Music Tech is Different Here
Music technology students at Georgia Tech say this program does what they didn't think was possible.
Students who are passionate musicians that are also interested in engineering, robotics, computing, and science, can feel like they have to choose one interest over the other in their academic life. Our students were excited to find a major that engages their artistic and technical sides in equal measure.
These are some of their experiences.
Raghavasimhan Sankaranarayanan
Master of Science in Music Technology
I've been a violinist for 20 years, but I also was interested in building robots. I knew a lot about music, and I knew a lot about engineering. But I didn't know how to put those two things together and research how to do the things in music technology I really wanted to do. This program showed me how to do that.
If you want to go into research, whether it's university research, industry, or business, this is definitely the place to come to. The master's program here is the only one I've found that includes a research class every semester. And not just research by yourself. That means you actually do research - as a class - every semester.
Chad Bullard
Bachelor of Science in Music Technology
When I first came here, I thought I was going to go into audio production as my career. I figured my degree would just supplement my experience as an audio engineer. But as soon as I got into the Intro to Audio Tech I class, we started learning how to make sound filters from scratch in MATLAB.
In order to get us to understand the importance of how the filtering system works, our professor did a lecture on how the human ear works. That was by far the single most attention I've ever paid to a lecture before. Everything just sort of fell into place from there.
Ally Stout
Bachelor of Science in Music Technology
I came in with just about zero technical skills. I was just a musician. I had a lot of background in music theory, history, and performance, but nothing with literally anything else. I look back and see how far all of my colleagues and I have progressed, and it's really cool.
I never would have imagined I could do anything like my project studio three years ago. I didn't know what Max/MSP was, I didn't know how to program, I didn't know how to do any of this. It's really interesting to see how far we've all come.
Lauren McCall
Master of Science in Music Technology
Coming here really opened my horizons. With technology being such a large part of our world, I decided that studying music technology would use my skills to the best of my ability. The classes I've taken have really helped me to understand so many different things that I can do.
I've gotten the chance to develop different interactive systems. I'm exploring expressivity in the instruments, and different ways for musicians to play instruments, the different pieces of music that I can write, and about how ensembles can work together with acoustic and electronic instruments added.
Seth Holland
Bachelor of Science in Music Technology
Music technology is using computer science, programming, and other technological methods to study the characteristics of music. Then it takes that information to create new compositions, analyze music in a way that's never been done before, or create new hardware or software interfaces that use music or musical signals.
I've learned a lot about how we've been able to harness music in technology, and how that gives us capabilities to analyze and express music in ways we weren't able to do 40 or 50 years ago. It's definitely taught me how complex music is, but also how beautiful and rewarding it can be when you tackle the physics of it, and create something new.
Takahiko Tsuchiya
Ph.D. in Music Technology
This major offers a lot of opportunities and is a very rich experience. I've been lucky to be part of many collaborations with other schools here at Georgia Tech. I've done projects with the School of Biology, the School of Psychology, and computer scientists from the Georgia Tech Research Institute.
They were all interested in the use of music with research projects they were working on. It's a good example of the variety of fields that music technology can interact with. It can be vague and difficult to define as a field of study, but only because it intersects across so many fields.