Sean Levine, a recent graduate of the BS/MS dual degree program, is giving guitarists more flexibility to experiment with style. “I’m using deep learning to analyze guitar playing, then select guitar effects based how the player plays,” Levine said.

Levine based his project on his 15-year experience playing guitar. “You can have an amplifier with all these different presets for different styles, but I don’t want to be constantly turning through that,” he said.  “So I wanted to make this system where I just play whatever I want, and it moves with me. If anything, it helps me try stuff I haven’t done before because I’ve so fixated on having this one effect.”

Music technology allows Levine to combine passion for music and skill in engineering to expand his understanding of both. “This field intermeshes two different things I know so well to gain more breadth, into things like neural networks, statistical models, and engineering problems. It’s been a really good avenue for me to branch out from things I already know.”