Your Ramblin' Wreck. Our Future.
The Georgia Tech School of Music welcomes a variety of Georgia Tech students every day — from rock guitarists to violinists to singers to sousaphone players. Not only does the School of Music offer students traditional opportunities to further their musical interest, the School also offers undergraduate and graduate programs in music technology that equip students to envision and create the future of the music industry. Through a variety of backgrounds and experiences the very diverse student body in the School of Music, the courses, ensembles, orchestras and choral groups create a rich and eclectic environment for innovation and exploration in music and music technology. These three alumni stories are just an example of how students with very diverse interests and experiences can thrive at Georgia Tech and expand their academics in music with technology and computing to achieve more than they had ever dreamed possible.
For more information on how you can help more students with stories like Nadia, Kate, or Chalece, please contact Jacquelyn Schneider, the Development Associate within the College of Design.
To give to the School directly, click on the link below.When you enter your gift, select "Other designation" and specify it as "School of Music".
Nadia Zaragoza, trumpet player in the Marching Band
Nadia, a San Diego native, visited several college campuses as a prospective student. She quickly realized that Georgia Tech was the only school that made it possible for her to pursue a major in engineering and also do all the other extracurricular activities she was interested in. “Other places would tell me ‘You can do marching band, but it’s hard to do with engineering. Or they’d say ‘You can study abroad, but it’s hard to do with engineering.’ When I came to Georgia Tech, they told me ‘You should totally do marching band! You should study abroad! You should intern! You should do everything. We have so much for you,’” she says.
Nadia majored in Materials Science and Engineering, but she spent a lot of time in the music building for her role as a RAT parent within the Yellow Jacket Marching Band. This position, which is supported through the Long Family Scholarship, is one where she helped new members of the band acclimate to life at Georgia Tech. She understood the importance of the role well because of her own experience. “Coming from California, I didn’t know anybody in Georgia at all. So joining marching band was like having 300 immediate friends!” She also served as a PLUS leader and mentor for physics on campus, and she got many members of the band involved in the program as well. “I feel like when you gain clout in the band, you can help increase awareness within the band of the resources that they have available to them,” she said.
Nadia’s ultimate goal in life, she said, would be to do engineering by day, and play a jazz club by night. For Nadia, Georgia Tech is one of the only places that made it possible to keep her dream of studying engineering AND music with equal parts of passion and dedication.
Kate Bosen – BS Music Technology student and singer
When Kate Bosen first came to Georgia Tech, she planned on majoring in history. But when she spoke to a professor after one of her choir classes, she realized how much she wanted music to be a larger part of her life. The new BS degree in Music Technology was the perfect program for her to do that. “I realized I missed music, and I was also interested in Music Technology because I could actually get a job afterwards, which I didn’t find from any other music programs around,” says Bosen. Kate’s excellence in academic study, research, and music performance was recognized in her final year with the Kim Scott Logan Award, the highest honor given to a music technology student.
Kate stayed deeply involved in music, both in and out of class. For her music technology capstone project, she worked both to discover new modes of artistic expression and to find new therapies for clinical patients. “It’s really kind of poetic – we're asking questions like ‘How do you make music out of a heartbeat?’ or ‘How do you make music out of a brain signal?’ she said. In the lab, she partnered with classmates to create a device that will enable a person to sing who has lost control of their face muscles, such as a victim of a severe stroke. She and her group envision their device as something worn on the face that takes in data when the user “thinks” of a pitch and syllables sub vocally, and outputs that as audio data. The end result would be a person that appears to be silent, but is actually singing. Singing is an important part of Bosen’s life: when not studying or working on research projects, she served as president of Georgia Tech A Capella.
Kate attracted early notice from industry, securing a coveted internship at a music startup and fielding offers for full-time jobs upon graduation.
Chalece DeLaCoudray – MS Music Technology student
Chalece studied Music Technology in her undergraduate education, but her major focused more on learning how to succeed in a professional recording studio rather than on advanced research. After graduation she started working with Tree Sound Studios in Norcross for several years before deciding to continue her education. “As I got deeper and deeper into it, I started realizing that the music technology I studied as an undergraduate was so limited. There was so much more that could be done by intersecting music with advanced technology, and I wanted to be right there in the middle of that,” she said.
When she applied to Georgia Tech, she realized that she did not have the same technical background that most other Tech graduate students received as undergraduates. So to make sure she would qualify for the program, she taught herself the technical skills she needed to succeed. “I went and studied all the math, all of the computer science I could get my hands on. I also took an online Digital Signal Processing course because I knew if I could figure that out, I would be just fine,” she said.
Since then, Chalece thrived in the MS Music Technology program, where she was the recipient of a Herbert P. Haley fellowship. Her graduate project involved quantifying trap music, a sub-genre of hip hop, and defining what traits within it have enabled it to remain relevant and popular for over 20 years.