Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008 - (Page 48) New Notes: The Beat Goes Tech G Mark Godfrey combines his passions for math, science and music as a master’s student in the Institute’s Music Technology Program. that Godfrey decided to stick around campus to study music technology. “I was particularly interested in machine listening — having a computer understand music so that it can improvise with you or recommend songs to you, et cetera. There aren’t many schools that are really focusing on this artificial intelligence side of music technology, and since I was around when it was starting, I just jumped into it,” Godfrey says. “Surely my passion for music would have survived at another school,” he adds. “I’m just not sure I would have had the opportunity to combine it with my passions for math and science. For that, I feel lucky I was in the right place at the right time.” Godfrey ultimately hopes to land a job in the field of computational music analysis or information retrieval but may pursue a PhD first. When he decides to enter the work force, Godfrey believes his training at Tech will give him an advantage over other job applicants. “Most candidates for music technology positions will usually have experience on just one side — they have traditional music training and are selftaught hackers on the side — but I have solid expertise on both sides of the art-science fence.” Music’s Move to the Mainstream eorgia Tech may not be known for music, but its helluva engineers have been making it on campus for more than a century. The oldest student organization on campus, the Men’s Glee Club was founded in 1906. The Georgia Tech band, now celebrating its centennial, was formed by 14 students in 1908. Today, about 2,400 students participate in the music department’s instrumental and vocal ensembles each year. Despite this rich tradition of musical performance, it has just been in recent years that music has become part of the academic rigor at Georgia Tech. “Prior to 2001, the department functioned as a service organization,” Clark says. “There had been some projects but no sustained research in music and technology. There were no tenure-track positions in music, facilities were in desperate need of improvement and almost 40 percent of music’s budget came from the Student Government Association. It was an inappropriate and unsustainable scenario.” Clark recalls that then College of Architecture Dean Tom Galloway and Tech’s provost Jean-Lou Chameau formulated a strategic plan to move music into the academic mainstream at Georgia Tech. “We realized that students from every major, every college and every discipline on campus were participating in our classes and ensembles,” Clark says. “We asked if we could combine the current majors and interest areas with music. For example, if you’re an electrical engineer and you love music, is it possible that you could combine those in some way? If you’re a computer scientist and a musician, how do you artistically and aesthetically integrate music and technology?” A key component of the strategic plan was to attract leaders in music technology as tenure-track faculty. In 2003, Weinberg, just one month after earning his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, joined Georgia Tech as director of music technology. Charged with designing the curriculum and hiring faculty for the new program, he met with leaders of industry to find out what skills graduates should possess. Only a few universities in the United States have music technology programs, most of which train students to become engineers who work in the studio with mixers and technical equipment, Weinberg says. He found that Tech students have the technical know-how to do much more. “When I came here, I tried to design a program that would be right for Tech but also unique if you compared it to other leading programs in music technology,” he says. “We want to focus on inventing new enabling tech- >>> 48 Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2008
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.