As UC Berkeley’s iconic music venue, Hertz Hall was selected as a photo backdrop for a musically related article pun-tastically titled, “What makes pop, pop?.” The piece features the research of three Engineering graduate students, bridging the world of technology research and application with music.
In a recent article in NewsCenter, Nate Seltenrich described how the trio coded and analyzed the chords and melodies to more than 1,300 sections of popular songs from countless genres and eras. Then, they sifted through the data for patterns and trends, hoping to develop tools allowing aspiring songwriters to follow suit. Their findings led them to develop a theories, books and series of software called “HookTheory”.
As a self-proclaimed nerdy gal, learning more about technology and music daily, this NewsCenter article was very exciting and refreshing! This piece inspires us to think about the large impact music has in our lives, but as those in academia, it gives further examples of how Music can be more than a passion, but studied, researched and applied!
— LaShonda King
What the article didn’t mention was that Ryan Miyakawa is a former enthusiastic undergrad who was very involved with the Music Department here at Cal, played French Horn in the orchestra and was a piano accompanist for many of our music majors. He arranged for this article to be featured and thought Hertz Hall would be a great photo opportunity. Glad to see he and his friends are still very much integrating music into their careers and pushing it to the next level!
— Quelani Penland
Check out their website here.