VIDEO: Elaine Chew on the Ties Between Engineering and Music
January 20, 2010 —
The pianist--professor from the Viterbi School's Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering demonstrates "interactive software that analyzes music on the fly" - in this case, piano pieces by Libby Larsen, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Peter Schickele (a.k.a. P.D.Q. Bach) she plays, analyzed in real time by the MuSA.RT software she developed with Alexandre François.
"I'm interested in using scientific and engineering methods to model and explain music -- its structure and performance," she says. "To many people music and engineering seem to be extremely disparate disciplines, but I feel that there is a lot that is in common between the two, and one of the manifestations of this is that both musicians and engineers are involved in this act of creating things by doing. It is a very active way of engaging with what you do."
