Roger Dannenberg to Discuss Music and Computer Science at CS+X Colloquium

When music and computation mix, new capabilities can arise that have applications in music education, music production, and music performance. As a part of McCormick’s CS+X colloquium series, Roger Dannenberg, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, will talk about the potential that results from marrying these two disciplines.

“Automating Music Listening and Understanding” will take place at 1 p.m. Friday, June 13 in the ITW Auditorium of the Ford Motor Company Engineering and Design Center.

A portion of Dannenberg’s talk will focus on music understanding—the automatic recognition of pattern and structure in music. He will share examples of music understanding success stories, including commercial products and artistic ventures.

A composer, trumpet player, and computer scientist, Dannenberg’s pioneering work in computer accompaniment has led to three patents and the SmartMusic System, an interactive music education software used by more than 100,000 music students. He also played a central role in the development of Piano Tutor and Rock Prodigy, which are interactive multimedia music education systems, and Audacity, a multi-track audio editor and recorder for home computers. Dannenberg also introduced functional programming concepts to describe real-time behavior, an approach that forms the foundation of Nyquist, a widely used sound synthesis language.