills into building innovative hardware-based electronic devices. Projects spanned from musical instruments and controllers, to other gadgets which related to each students interest in music and audio.

From new ways of utilizing MIDI controllers, to a fresh way of playing a guitar, these projects are a strong indication of where the future of music technology is headed. We would like to congratulate these students on their impressive work.

Here are some of the incredible products which were developed this past Spring semester.

The SmartBow

“an electromagnetic bowing device for guitar that creates unlimited sustain and rich harmonics across each string”

This device, built by Paul Odenwaldt works on a feedback loop based on the vibrations of individual guitar strings.

The Harmonizer

“takes an audio signal (usually a human voice) and auto-tunes it to whatever notes you play on an attached MIDI keyboard in real time”

This device by Ethan Bailey allows users to create as many harmonies out of their own voices as they can play keys on a keyboard

The Pouli

“allows woodwind players and people who have never touched an instrument to immediately play something beautiful.”

This electronic instrument, designed by Jake Sandakly, modeled after the woodwind family, can be played exactly like a flute by using a breath pressure sensor and pressure sensitive buttons

The portaMid

“works over the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol which allows one to control music apps on any  Apple iOS device”

This product, created by Matthew Dunlap, is a portable external MIDI controller for your phone. Just plug in and play!

The Ro-MC-001


“allows for easy adjustment without the hassle of taking the mic down”

This gadget, made by Quinn Scacheri, is a remote operated microphone clip which can be used when recording concerts or when booming on set.

You can also watch demonstration videos, gain insight into project details, and much more on each innovators blog, linked to their names below.

Netflix’s “Green Door” Brings Together Music Technology and Steinhardt Alumni

The NYU Steinhardt and Music Technology alumni community is truly incredible. When Music Technology Master’s Alum Shao-Ting Sun was asked to be brought on as the sound supervisor and music producer for Taiwanese psychological thriller “Green Door” (魂囚西門), he believed it would be an fantastic opportunity to bring his fellow NYU Steinhardt classmates, friends, and faculty onto the project with him.

Shao-Ting Sun

In the end, 60% of the musicians that played on the soundtrack were NYU Steinhardt Students / Alumni / Faculty :

  • Alexander Wong (Music Technology with a focus on Screen Scoring)
  • Sean Kim and Ian Chen (Screen Scoring)
  • Cristina Huang (Viola Performance)
  • Meghan Todt (String Studies)
  • Josh Henderson, Josh Hunton, Bryan Hayslett
  • Alan Silverman (Music Technology Faculty)

Thank you so much to NYU Steinhardt for covering this incredible story. You can read the article here.

Alexander Wong and the String section

Music Technology Open House 2019

The NYU Music Technology program invites you to join us at our annual open house!  This event showcases our awesome students from the undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate programs.  Current students are encouraged to submit their work in the contests and exhibits described below.  Friends and family are welcome to attend and enjoy the food, refreshments, and fun! 

Music Technology Open House 2018 Promo Video
The Open House will be hosted on May 11th, 2019 in the
Steinhardt Education Building at 35 West 4th Street, NYC 10014
Reception will be located on the 6th floor with other events and showcases on the 7th and 8th floors. 

EVERYONE IS WELCOME!
The open house will play host to a variety of student and departmental showcases.  We encourage you to invite your friends and family to attend.  Live music, installation experiences, discussion, and critical review sessions will all be open for viewers.

PRELIMINARY EVENT SCHEDULE
9am – 12:30pm: Senior Capstone Presentations (Students/Faculty Only)
2pm – 5:00pm: General Presentations & Project Displays 
3:30pm – 5:00pm: Recording Competition
5:30pm-7pm: Concert

Dr. Agnieszka Roginska 2019 AES President Elect

 

     At the beginning of 2019, Music Technology’s Dr. Agnieszka Roginska officially became the AES’s newest President Elect before she becomes the president of AES in the following year. We wish Dr. Roginska the best this year and we look forward to seeing all of her amazing work with the AES this year.

Q: What are some major decisions the AES executive board has to discuss?

The board itself takes larger decisions such as the vision of the society. What I think a lot of people don’t see is that throughout the 3 days of AES, there’s nonstop meetings of sub  committees. For example, there is a a convention policy committee that meets and they decide we’re going to be, there’s a conference policy committee that decides on specific topics take based on proposals from different different people, there’s a big standards committee to decide on the all the AES standards like formatting standards.

Q: What motivated you to take on this challenge?

I have been involved with the AES for many years so feel like I have in-depth knowledge about what the AES is. I also was thinking a lot about how there is a lot of imbalance in terms of the diversity that exists in the AES and the entire audio industry. As you know, we’ve been paying attention to SWiTCH (Society of Women in Technology) here at NYU and I’ve always tried to be a champion for women in the audio industry. And in this past year, I had a personal revelation that if I wanted to see more women in more leadership roles in audio, I said, “you know what, I should be one of those women”.

Q: In what ways can Music Technology students benefit from being involved with the AES? 

In my opinion, I think that any student that’s involved in any type of audio should be an AES member. It is designed to allow all students to be a part of the AES. The AES the largest conglomerate of audio professionals in the world. So if you are a member, you now have access to an enormous network of professionals, companies, and activities that involve your field. The best thing students can do is to enter this network as early as possible. At first it might be really overwhelming when you go to the conventions, but when you enter this network and you meet the people, you realize that they’re not only great at what they do, but they’re also really nice people. And there’s always been a culture at AES of “passing it down”. For instance the more senior members of the society want to give back and mentor and younger members of the society. You soon realize how easy it is to enter the network.

Congratulations once again, Dr. Roginska!

The 2019 Audio Engineering Society Board of Governors Announcement:

http://www.clynemedia.com/AES/Election_Results_2018/AES_Election_Results_2018.html?fbclid=IwAR1pkzFgEWAwhYVpYliYaLPZqcwyThomdaSFhfxyamHg6zI_5y56ta0Xhl4

Dr. Roginska’s AES member profile:

http://www.aes.org/member/profile.cfm?ID=557211590

 

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Music Tech Alumna Emily Lazar Wins Grammy

Congratulations to Music Tech Alumna (MM ’96) Emily Lazar for becoming the first woman mastering engineer ever to take home the Best Engineered Album (Non-Classical) Grammy for her work on Beck’s “Colors”.

Lazar has worked on over 2,000 albums with artists such as David Bowie, Foo Fighters, Destiny’s Child, Paul McCartney, and more! Emily Lazar earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Creative Writing and Music from Skidmore College and later attended NYU Steinhardt’s Music Technology program to get her Master’s degree. While at NYU, Lazar pursued Tonmeister studies and was awarded a Graduate Fellowship.

See the music video for Beck’s “Colors”.

Check out Refinery 29’s story on Emily Lazar’s Historic Win.

 

Grad Student David Baylies Performs at Electrobrass Conference

Grad Student David Baylies Performs at Electrobrass Conference 

At the beginning of November, Music Technology Master’s student David Baylies performed at the NYC Electrobrass Conference showcasing “Stella”, an electronic trumpet that David started in the summer of 2016  to allow trumpet players to use synthesized sounds within DAWS without having to change their trumpet technique. The Electrobrass Conference focuses on the advancement of American music through the combination of brass instruments and live electronics. Throughout the weekend, conference attendees had access to amazing clinics, seminars, and concerts given by some of today’s greatest musical minds!

At the conference, David performed an improvisational piece on “Stella” which a snippet can be heard here!

 

To find out more information about David’s work on “Stella”, you can find him at his website: https://www.openstella.com/

Congratulations David on your performance!

WCBS News Radio Covers SONYC Project

WCBS News Radio Covers SONYC Project 

A Huge thank you to WCBS News radio for covering the Sounds of New York City (SONYC) project! The SONYC project is a National Science Foundation funded research project in conjunction with NYU MARL and NYU Center for Urban and Science Progress that monitors NYC noise levels through a complex sensor network system and machine learning and listening techniques.

“The noise levels in the city are incredibly high,” says Charlie Mydlarz, the senior research scientist for the Sounds of New York City (SONYC) project at the NYU Center for Urban and Science Progress. “In certain locations they are at levels that the World Health Organization considers to be harmful to health.”

Check out the video here:

https://wcbs880.radio.com/articles/nyus-noise-study-new-york-city-sweet-spot-mike-sugerman?fbclid=IwAR2Z_U-O6JXpy7aTmltlixgeMkrMbykKB5XJZxG9UsIOsfbIil6DIbIlGcI

 

 

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WSN Covers the Holodeck

WSN Covers the Holodeck

A huge thank you to NYU’s independent student newspaper, Washington Square News, for highlighting Music Technology’s Dr. Agnieszka Roginska and her team’s work on the Holodeck! The Holodeck is “a staging environment in which participants can engage with various virtual reality environments” that has received a multi-million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation.

Check out the article down below!

The ‘Holodeck’ Propels NYU to the Future

MARL Talk: Serge Belongie

From Visipedia to PointAR  by Serge Belongie

 

Abstract:

In this talk Prof. Belongie will provide an overview of his group’s research projects at Cornell Tech involving Computer Vision, Machine Learning, and Human-in-the-Loop Computing. The talk will cover projects involving identification of plant and animal species (Visipedia) and learning perceptual embeddings of food (SNaCK). It will conclude with a preview of a new effort to build a projector-based, human-computer interaction apparatus that allows computers to point to physical objects in the real world (PointAR).

Serge Belongie received a B.S. (with honor) in EE from Caltech in 1995 and a Ph.D. in EECS from Berkeley in 2000. While at Berkeley, his research was supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. From 2001-2013 he was a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at University of California, San Diego.

He is currently a professor at Cornell Tech and the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University. His research interests include Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Crowdsourcing and Human-in-the-Loop Computing. He is also a co-founder of several companies including Digital Persona, Anchovi Labs and Orpix. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the MIT Technology Review “Innovators Under 35” Award and the Helmholtz Prize for fundamental contributions in Computer Vision.

SWiTCH Collaborates with Artist Camille Trust

The NYU Society of Women in Technology (SWiTCH) recently got the opportunity to record, engineer, and help produce 3 tracks for pop artist and singer songwriter Camille Trust over this past weekend!

From 8 am until 6 pm, SWiTCH members from all grade levels got together and set up microphones for band members and vocalists, patch up  patch bays, run consoles, troubleshoot signal flow, run Pro Tools, and engineer a recording session with Camille Trust and her band.

For more information about SWiTCH and how to be part of their upcoming events, email:

nyuswitch@gmail.com.

 

 

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