Music Production, Technology, and Innovation

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  Onda Expansiva

  Arturo Angarita Arango
  2026

  This project presents a live electronic performance that explores emotional evolution through sound design, audiovisual interaction, and structural development. Motivated by an interest in expanding electronic music performance beyond conventional DJ formats, the project integrates original compositions, live performance techniques, and synchronized visual systems into a unified artistic experience. Its central objective was to investigate how instrumental electronic music and abstract visuals can communicate affective change without relying on lyrics or explicit narrative devices. The project resulted in a fifty-five-minute live performance consisting of seven original compositions arranged as a continuous set. Developed using Ableton Live, MIDI controllers, hardware synthesizers, and Max/MSP, the performance combines live musical control with audiovisual synchronization. Additional deliverables include final mixes and masters of the seven compositions, audio and video documentation of the performance, a standalone visual recording, a custom audiovisual software instrument titled R2-rito Audiovisual Synthesizer, and accompanying technical documentation. The completed work demonstrates how electronic music, live performance, and audiovisual interaction can be integrated into a coherent format that balances compositional structure with real-time expression, contributing a practical model for immersive audiovisual performance within contemporary electronic music practice.

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  RUSH

  Manuel Iván Aranda Cuéllar
  2026

  RUSH: Audioreactive Experience of Memory and Nostalgia in Contemporary House Music RUSH is a conceptual house music album that integrates real time audioreactive visuals to examine the relation between memory and nostalgia through sound and motion. The project explores how electronic music can serve as both a temporal and emotional journey. Each composition is recorded, mixed and mastered by the author. The accompanying visuals, generated in response to an audio source, translate the music into visual patterns that represent the memory. Together, these components construct a story where the listener perceives cycles, a metaphor for purpose and existence. By merging audioreactive design with the aesthetic language of house music, RUSH reframes nostalgia not as regression but as an ongoing dialogue of recurrent memories. The project ultimately proposes a framework where electronic music becomes not only a medium of dance floor expression but also a reflective canvas for emotional resilience in a disconnected digital age.

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  Silim: A 6 Track EP of Lebanese heritage synthesis in Electronic Music

  Najwa Aswad
  2026

  This project is the debut EP of the author as a producer, named Silim. As global struggles echo the past, Silim translates personal and collective histories of trauma into a new sonic language. The debut EP from the author is a work of sonic witnessing that weaves archival sound, family memory, and electronic production to bridge the Lebanese Civil War to present-day anti-genocide activism. The collaborations featured artists of Levantine/West Asian heritage. Throughout the process, the author learned electronic performance techniques with Ableton Live, interactive media approaches with Max/MSP, and improved hybrid recording techniques to produce and record vocals and strings for original compositions. Some of the initial challenges included the EP’s themes and sensitive subject matter about the Lebanese Civil War. Through creating this body of work, the author achieved a project that documents and recontextualizes Lebanese memory, creating a sonic archive where each piece negotiates between inherited pain and reimagined futures. Silim joins a broader movement in the Arab diaspora, where heritage and contemporary sound practices converge to reclaim the space and voice that the Diaspora is originally entitled to.

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  The Production of an Extended Play

  May Bahnini
  2026

  This Culminating Experience is an original EP of four tracks rooted in the soul genre, exploring the intersection of live instrumentation, orchestral arrangement, and contemporary production sensibilities. Each track navigates a distinct stylistic direction within the soul tradition, drawing on influences ranging from classic soul and jazz to more modern sonic textures, in pursuit of a sound that feels both personal and expansive. At the heart of the project lies a collaborative creative model. The project is conceived as a platform for genuine artistic dialogue, one in which each musician leaves a real imprint on the material, while a cohesive personal vision holds the whole together. Rooted in a deep love for music, storytelling, and the emotional power of sound, this project approaches each composition as an opportunity to connect diverse artistic voices through shared creative intention. The result is a body of work that is as much about the process of making music together as it is about the music itself.

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  Synesthia: Real-Time Visual Autonomy for Musicians by Cyrus Bahram

  Cyrus Bahram
  2026

  In the modern lighting and stage visuals landscape, sophisticated presentations often require a combination of skilled operators, MIDI triggers, pre-programmed cues, and click tracks to function. Not only does this cost-restrict emerging artists from realizing their full visual potential, but it also limits any group’s creative autonomy by binding advanced production to rigid tempo or MIDI input. This project aims to create an alternative system, allowing musicians to become their own visual designers through an innovative and automated system. By using machine learning and audio analysis, this software responds to musical elements such as rhythm, harmony, and structure to accurately predict and adjust lighting in real time without a metronome. Through sound analysis tools like Librosa, musical transitions are mapped to predetermined DMX lighting and generative visuals, allowing a performer to create dynamic and expressive visuals of their own choosing. Prior to a performance, an artist would load their track to this software and assign colors, effects, and moods to different sections. The system handles synchronization automatically, requiring no coding experience. The end result is a structure-aware predictive performance engine that merges technology and art, giving performers the ability to create immersive stage visuals with minimal setup.

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  Fatakda

  Aatrey Bhatt
  2026

  Musicians spend years honing their craft, fine tuning the details of their sonic explorations, but a live performance is a great opportunity to showcase a visual aspect of the artists’ work. There are several software tools that provide audio-reactive visuals, but they always tend to compromise between ease-of-use and customizability. This project aims to develop a visualization tool that can be used by musicians to augment their live performances without having to learn complicated software. The project uses Max/MSP to develop an audio-reactive visualization environment with a user-friendly interface empowering artists to develop visually intriguing live sets infused with their own unique creativity. Taking audio and MIDI inputs from the musicians’ live set, the tool can map attributes of the audio to different parameters of the visuals. An added layer of customizability is available in the form of custom visual assets such as artworks, logos, and videos that musicians can import into the software and then use audio to manipulate and distort the generated visuals. Combining these aspects with a simple interface, it allows artists to add a visual aspect to their live performances without getting distracted from performing the music.

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  Chaivala - An Interactive Musical Experience

  Mikhail Cazi
  2026

  The goal of this project is to create an interactive musical experience in the form of a video game, where player movements and decisions heavily influence the way the music evolves. Inspired by video games with adaptive audio like No Man’s Sky and DOOM, this project also examines the potential of video games as an alternative platform for music presentation and discovery. Using modern sound design and hybrid recording techniques to create soundtracks, and distributing the stems into objects created in Blender and Unity, a game was developed with the backdrop of Mumbai city, and the central theme of chai (tea). The biggest challenge was the scope of the work - from synthesis and recording, to C# programming, 3D model creation and designing the adaptive audio system. The project aims to explore how interactive systems can enable people to explore and shape their own listening experience, via a calming, cozy game.

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  Un Café Para Llevar

  Camilo Chamorro
  2026

  This document presents the proposal for the culminating experience project by Camilo Chamorro, also known artistically as Chamo. The project centers on the creation of an EP that combines songwriting, sound engineering, production, and sound design to reflect the author's life in Valencia during the year of the Master's program. The EP will feature six tracks in Spanish, with a focus on modern music production, experimental songwriting techniques, and state-of-the-art recordings and visual content. The author will use Pro Tools for recording and mixing, and Ableton for demo creation, arrangement, and creative workflow. The main objective is to produce a cohesive EP inspired by contemporary pop music, capable of crossing into multiple genres while maintaining pop as the project's core. Ultimately, the goal is to craft a sound and narrative that not only captures the artist's personal experience but also connects with a wider audience. The project is both a technical and emotional journey, blending professional production with genuine expression in his own language.

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  After the Echo- CE Project

  chris chen
  2026

  This project documents the production and immersive mixing of a Hip-Hop EP using Dolby Atmos, a spatial audio format that enables sound to be positioned and moved within a three-dimensional listening field. Motivated by the observed gap between the technical availability of immersive audio tools and their thoughtful application within Hip-Hop production, the project examined how spatial design choices—including object placement, height channels, and binaural rendering—can expand the genre's sonic and emotional possibilities without compromising its essential rhythmic energy. After producing the tracks primarily in FL Studio, the student developed stereo and Dolby Atmos mixes in Pro Tools within a 7.1.4 monitoring environment. Key challenges included low-frequency management, groove preservation, and stereo translation. The project yields both musical deliverables and a practical framework for spatially informed Hip-Hop production.

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  The Long Way Home, Returning to the Artist Within

  Pio Leandro Gabriel Fernandez
  2026

  This project documents the creation of Long Way Home, a nine-song album written, recorded, and produced at Berklee Valencia following a period of creative disconnection after three years of writing commercial music for jingles and sync licensing. The purpose was to create a deeply personal body of work authentically reflecting the author's musical voice through themes of love, relationships, and self-growth — and to present that work in a way that extends beyond the traditional album format. The album is delivered through a custom-built MaxMSP interface modeled after a retro television, navigated by physical Video Home System (VHS) tapes, transforming a linear listening experience into a self-directed, non-linear audiovisual journey. Compositionally, the project draws on diverse songwriting approaches, blending structures from pop, folk, and R&B while maintaining the emotional sincerity of the Americana singer-songwriter tradition. The result is a project that sits at the intersection of intimate personal songwriting and interactive media practice — a combination that remains largely unexplored within this genre.

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  Rodrigo Frangioni - CE Project

  Rodrigo Frangioni
  2026

  Modular synthesis is an ever-evolving area of music technology that has given musicians of all genres a powerful tool to sculpt sound. In more recent years, a new layer of modularity was achieved through the creation of programmable modules, resulting in a space where synthesists can alter the code of a module to completely change its function. This project explores these tools through the development of a MIDI-controlled pitch quantizer based around the module Lich. Using MaxGen combined with OWL technology, this work aims to dive into the process of coding for modular synthesis modules, understanding the foundations of low-level programming and text based-coding. As a practical and educational portion of the work, a device that implements CV and MIDI processing to achieve quantized notes was created, accompanied by explanations of each portion of the code, and was made available to the public for download and modification. This product is intended to be adapted and expanded by users.

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  My Salvation EP: Jazz Traditions, Lyrical Storytelling, and Contemporary Music Production

  Aida Gholami
  2026

  My Salvation entailed the creation of a five-track original vocal jazz EP, driven by the author’s intention to convey lived experiences through an interdisciplinary creative process. Rooted in the exploration of personal narrative, the project integrated jazz traditions, lyrical storytelling, and contemporary music production, shaping a cohesive thematic landscape that emphasized the synthesis of musical tradition with modern production techniques. The process also addressed the challenges of translating abstract ideas into unified musical forms capable of sustaining a dimensional narrative arc. The project involved collaboration across the Berklee Valencia community and the Toronto music scene, providing opportunities for iterative development and peer exchange. Through a practical framework that integrated jazz composition, storytelling, and music technology into a unified practice, the work established a foundation for the author’s continued engagement with the music industry. Ultimately, the EP functioned as an interdisciplinary demonstration of methods for enhancing future creative projects through the production of a complete and cohesive body of work.

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  The Organism System Architecture: An Exploration of the Interactive Medium

  Oliver Goslin
  2026

  In his Culminating Experience project, the author will curate the system architecture behind a generative, collaborative, interactive audiovisual installation built as part of Berklee Valencia’s Multimedia Installation class led by Marta Verde Baqueiro. The project incorporates artificial intelligence into various aspects of its development. Intuitive control mechanisms—a PS5 controller, and touch-control device—connect to two separate HTML5 interfaces which send MIDI data to a central Ableton session, generating unique compositions within G major pentatonic. Simultaneously, a Max for Live device receives the same MIDI data within Ableton, influencing parameters of a reactive visual. The advancements in AI technology in the mid-2020s expand the scope of what is pragmatically achievable within the boundaries of interactive media. Additionally, the author breaches issues of authorship and intellectual property in novel processes of human-LLM co-creation.

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  EmotionMap

  Xiaoke Huang
  2026

  This research explores the integration of affective computing into music production through the development of EmotionMap, an emotion-aware music production tool. The system analyzes vocal performances and automatically maps predicted emotional states to digital signal processing (DSP) parameters in real time. Using machine learning techniques, vocal acoustic features are extracted and used to estimate continuous emotional values within the Valence–Arousal (V-A) space. These emotional coordinates are transmitted to a custom Max for Live device in Ableton Live, where they control audio effects such as filter modulation and distortion. The system also supports parameter mapping to external plugins, enabling emotion-driven interaction across different production environments. Through the design and implementation of EmotionMap, this research investigates how affective computing and Music Information Retrieval techniques can support creative decision-making and enhance expressive possibilities in music production workflows.

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  "Alwfraid" A Chinese Media Plunderphonics Triphop EP as Cultural Integration

  SHIYAO JIN
  2026

  “Alwfraid” is a 7‑track Chinese media plunderphonics / Trip‑Hop EP, produced entirely on an AKAI MPC One Plus mainly using Chinese media samples and a handful of Western drum loops. The work fuses Trip-Hop atmosphere with Chinese media elements, aiming to explore creative pathways that deeply integrate Western electronic music with Chinese cultural textures. The producer extracted samples from contemporary Chinese music, psychedelic rock, stage plays, radio gymnastics, and city broadcasts, building an atmosphere charged with his inner tension. This EP serves two purposes: it practiced the producer’s sample‑extraction and recombination skills, and it seeks to organically unite different source samples into a coherent emotional narrative. Beyond technical practice, the project also focuses on cross-cultural musical exchange and integration, while also acting as a personal inner monologue — a reflection voiced through existing found sounds. The result is a unified mood that balances external cultural references with a personal emotional world.

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  Changes: An AI-Aided Production of an Acoustic/Electronic 5-Song EP

  Julian Koch
  2026

  While Artificial Intelligence (AI) already found its way into the workflow of several corporate jobs, many musicians, producers and recording engineers still shy away from using Artificial Intelligence. The reasons for this are manifold, including ethical concerns about the use and training of AI, legal unclarity and the lack of emotional expression in AI-generated songs. Changes is a 5-song acoustic/electronic EP. Within this project, the concept of change was expressed lyrically, telling the individual journey of the author before and throughout his time at Berklee, as well as technologically, through the exploration of Artificial Intelligence as a creative assistant in contemporary music production. During the project, research on state-of-the-art AI tools used in music production was conducted, identifying two tools as the main focus of this thesis: Suno as a songwriting and production assistant and ChatGPT/Perplexity as a lyrics co-writer. Subsequently, a workflow that integrates these technologies while preserving the human aspect that many people still miss in most artistic creations done exclusively by AI was developed.

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  Wuxiscape

  Yuhan Leng
  2026

  Wuxiscape is a soundscape composition project based on field recordings collected in Wuxi, China. The project explores the relationship between listening, memory, place, and environmental sound through a series of electroacoustic works. Drawing from acoustic ecology, experimental listening practices, and the Chinese philosophical text Sheng Wu Ai Le Lun, the project examines how everyday sounds can carry cultural, emotional, and spatial meaning without relying on conventional musical structures. Field recordings from natural, urban, and cultural sites in Wuxi were edited, layered, and processed to create compositions that move between documentation and musical interpretation. Through this process, Wuxiscape reflects on how sound can represent a city beyond visual imagery and how listening can reshape one’s understanding of home, environment, and identity.

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  Seasons of My Life So Far

  Ezekiel Lieberman
  2026

  This project explores the potential for integrating rock and classical instruments within a single, unified work. In most collaborations between contemporary ensembles and symphony orchestras, the two exist in a hierarchical format in which one supports the other. This cross-genre compositional approach addresses that imbalance by developing music in which both ensembles are mutually interdependent. The goal is to create a cohesive work in which each instrument contributes equally, mirroring the interdependence found within a symphony orchestra. The final product is a multi-movement piece performed by a hybrid ensemble surrounding the audience in an intimate, nontraditional performance space. This format encourages listeners to experience the dialogue between timbres and genres from within the ensemble itself. Mixing in Dolby Atmos, which is an immersive spacial audio system that adds height speakers, preserves the project’s fully spatialized immersive audio concept. Through the integration of spatial audio, genre fusion, and virtual technology, this project seeks to explore the relationship between rock and classical music while expanding public accessibility to endangered instruments.

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  Defining Distortion Through Modern Plugin Design

  Nicholas Marino
  2026

  This project explores the design and implementation of a digital distortion audio plugin, developed first in Max/MSP to prototype sound characteristics and later in C++ to create a fully functional and efficient plugin. The purpose of this project is to bridge creative sound design with technical implementation, addressing the notorious challenge of achieving high-quality, musically expressive distortion without introducing unwanted digital artifacts. The research focuses on analyzing various distortion algorithms, their spectral behaviors, and their perceptual impact on audio signals. The Max/MSP prototyping environment provides a flexible platform for rapid experimentation, design and testing, while C++ offers the necessary performance and scalability for professional plugin development. The resulting plugin aims to provide producers and sound designers with a unique distortion tool that maintains tonal clarity while enhancing harmonic richness. This work contributes to the field of music production technology by demonstrating a practical workflow from conceptual design to optimized coding, highlighting the intersection between audio signal processing and creative sound design.

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  From Sound To Scene

  Rodrigo Marquez
  2026

  This project involved the creation and performance of an electronic music audiovisual event to understand the artistic, technical, and organizational processes of contemporary performance. The event integrated a live electronic set with audio-reactive visuals, producing an immersive multisensory experience. The project examined the pathways an electronic musician must navigate to realize such a performance, including professional networking, event planning, and skill acquisition. Beyond its artistic dimension, the project engaged with broader industry issues, addressing negative perceptions of electronic music events shaped by problematic practices such as overcrowded venues, insecurity, and substance misuse. By foregrounding inclusivity, safety, and respect, this initiative proposed an alternative model for performance spaces that fostered both artistic expression and audience well-being. Ultimately, the project strengthened local creative networks and contributed to more sustainable, positive practices in electronic music culture, beginning in Valencia, Spain.

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  Tatiana Arabella Moynihan-Rodrigo - Chasing The Sun: The Production of an Extended Play

  Tatiana Arabella Moynihan-Rodrigo
  2026

  Dance music and live vocal performances have been the pulse of island life in the Philippines since the 1970s and 1990s; a driving force of culture and societal preferences in media consumption. This has shifted throughout the years with the increased globalisation of Filipino music and exposure provided by streaming and social media platforms. Influenced by the work of artists such as Imogen Heap, Caroline Polachek, Moony, Peggy Gou, and Chicane, the project aims to blend ‘90s dance music production techniques and electronic pop melodic cadences popularised in the Philippines. The basis of this project was to write, record, produce, and mix an extended play (EP) of seven (7) songs consisting of various electronic dance music subgenres (i.e., House, Afrohouse, Ambient, EDM, Nu Disco) that will be presented as a video recording of a disk jockey (DJ) set incorporating live vocal performance. The intended outcome was for the project to translate as a live electronic performance in a nightclub setting. The work aims to explore an intersectional avenue for Filipino multihyphenates in the local and international electronic dance music scenes – to serve as a case study in an area few OPM (Original Pinoy Music) artists have found success in.

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  Resonant Pathways

  Alessandro Niro
  2026

  This work documents an artist’s attempt to articulate a personal sonic identity — a voice untouched by expectation. Each piece reflects a detour, a journey, or a breakthrough. What starts as a return to the first spark becomes something greater: a reclamation of self, and the realization that expression isn’t found at the destination, but forged along the way. Resonant Pathways: Evolutionary Chronicles is a concept album that traces the artist’s personal and creative evolution in music production from 2018 to 2026. This beginning became a defining threshold — the point at which music stopped serving external expectations and transformed into a medium through which the artist could finally express himself. The project seeks to merge the worlds of sound design and musical storytelling, using genre as a framework to explore his identity and artistic transformation. Each composition revisits a distinct period in the artist’s journey—spanning lo-fi, chillwave, funk, pop, and beyond—while integrating immersive textures and ambient sound design elements developed in recent years. The project proposes that the bridge between sound design and songwriting holds untapped narrative potential. When treated as one, music can evolve to convey deeper meaning, emotion, and personal expression. Resonant Pathways explores this idea through the creation of a unified sonic narrative in which experimental sound design becomes integral to emotional and structural storytelling. By fusing these elements, the project seeks to demonstrate how production and design can coexist to form a cohesive reflection of artistic evolution, memory, and self-discovery.

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  Flammable: The production of a nine song album

  Alice O'Conor
  2026

  The purpose of this project was to compose, record, produce, and mix a nine song album exploring themes of loss, relationships, and emotional introspection. This work experimented with the blend of acoustic/folk and electronic music to reflect and enhance these emotional narratives. Influenced by the works of independent pop musicians such as Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver, and Frank Ocean, this project sought to create a unique sonic world that merged organic and synthesized elements along with creative vocal production. Through the use of analog synthesis, sound design, hybrid recording, and mixing techniques, this album aimed to balance intimacy and experimentation, highlighting the expressive potential of both acoustic and electronic textures. This project demonstrated how genre-blending production methods could serve as a vehicle for personal storytelling within contemporary independent pop music.

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  NeoMerengue

  Isaac Olivo
  2026

  This project explores the modernization of Dominican Merengue Clásico through the lens of contemporary electronic music production. It addresses the growing dominance of simplified urban genres such as Reggaeton and Dembow, which, while commercially efficient, have overshadowed the rich rhythmic and instrumental traditions of the Dominican Republic. The project’s central aim is to bridge this cultural gap by merging the timbres, rhythms, and harmonic language of traditional Merengue—particularly those of the tambora, güira, congas, and piano—with the sound design and production techniques of electronic genres such as EDM,House, Techno, Trance, Dubstep, and Drum & Bass. The result seeks to preserve the dynamic energy of classic Merengue mambos while situating them within a modern, club-ready, and globally accessible sonic framework. Designed for both DJs and general listeners, the album balances experimental electronic textures with pop-oriented song structures. Ultimately, this fusion intends to reassert the relevance of Merengue in today’s musical landscape and to inspire a new generation of Dominican artists to revisit and reinterpret their cultural roots through innovative, forward-thinking sound design.

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  "Mechadash" ("From The Start") - Album

  Adi Orion
  2026

  Adi Orion’s third album, Mechadash (From the Start), is a twelve-track collection exploring identity within a fragmented reality. Written in Hebrew and English, the mostly acoustic album was produced by Orion and recorded with live instruments alongside musicians from all around the world. Blending folk traditions, communal singing, jazz, Arabic music, and singer-songwriter influences, the album reflects Orion’s Hebrew, Jewish, and Middle Eastern roots while embracing a universal musical language. Emerging from both a multicultural Israeli society and the globally niche position of Hebrew culture, Mechadash creates a dialogue between the deeply local and the universally human. Its lyrics move between personal and collective experiences, offering an intimate glimpse into a generation living through prolonged conflict, where love, vulnerability, and daily life coexist with fear and instability. Through emotionally direct storytelling, the album becomes both a reflection on the human cost of war and a quiet act of resistance grounded in humanity, connection, and the choice for life.