Georgia Tech Announces Winners of First Guthman Musical Instrument Competition

Silent Drum, LEMUR GuitarBot and SLABS Touch Pads win top prizes

ATLANTA, March 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Georgia Tech's Center for Music
Technology announced Jaime Oliver's Silent Drum won first place in the first
Guthman Musical Instrument Competition. The competition - supported by the
philanthropic family of Tech alum Richard Guthman - showcased new uses of
technology to enhance participation in music performance and music creation.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090309/DC80594)

Nearly 30 inventors from seven countries performed on Georgia Tech's campus in
the competition for more than $15,000 in prizes. Guest judges Eran Egozy, of
video game development company Harmonix Music Systems, and digital music
writer Eliot Van Buskirk joined the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology
to score the instruments for their musicality, design and engineering. Eric
Singer from the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots (LEMUR) won second
place for his robotic guitar, and SLABS Touch Pads by David Wessel of the
Center of New Music and Audio Technologies at the University of California,
Berkeley, took third place.

"We were blown away by the diversity and quality of the competitors - it was
great to see ideas from commercial firms, academicians and just creative young
musicians," said Tech music director Frank Clark. "Thanks to the Guthmans, we
think the Musical Instrument Competition will expose new paradigms of
expression year after year."

"It was a very open and competitive group of people with some very high
quality instruments," said Oliver, a doctoral student at University of
California, San Diego. "Judging was good and diverse, and technical support
was great."

Oliver's instrument is a drum shell with an elastic spandex head, illuminated
from the inside, that uses shapes and shadows to compute and control sound.
Other entries included Sorisu, which responded and accompanies a player's
movements in the game Soduko; the Tongue Music System; and a whimsical
star-and-circle-shaped contraption with exposed wires that uttered slow,
mysterious sounds.

"Since this was the first competition of its kind, it brought together people
that had been working on the subject for decades," said Oliver. "Good
competitions have a feedback effect and I wouldn't be surprised to see this
one having an effect in the number and quality of instruments that are
developed in the following years."

"Anyone that has an idea should come, get some feedback and perhaps win," said
Oliver. "Many of us do this trying to find ways of realizing sound
morphologies that contain the nuance of human performance, unsatisfied with
complex automations, in need of performing, of feeling that materiality that
sometimes electronic sounds lack."

Georgia Tech Music Department
http://www.coa.gatech.edu/music/

Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology
http://gtcmt.coa.gatech.edu/

Georgia Tech College of Architecture
http://www.coa.gatech.edu/

Silent Drum:
http://www.realidadvisual.org/jaimeoliver/research_Silentperc.htm

SOURCE Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology

Matt Nagel of Georgia Tech, +1-404-894-7460, Matt.nagel@comm.gatech.edu