Innovation

Meet CU Boulder startup Specdrums

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 16:53:26 +0000

Meet CU Boulder startup Specdrums Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/18/2018 - 10:53

College of Music student Jenna Palensky is also a full-time team member at Specdrums, a Boulder startup that was recently acquired by robot toy company Sphero. Jenna talks about what it’s like to be a musician working at a music technology company.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lJ1EGc_dnQ&feature=youtu.be]

College of Music student Jenna Palensky is also a full-time team member at Specdrums, a Boulder startup that was recently acquired by robot toy company Sphero.

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Mini-Documentary: CFI 2017

Anonymous — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 22:22:52 +0000

Mini-Documentary: CFI 2017 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/06/2017 - 16:22

Jessie Bauters

In a special partnership for the 2017 edition of CU NOW’s Composer Fellows’ Initiative, CU Boulder’s Eklund Opera Program teamed up with CU Film Studies students to create short films to accompany student-written and student-performed opera scenes at the ATLAS Black Box Theater. Watch the video below for highlights from this year's workshop.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeJFMB9_lMU]

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Leveling the playing field

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 15:02:57 +0000

Leveling the playing field Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/07/2017 - 09:02

Jessie Bauters

Kylie Dale, Elise Campbell and Callan Miller pose with their award after coming in third place at the CU New Venture Challenge finals.

Every really good idea had to have its genesis somewhere.

For Elise Campbell and Callan Miller, it was in a dorm room.

“It’s fun to look back on all the progress that we’ve made since then. We’re so much more confident in our purpose as musicians,” says Campbell.

The recent College of Music graduates will be spending their first summer post-undergrad building on their really good idea. And they won’t be doing it alone.

After taking the top prize in the performing arts track of the CU Boulder New Venture Challenge, the two flutists came in third at the campus-wide competition with a pitch for their online platform Gigsicians. That means they have $7,000 in their pockets to turn that idea into reality.

“But we also got some help from a venture capitalist in the area,” says Miller. “One of the judges, [former musician and cofounder of the Foundry Group] Jason Mendelson, approached us afterward and offered us an additional $5,000 to get started.”

Gigsicians began as an online gigging platform—what the founders describe as Airbnb for musicians. The problem it attempts to address is daunting: Only one percent of college music students go on to have a career in music.

The perception is that there just aren’t jobs for them. But Miller and Campbell suspected there was something more to it than that.

“Our mentor inspired us to find the root of the problem,” Campbell explains. “The private musical performance business is an $11 billion industry. It’s not that there isn’t a market for gigging musicians. There is a market—young musicians just aren’t tapping into it because they’re being told it’s not there.”

From that epiphany grew the current Gigsicians platform: an interface that educates music students on how to be professional musicians and connects them with event planners hiring for gigs. Users create profiles with biography information and audio and video clips, which event planners can then browse when they’re hiring.

The profiles are verified by the students’ primary professor. By partnering with music institutions, the Gigsicians team hopes to overcome a barrier to entry that has long plagued young musicians.

“Event planners tell us it’s too risky to hire young performers without prior experience. They are often unprofessional and unverified and don’t know the expectations of playing for an event like a wedding. It’s just easier to hire from the set vendor list that planners have always worked off of,” Miller says.

“But this way, these well-known music programs can vouch for the musicians.”

The platform offers different modules of content that students can use and customize, such as contract generation and information on arranging music for timing at events, doing your taxes as a freelance musician and distinguishing yourself from other performers. Campbell and Miller are working with computer science graduate Kylie Dale—who played flute in middle school—to build the site.

Miller says she and Campbell came to CU four years ago to be orchestral musicians, but they became interested in entrepreneurship early on with the urging of their professors.

“We couldn’t have done this without help from Jeff Nytch, Daniel Zacek, Christina Jennings, Yoriko Morita, Joan Braun and others who have mentored us along the way.”

Now, the College of Music and the Entrepreneurship Center for Music will be among Gigsicians’ first clients: After spending the summer developing content, the team hopes to launch a beta test with the ECM in the coming months.

“We also have letters of intent from Lawrence University in Wisconsin and the University of Indiana,” Miller adds, “so we’ll be able to get feedback from those schools on how the platform is working.”

Campbell says now is the time for a service like this to enter the music world.

“Musicians want to share their passion and their talents that they worked so hard to perfect. Music schools and their students are hungry for this.”

Elise Campbell and Callan Miller are already winning awards for Gigsicians, the online service that connects musicians with event planners hiring for gigs.

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Online summer piano course open for registration

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Apr 2017 13:13:21 +0000

Online summer piano course open for registration Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/11/2017 - 07:13

Jessie Bauters

Alejandro Cremaschi walks students through the basics of piano playing using custom videos and the tools Piano Marvel and Classroom Maestro.

This summer, Alejandro Cremaschi will teach a class of 15-20 students the finer points of beginner piano playing. They'll go through a sequence of fun piano pieces and learn about rhythm, reading music, hand placement and chords—and they'll do it entirely online.

“It presents a lot of opportunities and a lot of challenges,” Cremaschi says. “Students can work at their own pace, and the course is open ended so they have the opportunity to do more than what’s required. But I’m also not there to see their technique in person, and unlike a regular class, they’re not in the same room learning together with their classmates.”

The associate professor of piano pedagogy first started teaching the online course three years ago to accommodate students outside the College of Music who may be interested in composition or music technology.

“Piano is really the most accessible instrument. You can create harmonies, you don’t have to worry about intonation, you don’t need to spend six months learning how to make a sound from it. So a lot of people learn how to play the piano as a gateway to music.”

Though the class consists of more than a dozen students, Cremaschi says the online format means it works more like a one-on-one lesson. Students complete several assignments each week, progressing to more difficult pieces as the course goes on. The class culminates with a project that requires students to accompany a hit song song by Coldplay.

The coursework is facilitated by an electronic keyboard and an online tool called Piano Marvel, which work together to give students real-time feedback on their playing. Cremaschi also has students record videos of themselves playing so he can keep an eye on their positioning and coach them each week.

“One of the benefits for me is that I usually travel in the summer—this year I’ll be in Brazil—and this way I’m still able to teach,” he explains. “I conduct office hours via Skype. I have to be very quick to answer emails, because when there’s no face-to-face contact, students can’t just raise their hands when they have a question. I want them to feel like I’m there with them.”

Videos from Cremaschi himself early on in the course lay the foundation for proper technique, showing multiple angles and thoroughly explaining the correct physical approach to playing the instrument.

To combat the loss of social support present in a classroom, Cremaschi has integrated group discussion into the course.

“Being around other people who are playing can be motivating and encouraging. So I have students share their videos with each other and comment on the other students’ playing.”

New for this semester, Cremaschi hopes to unveil a new technological solution to distance learning challenges: During his sabbatical, he’s been working with a group of computer science students to develop a tool that allows students to store and share video and MIDI files and do live conferencing all in one place.

He says he hopes to continue improving the app to meet a growing need in music in higher education.

“There’s a lot of interest in developing this course model, especially for faculty teaching non-music majors in group settings. We’re one of only a few colleges offering this kind of online introductory course, and I think there’s a future in this.”

The online piano course is open to non-music majors and takes place during Summer Session B, July 11 through Aug. 11. Look for Piano Class 1, MUEL 1115, Section 200 in the CU Course Catalog.

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Alumni spotlight: Sam Estes and Cole Ingraham

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Feb 2017 13:12:57 +0000

Alumni spotlight: Sam Estes and Cole Ingraham Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 02/08/2017 - 06:12

Jessie Bauters

Alumnus Sam Estes works the audio booth.

When you’ve helped prolific composers such as Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman write film music, it’s probably safe to say you know a thing or two about what it takes to create a memorable and fitting score in Hollywood.

You also know how challenging it is.

Sam Estes (MM ’05) is hoping that expertise—along with a healthy knowledge of composition technology—will help him and his colleagues find success with Amper Music.

“My co-founders and I had been working in LA for quite some time, and we decided to create a tool for music and media professionals who were having a hard time getting music put together for videos.”

Two years ago, Estes, Michael Hobe and Drew Silverstein started working on an algorithm-based program that creates a unique score based on musical attributes selected by the user.

Essentially, it would make the process of scoring music for a video more seamless and precise.

Sam Estes (MM '05) helped found Amper Music.

“Right now, music editors have to go to music license clearance sites and sort through hundreds of thousands of songs to find one that might suit their video,” Estes explains. “Even then, it probably won’t work out just right.”

Estes brings his expertise in music technology, recording and acoustics to use in his position. While he was in Boulder, he worked under College of Music Recording Engineer Kevin Harbison hooking up microphones and recording different kinds of instruments in different settings.

“My specialty is in the performance of the instruments and recording in a way that makes the music sound more realistic when we play it back.”

As Estes and his team started to flesh out the idea, they knew they needed more help from musicians who knew their way around SuperCollider, the coding language they were using to build the program. Estes reached out to Associate Professor of Composition Michael Theodore.

Cole Ingraham (DMA '13) works as a developer at Amper Music.

“I asked if he knew anyone who was a pro and he suggested Cole.”

The suggestion led to a Skype call to the other side of the world. Cole Ingraham (DMA ’13) was living in China, teaching music composition and theory at a private music school in Shanghai.

Ingraham says he knew this was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. “I enjoyed what I was doing, but I wanted a chance to do something else. This combined my passions for music and technology, so I took the job.”

Ingraham was an ATLAS fellow as he earned his composition degree from CU Boulder. Focused on music technology, he says he was always encouraged to explore new outlets for his music. “I had immense freedom and ability to try things and be self-directed. I never felt like it was out of place,” he says.

With Ingraham on board leading a group of composer-developers, the Amper Music team has grown to nine employees and six interns. The biggest requirement for everyone working on the project is a background in music.

“I’m a composer first,” says Ingraham. “And that goes for all of the programmers here. Everyone is a composer or a high-level musician.”

“That’s why we will never set out to replace the composer or the musician,” Estes adds. “There’s always going to be a human component to composing that’s more intelligent that the computer, and our users will be able to manipulate the sounds to make them work.”

The innate understanding of the technological and musical side of their industry has been a benefit to both Estes and Ingraham.

“My music background gives me a different perspective on things,” Ingraham says. “As I become a better programmer, I become a better musician and vice versa.”

“In the movie music industry you have to be a jack of all trades,” says Estes. “You have to do sound design, be an orchestrator, a copyist, a music editor. That’s really where the value of dabbling comes into play.”

Check out Amper Music for yourself on the company's website.

Alumni Sam Estes (MM ’05) and Cole Ingraham (DMA ’13) are changing the game in film scoring, helping build a music composition software based on an algorithm and user needs.

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College rolls out new interdisciplinary program

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Dec 2016 21:43:59 +0000

College rolls out new interdisciplinary program Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 12/07/2016 - 14:43

Jessie Bauters

Students give presentations during a music technology class in the CAML lab at Imig Music Building.

When the College of Music was founded nearly 100 years ago, students composed exclusively on paper, listened to music on gramophones and used the library's card catalog to learn more about its history. Needless to say, things have changed a bit since then, and those changes have been ushered in by rapidly improving technology.

To that end, the College of Music next fall will unveil a new Media and Technology emphasis within its existing Bachelor of Arts in Music degree.

First conceived as part of the strategic planning process and approved last month by the faculty, the new emphasis combines already-offered courses at the college and departments across campus into an interdisciplinary degree that organizers say will go a long way toward preparing students for a changing musical landscape.

“Students are growing up with technology in a way that’s unprecedented,” says Daniel Kellogg, associate professor of composition. “We hope this will open the door to lot of artistically minded, creative applicants who have a love of music but are also heavily interested in technology.”

The new emphasis starts with the classes already required for the college’s certificate in music technology, then partners with the College of Media, Communication and Information, the ATLAS Institute and the College of Arts and Sciences to allow students to tailor their studies.

“There will be a lot of flexibility in what courses they can take to fulfill the emphasis. Twelve credits will be from computer science or design or engineering or filmmaking, with most of the credits coming from the College of Music.”

It’s an idea that's already piqued the interest of students. John Buford, a sophomore pursuing the BA in music, has always wanted to learn more about the synergy between music and technology.

“Technology is being updated from day to day and will keep progressing. Music is doing the same and I would love to join in and learn as much as I can about music that is not just instrumental.”

Lukas Moldawsky agrees. The sophomore composition major is already taking classes to earn a certificate in music technology, and he’s considering the new emphasis once it becomes available.

“My goal in the music world is to become a producer and work in studios, and this seems like a perfect fit for that agenda,” Moldawsky explains.

Kellogg says Buford and Moldawsky are not alone—which speaks to the potential for this program to have a big impact on the college.

“I’d say a goal of the emphasis is that in a few years, we’ve attracted new and interesting students who add to our already vibrant and creative community at the college,” he explains.

Another goal is to encourage collaboration between the College of Music and other departments on campus—a key component of the College of Music Advantage.

“The College of Music's strategic plan calls for it to develop several new programs that connect music to other fields,” says College of Music Dean Robert Shay. “Music is unparalleled in allowing for interdisciplinary connections with a variety of other fields, and many of the pathways students are now pursuing lie to some extent in the spaces between the disciplines.

“While we will continue to pursue excellence in all of our traditional offerings, it's important now that we not limit music within the boundaries of the past.”

It’s a change that’s not lost on students like Buford.

“Music is something that is growing and developing every day, so to be a college that offers music technology is fantastic.”

Adds Moldawsky, “I think it will draw more people into the college. Students who have an interest in music technology now have an option that fits that route.”

Kellogg says as the college acknowledges that the same, singular molds of the past century of music study may not serve students forever, this degree will allow students to form new molds.

“It gives students a lot of different options for their future,” he says. “They don’t have to walk out of here and feel like there’s only one track forward for them. They can apply their creativity to even more careers than before.”

The BA in Music with an Emphasis in Media and Technology Studies will be officially available in Fall 2017; to view the degree plan, visit the Undergraduate Advising section.

The College of Music next fall is launching a new Bachelor of Arts degree in Music with a Technology and Media emphasis.

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Bigger, bolder and brighter: Announcing the College of Music Advantage

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 16:28:16 +0000

Bigger, bolder and brighter: Announcing the College of Music Advantage Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/19/2016 - 10:28

Jessie Bauters

Dean Shay addresses alumni before the April 2016 Boettcher Showcase Concert.

The College of Music continues its push toward a bigger, bolder and brighter future for music at the University of Colorado Boulder.

And it’s a journey the college’s many stakeholders are embarking on together.

Dubbed the “College of Music Advantage,” the college’s 10-year strategic plan was unanimously approved by faculty and subsequently endorsed by staff and the Music Advisory Board in early 2016.

In his third year at the helm of the college, Dean Robert Shay says the support the plan has received can be largely attributed to the way it was drawn up.

“It was important that this was a homegrown plan,” Shay explains. “Early on, we developed a sense of it being our collaborative effort with everyone having a stake in it. The priorities flowed organically from a series of conversations among many constituents.”

Those priorities—which will be presented publicly before the CU Symphony Orchestra concert this Friday, Sept. 23—include everything from increasing student and curricular diversity to expanding the College of Music’s footprint with newly renovated spaces on campus.

Shay says the college is poised to get off to a great start.

“A critical time in the strategic planning process is between approval and the beginning of implementation. We have now developed action plans for each year, determined who will be in the driver’s seat for each initiative and decided on necessary resources and deliverables so we can measure our progress effectively.”

In the first year of the plan’s implementation, the College of Music will see several of its top students and ensembles travel to New York’s famed Carnegie Hall for a showcase concert in Weill Recital Hall this November.

The appearance, along with the April 2016 Boettcher Showcase Concert in Denver, represent a major goal of the plan: to connect student success to professional achievement.

“These opportunities not only give students a chance to perform in some of the nation’s greatest venues but also grow our presence in major urban centers,” Shay says.

Other projects on tap over the next few years—such as the creation of a bachelor’s degree in music with a media and technology emphasis and the expansion of the Musicians’ Wellness Program—are part of the college’s goal to provide more than performance opportunities for students.

“We want to deliver a well-rounded education for all our students, whether they are earning performance or academic-based degrees such as music education,” Shay explains, “though for all students we need to be sure we’re including value-adding experiences that position them for professional success.”

Also coming down the pike are enhanced alumni resources, an annual distinguished lectureship on diversity and inclusion in music and the establishment of a student professional development travel initiative.

As the college looks toward its 2020 centennial, Shay says it’s crucial that administration, faculty and staff not rest on their laurels. “Any successful organization must always be thinking ahead several years and anticipating changes.”

That rings especially true for music in higher education.

“In music, it’s a critical time. So many of the previous conceptions of music education and music careers have been changing rapidly, and this plan allows us to position ourselves as being on the forefront of preparing musicians who will be the leaders of tomorrow.”

The public is invited to learn more about the “College of Music Advantage” this Friday at 8 p.m. at Macky Auditorium before the first CU Symphony Orchestra concert of the year. You can also find more information on the website and read more in the 2016 edition of Colorado Music Magazine, coming in October.

Before this Friday’s Symphony Orchestra concert, Dean Robert Shay will unveil “The College of Music Advantage,” the college’s strategic plan.

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Mini-Documentary: CU NOW 2016

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 14:46:33 +0000

Mini-Documentary: CU NOW 2016 Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/02/2016 - 08:46

Jessie Bauters

Renowned opera professionals Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer brought their working opera "It's a Wonderful Life" to the University of Colorado Boulder's CU NOW workshop in June 2016. They will premiere the piece during the 2016 holiday season at Houston Grand Opera.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2vN_11y2lk]

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Searching for historical clues in music

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 22:02:23 +0000

Searching for historical clues in music Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/14/2016 - 16:02

Jessie Bauters

Students of Rebecca Maloy pose at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in May.

Music can often provide a window into worlds long past. A particular Schubert song could transport you right back to an ornate parlor in 19th-century Austria. It’s hard not to picture Mozart at the podium in front of a hall full of white-wigged aristocrats when listening to The Magic Flute.

But instead of just invoking certain periods of history, what if music could shed light on the comings and goings of a forgotten culture?

Associate Professor of Musicology Rebecca Maloy and a group of PhD students are beginning to have just that revelation as they study a type of chant found in medieval Spain around the same time as Gregorian chant.

“Old Hispanic has been a neglected area for a long time in chant scholarship,” Maloy explains. “While there are some similarities to Gregorian, all that remains of Old Hispanic is the notation.

“And we don’t know what the notes sounded like in the seventh century.”

Maloy and graduate students Mason Brown, Ben Cefkin, Ruth Opara, Megan Quilliam and Melanie Shaffer recently presented their research on Old Hispanic chant at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

“We basically looked through huge databases of chants to find all the text matches we could, then looked at the notation of the Gregorian and Old Hispanic melodies to see whether they were connected,” Maloy says.

From there, the team looked for similarities that could offer clues about what inspired the chant, what it sounded like and the interaction between the two cultures.

Although the Old Hispanic chant is mostly independent from Gregorian chant, Maloy and the students discovered that the two traditions share more repertory than previously thought.

“If there were chants based off the same scripture, for example, that could be a signal that there was some crossover in the traditions,” explains Melanie Shaffer, a PhD candidate in musicology.

“And because we know what the pitches sound like in Gregorian chant, we can compare how the notes moved up and down to guess what they sounded like in Old Hispanic.”

What they found was surprising—and potentially game-changing.

“There were so many connections,” ethnomusicology PhD candidate Megan Quilliam adds. “It was impossible to say they were coincidence.

“The big question is—what does it mean?”

Each student took a different approach to a different quandary, bringing their expertise in musicology and ethnomusicology to the table in different ways.

“We were seeing [that], while there might not be musical correlation, the chants highlighted certain words in the same way,” says Quilliam. “In one of my chants, I was looking at 'lux,’ which means light, and both traditions assigned the same note shapes to each syllable in similar chants.

“That means the two melodies could have come from the same place.”

As researchers, the students say they learned a lot about how to improve their methods by observing and taking cues from their peers.

“I’ve never understood why there’s not more collaboration in musicology and ethnomusicology,” says Quilliam. “By grouping your knowledge together, you see how other people approach their different goals and you make changes to what you’re doing based on what you learn from them.”

“It helps with the workload,” Shaffer adds. “In order to make meaningful observations during a tight timeline, you have to divide up the work to get it finished faster.”

Shaffer says the fact that Maloy has been focused on this subject for the better part of six years helped the seminar class as well.

“There’s something comforting about not feeling you’re trying to reinvent the wheel on a project. We really benefited from Dr. Maloy’s methodology as a launching pad.”

Maloy says the paper was well-received at the interdisciplinary conference. What she and her students found could inform not only music history but also general history about medieval trade, communication and collaboration.

“Historians have studied different forms of prayer and noted these connections, but musicologists haven’t. This is the first time anyone’s looked in depth at parallel chants.

“These chants are tokens of cultural contact that we don’t have any other record of. Trying to discover when and how that exchange happened is fascinating.”

Several musicology PhD students and Associate Professor Rebecca Maloy delve into the meaning of Old Hispanic chant, a contemporary of medieval Gregorian chant.

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The sound of innovation

Anonymous — Tue, 17 May 2016 21:43:38 +0000

The sound of innovation Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/17/2016 - 15:43

Jessie Bauters

Michael Mann, a 2016 ecology and evolutionary biology graduate, and Hugh Lobel, a 2015 DMA graduate in composition, work on Music_SDP in the ATLAS Institute lobby.

As music and technology evolve, it only makes sense that they should evolve together, the principles of one informing and helping better the other.

This idea—that music making happens more efficiently with the help of technology—is behind the unique invention of one College of Music graduate.

“I’d been writing music using every instrument I could for years. But I started to realize that in order to really do what I wanted, I needed a new platform for my music.”

Hugh Lobel, who graduated in 2015 with a DMA in composition, is using the benefits of technological innovation to make it easier for anyone to compose his or her own music. His weapon in the fight is The Music and Sound Design Platform, or Music_SDP.

“It’s a totally open-source and free music creation platform designed around live performance,” Lobel explains. “It facilitates exploration and experimentation in a performance setting.”

The trained programmer is building the platform from the ground up. He first got the coding bug at the University of Texas at Austin while earning his master’s degree in composition.

“At first I didn’t expect to take it very far. I didn’t think I needed programming to make the sounds I wanted to make. But I immediately found that I could never do this without programming.”

Using a coding language called Max, Lobel began developing his platform six years ago. At that time, most options for digital music creation were based on a digital audio workstation, or DAW, system.

“It allows people to record music into tracks and create compositions by combining different tracks in different orders,” he explains.

Over time, Lobel strayed from the DAW model, landing on his own concept as he pursued his doctoral degree in Boulder.

“A lot of artists were creating electronic music live. I started to think about how I could do that in Max.”

But to allow for live improvisation, Lobel knew he’d need to do a complete redesign of his product.

“It has lot of the same functions, like the ability to generate sound with synthesizers and record and manipulate audio, but the tools and functions are based on guitar pedal boards. They’re customizable based on the piece you’re writing.”

The pedals—called modules on Music_SDP—can be instruments, sound effects or recordings. Their adaptability allows for on-the-fly decisions in the middle of a performance.

The program can also be controlled by any number of different kinds of hardware. “You could use a keyboard, for example, to control the system,” Lobel explains. “You can set the modules so that the F key plays back a certain audio file or the E key plays a certain chord.”

Since a soft launch of the product last May as part of his dissertation, Lobel has continued to tweak the product, bringing what he’s learned as a teacher at the college and as a student of composition professors Michael Theodore and John Drumheller into the design.

“I’ve taught Max at CU, and of course every time you teach something you learn so much. That sparked an interest to continue making revisions.”

He’s also been getting help from other students. Chandler Spoon, who graduated this May with a bachelor’s degree in horn performance, and recent ecology and evolutionary biology grad Michael Mann, make up his team on campus.

“And BLOrk [student ensemble the Boulder Laptop Orchestra] has been using the software in its current and previous forms during performances, acting as bug testers for me.”

The ultimate goal of the project, Lobel says, is to make it a community-driven platform that’s free and easy for anyone to use.

“The most important thing is that the platform has value, and that happens when it’s at everyone’s disposal. You don’t need $10 to download it, and you don’t need to know anything about programming to use it.

“By making Music_SDP free, I hope to enable people who can’t invest in other tools to unlock their creativity and explore their potential.”

Lobel says he’ll keep the platform free by getting help where he can from other Max developers. “I already have way more ideas than I can execute myself. They know the language so well that they can introduce concepts and expand the functionality.”

If you’d like to help Lobel improve Music_SDP, visit the product’s website or Facebook and YouTube pages to try it out, make a donation or spread the word.

Hugh Lobel, a 2015 DMA graduate, is making it easier for anyone to compose their own music using his new platform, Music_SDP.

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