On this page, you can find the Culminating Experience (CE) Projects for all graduate students from the Berklee College of Music master’s program Music Production, Technology, and Innovation (MPTI) from 2015 – present. Click on any title for more information and access to the full paper and other deliverables (if available).
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Chord Suggestions iPhone App for Original Melodies: App Name: ARIA Chord
Christos Stylianides
2018ARIA Chord is an app that can suggest chords to accompany an original melody in real time. The users can import their melody through a MIDI file. ARIA Chord focuses on suggesting unique chord variations that can make a progression ideal for any music genre. Its purpose is to allow anyone to write like a guitarist, pianist or any other polyphonic instrumentalist. Additionally, the suggested chords can be filtered out by using the emotion filters, which will then show the most related and desired chords. The emotion tool can help the user find more complex variations of chords that can access more complex emotions. Also, ARIA Chord will give you the option to filter out chords according to the genre you write (more complex chords and inversions for jazz, simpler catchy chords for pop, more aggressive chords for rock, etc.). What makes ARIA Chord unique is its ability to analyze an inserted melody and, after the user has set the desired key, show all the available chords that belong to that scale.
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Black Waves EP: An Experimental Journey at the Crossroads of Electronic Music and Jazz
Pablo Troussard
2018The student set to create an EP combining elements of two different musical genres; namely Jazz and Dance music. In order to create the music the student composed chord progressions to be used as the basis of the songs. The student then recorded jazz musicians from the Berklee roster improvising on the chord progressions. Using the recordings, the student manipulated the recordings to resample the musicians. Following this, the student started to focus on the electronic sound design of the EP along with the mixing and mastering of the EP. The student then realised that the EP project was expandable into a flexible live performance. The organic sampled parts of the work could be replaced by real musicians and could include instruments which were not originally featured in the EP. This led the student to present its live version of the work in a concert alongside two other Berklee musicians.
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Projected Self
Colin P. Watson Jr.
2018Projected Self is a solo audiovisual performance from the artist C. Watson of original experimental music & video. Using pre-rendered visuals and live manipulated effects, the performance explores mental health themes of anxiety, depression, self-hatred, rage, and finally acceptance. Instead of simply telling a story about a mental health journey, Projected Self uses light and sound to bring the audience on the journey along with the artist; to evoke the feelings in the audience and not just explain them. The music borrows heavily from experimental music genres such as noise and drone while also retaining more rhythmic themes present in electronica and trap. The project went through multiple iterations until an ideal technical setup for one performer was developed. For the artist, writing, editing, mixing, filming, synthesizing visuals, and prepping a performance performing all while dealing with anxiety, fear, and depression was exceedingly difficult but after sharing the multiple versions of Projected Self with peers and Berklee faculty, the response started to show that people did in fact feel the emotions portrayed. In the future, the project has the potential to evolve into multiple new mediums—film, art gallery installation, interstitial during a longer set—but all in all, the project was a successful study in shared emotional experience.
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INWINCCIBLE 360: A music artist producer innovator personal brand experiment
Soo Wincci
2018The international music scene has evolved with the explosion of technology. Artists must have diverse or hybrid skills in order to create a unique personal brand identity to break into the international music scene. Also, it is important to cultivate the knowledge of new software, technology and music production skills in order to communicate on the international music arena. However, there is a lack of artist personal brand research and experiment in the music production and innovation areas. Therefore, this personal brand experiment aims to reinvent own artist personal brand “Soo Wincci” into a hybrid music artist producer innovator personal brand called “Inwinccible.” This project will first analyze the current state of art for traditional mask changing, some cultural world instruments, aerial circus art, technology arts, experimental electronic music and 360 music video. Then using technology, innovation and electronic music production skills to produce a new hybrid combination of audio and visual experiences into an innovative 360 music video project titled “Inwinccible 360”.
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MixSpaceVR: An Interactive Audiovisual Mixing Experience in Virtual Reality
Alexander K. Yen
2018The goal of this project is to offer a more abstract and visual approach to understanding how to mix audio, while also being a creative and immersive way to interact with music. The basic design of the game is a 3D space with several colored spheres floating against a wall. The spheres could be moved and manipulated with a laser, and based on where they were moved in respect to the back wall, the sound associated with that sphere would be manipulated as well. The game consists of not only the program Unity, a major game development platform, but also Max, Max for Live, and Ableton as well. During the course of the project, the student will have explored techniques like scripting in the C# language, creating three-dimensional interactive game objects, and using OSC to create game interaction with outside programs such as Ableton. The final result of this project should be a fully immersive audiovisual mixing experience, that will hopefully inspire others to understand more about audio, and the possibilities of music technology.
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Dub Mix Live Set & VJing
Na Young Joo
2018The purpose of this CE is to make three dub live performance sets with VJing by learning and exploring dub mix and DJing skills. The innovative aspects of the project are focused on bringing new elements to Korean classical music. Ableton Live, MIDI controller, DJing skills, and Visual tools were the most useful and inspiring programs and skills acquired during the process. The project is linked to the author’s future plan, which is to widen her ability as a producer and collaborator so she can enrich Korean traditional music by incorporating sounds of dub music and other sub-genres.
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Seclude: Immersive Storytelling using 360 Film and Song
David Abrams
2017Seclude is a three-part film series that explores the concepts of identity using storytelling, emotionally driven music, and first person immersion. This project explores the intersection of 360 degrees immersive video content, storytelling, and songwriting which gives perspective into the identity of the storytellers. The purpose is to provide the audience with deeper understanding of the storytellers – to explore the world through their eyes, to live their story, and to feel their emotions. Songwriting, storytelling, and immersion are all powerful means to connect to an audience, and this new content model will provide songwriters with full access to these tools so they may create art which moves human cultural understanding forward.
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Distress: Exploring Compositional Elements for Audio and Interactivity for Video
Andrea Almeida de Mendonça
2017The basis of this project is to write and record an extended play (EP) in order to explore different tools and inspirational sources for composition. In addition, this project intends to offer listeners an audiovisual interactive experience for one of the tracks.
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MOOVE: MOTORIZED, SMART, AUTOMATED, WIRELESS, MUSIC VIDEO MOTION CONTROLLER
Ronald Esteban Ayala Vaca
2017Moove is an automated, motorized, professional music video motion controller, cater for both enthusiasts and professionals.
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The Development and the Documentation of the Artistic Process
Nanci Baker
2017The purpose of this document is to document the process of creating, editing, mixing and mastering for an engineer and performer.
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Programmatic Electro-Acoustic, Projection Mapping Performance
Dimitri Carabas
2017This project is a study in the juxtaposition, and fusion of traditional classical instruments with electronic and rock textures. A traditional quartet set beside synthesizers, electric guitar and electric bass will be the main focus of the work. The goal is to explore what elements of each style blend most beautifully alongside one another. Visual accompaniment to the music will exist in essence to both enhance and mirror the fusion of the traditional with the modern. Fusion of practical effects with digital manipulation will be the route towards creating stimulating visuals.
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ONAI: An Ethereal Journey
Paul Daniel
2017The purpose of this project is the development of the Audio/visual brand, ONAI, for festival performance and as a basis for post-grad school artistic development. The project will consist of an EP release of original music, a film about the brand aesthetic, and the creation and development of the live show.
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“Environments”: Live audiovisual performance
Luis Fernando Díaz González
2017The evolution of concerts throughout the years has enticed the inclusion of technological elements to enhance the musicians’ performance onstage and the audience’s experience. This inclusion has evolved into practical results achieved by using modern tools that bring about numerous possibilities. The addition of visuals in live shows has been a logical path in this audiovisual generation and it’s becoming even more recurrent in preset-day acts. The main focus of this project is to create an audiovisual performance that generates visuals reactant to the music being played in real time. This approach opposes a typical modus operandi of prerecorded videos, which are sequenced to play at specific points throughout a more conventional (but not limited) concert setting. The music is broken down and arranged into sequences that are triggered to recreate and remix original electronic music tracks while visuals are generated and manipulated by audio and MIDI. Through improvisation, spectators are able to appreciate the relation of the music with the imagery.
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Stray from the Path
Neal Dingies
2017Stray from the Path is a four song EP written in the style of Latin rock fusion. The EP will have two produced electronic songs, and two live recorded songs with real instruments. All of the money that will be made off of the EP will be donated to a charity to help recovering drug addicts.
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Uncle Ricky’s “It’s Me”
Jon Erik Lindberg
2017A creative endeavor to build myself as an artists using hip-hop, funk, rock, soul and electronic influences in one. That includes six performance sets built in Ableton Live, live audio/visual performance set, branding, social media presence, website and portfolio that will be distributed to several electronic music labels. All of the samples used will be ripped from vinyl and chopped in a way that is my own. The main focus is to combine elements from Hip-hop, Funk, Electronic, Soul, movies samples and live instrumentation into a cohesive live set broken into six pieces that include a live band incorporating samples being triggered from the Ableton Push and visuals generated by Max MSP.
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NATURAL ORDER
Erik Hasan Gomez Garza
2017Creation of an art installation that focuses on chaotic phenomena as a better model to understand reality. The main goal of the installation is for the viewer to assimilate in an artistic way the concepts of reductionism, sensitivity to initial conditions and strange attractors and how these can be associated with our daily cognitive processes. In this way, identifying ourselves as chaotic systems.
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Stranger Devices: A Sound Toolkit for the Modern Popular Musician"
Esteban Andrés Gómez Mellado
2017Stranger Devices: Performer Suite, its manual and demo videos and original music were developed throughout the 2016-2017 academic year from its proposal to the execution of the different project stages. The project comprises four Max for Live1 devices oriented to improve the workflow of live performances that include one or more computers with Ableton Live2 as a source of digital generated sound as well as outboard gear (analogue or digital) and traditional instruments together.
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NEUROPLASTIK
Tejaswi Gorti
2017An artistic and scientific exploration in the field of artificial intelligence, and how computers might “choose” to create music.
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Digitalog K: Interactive Music Based on Analog and Digital Instruments
Khairul Hazwan Musa
2017The purpose of this Culminating Experience project is to develop an interactive music based on analog and digital instruments to explore its potential in production of music as well as live performance. An extended player or EP consists of four (4) songs were produced and mixed with different tools of software and hardware equipment that inspires the source for the composition in this project. This project may offer an interactive product that involves a custom-built analog rig that would be integrated to digital instruments to produce meaningful EP. It is hope that the demand for an integrated experience with physical products that participants have the chance to engage with and be inspired the products and services that will not be purely digital or purely analog, but hybrids of the two.
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Divergent Realities
Daniel Kleffmann
2017Divergent Realities is a dark room installation that provides divergent perspectives between a black and white computer-generated audiovisual experience and a synesthetic perspective of that same environment through a binocular headset with technology similar to augmented reality. It explores and contrasts our perceived reality through technology and is meant to inspire reflection about how our reality could be perceived through machines.
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UniverSol: The Birth of a New Genre
Christopher LaPoint
2017For years, many people have listened to different kinds of music and decided they may not like a certain genre because of how it sounds. The purpose of this project is to bridge the gap between all genres by creating a new genre called “UniverSol”. An extended play (EP) of the UniverSol genre will be created and published on streaming sites such as Soundcloud and Bandcamp, along with a videotape that documents the production experience.
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BEHIND THE SCENES?
Yu Lu
2017The project will be a 5-track EP, with 4 original tunes and an arrangement of a jazz standard, with each song conveys a certain emotion. The genre will be pop music, with the pianist/keyboardist the primary artist, featuring different vocalists. For the music aspect, the project will focus on developing a personalized sound and style on piano/keyboard. For the technology aspect, the project will focus on recording and mixing for acoustic instruments.
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INDIGO: THE COMING OF LIVE-LOOP PERFORMANCE & ARTIST BRANDING
Chris Marsanico
2017My Culminating Experience at Berklee Valencia will be a live-loop performance incorporating acoustic/digital instruments and custom visuals in a downtempo/electronic style. In addition to the performance, I will be starting a website and getting all social media accounts up to date to help brand myself as a music producer/performer.
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Dysmorphic
Matthew McIntyre
2017This is an immersive audio-visual performance in el Hemispheric theater that explores cognitive science through music and video art; using the interpretation of electrical brainwave data recorded from human minds.
