The 2013 Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Competition, now in its fifth year, will be held April 11th and 12th at the Klaus Advanced Computing Building at 266 Ferst Drive on the Georgia Tech campus. This year, the competition will include a People’s Choice award that will recognize the finalist who wins the popular vote of those in attendance. The finals are Friday, April 12, from 7:00 – 8:30 pm and are free and open to the public with advance RSVP online at www.gtcmt.gatech.edu/guthmanrsvp.  

Nineteen inventors, composers and designers from 11 different countries were selected from a pool of over 60 entries for this year’s competition. Instruments will be judged on musicality, design and engineering by an expert panel comprised of experimental performance artist Laurie Anderson, composer, performer and educator, David Wessel, and electronic musician and sound designer Richard Devine.

The instruments range from cutting edge to outrageous, and all expand the definition of what a musical instrument is. For example, the Seaboard is a radically new kind of musical instrument and digital music controller - it has a soft, continuous, three-dimensional surface that enables unprecedented real-time control of the fundamental characteristics of sound: pitch, volume and timbre. This not only unleashes the capacity for magically authentic simulation of all other instruments - it also creates a world of entirely new sound possibilities. The Smomid, which stands for string modeling midi device, is a touch sensitive guitar that controls highly responsive software. This software allows for variation of beats, bass lines and patterns within a musical performance in real time. It also allows for a dynamically, variation rich and ever evolving live performance of electronic music.

“This competition has become one of the premier events that showcase the future of music,” said Gil Weinberg, director of the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology. “We are pleased that it continues to grow, each year bringing more and more innovative and creative inventors from all over the world together to have their ideas evaluated by our expert panel.”

In total, $10,000 in cash prizes will be awarded to the most exciting novel musical instruments and presented by Tech alumnus Richard Guthman in honor of his musician wife, Margaret.

About the Georgia Tech School of Music and the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology

Combining transdisciplinary research and technology with the art and tradition of music, the Georgia Tech School of Music and the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology offer mind-expanding performances and exhibitions; a leading graduate degree program in music technology; and a collaborative framework for students, researchers, government agencies and industry partners to transform the way we listen to, create and perform music.