Andrew McPherson is a composer and Professor of Design Engineering and Music in the Dyson School of Design Engineering, based at Imperial College. Here he talks to Nick Rothwell about the Augmented Instruments Laboratory, a music technology research team that he leads, whose ongoing projects include the Magnetic Resonator Piano and the Bela open-source audio platform.

Show Notes

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction
00:30 - A Background In Composition And Electronic Engineering
01:57 - The Magnetic Resonator Piano
09:50 - TouchKeys USB Touch Sensor
13:05 - Developing Ideas Within A Community
15:47 - Using The Piano Within Different Genres
17:19 - Bela Open-Source Hardware Platform
22:15 - Augmented Instruments Laboratory
23:50 - Laurel Pardue / Augmented Violin
25:15 - Getting Nuanced Performances
26:22 - Overcoming Latency Issues
27:31 - Future Predictions

Andrew McPherson - Biog

Andrew McPherson is a computing researcher, composer, electronic engineer, and musical instrument designer. He is Professor of Design Engineering and Music in the Dyson School of Design Engineering, Imperial College London, where he leads the Augmented Instruments Laboratory. Andrew holds undergraduate degrees in both engineering and music from MIT, an MEng in electrical engineering from MIT, and a PhD in music composition from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining Imperial in 2023, he has been a professor in the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary University of London.

Andrew’s musical instruments are widely used by performers and composers across many genres, and his research has led to three successful crowdfunding campaigns and the spinout of Augmented Instruments Ltd, which develops Bela, an open-source audio maker platform. He currently holds two fellowships: a Senior Research Fellowship from the Royal Academy of Engineering on embedded hardware for audio and music, and an ERC/UKRI Consolidator Grant investigating the cultural implications of engineering decisions. He is deeply committed to teaching: Bela is used in the classroom by dozens of universities, and his online course on audio programming has been followed by learners around the globe.

https://andrewmcpherson.org/

https://instrumentslab.org/

Interviewer: Nick Rothwell - Biog

Nick Rothwell is a regular Sound On Sound author, composer, performer, software architect, coder and visual artist. He has built media performance systems for projects with Ballett Frankfurt and Vienna Volksoper, composed sound scores for Aydın Teker (Istanbul / Kapadokya), AWA Dance, Luz Mannion Dance (Flamenco) and Undercurrent Theatre, programmed physical media sculptures with Simeon Nelson and Rob Godman, live coded in Mexico and in Berlin with sitar player Shama Rahman, collaborated with the body>data>space collective in Prague, Paris and Dresden, written software for Studio Wayne McGregor, the Pina Bausch Foundation and Nesta's FutureFest, consulted for Tate Modern, and developed algorithmic visuals for large-scale outdoor projections in Poland, Estonia, Cambridge Music Festival and Lumiere (London / Durham). He has taught design at CODE Berlin and currently runs the Computer Science undergraduate course at University of the Arts London.

https://cassiel.com/

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