What does it mean to be human? Many would argue that it’s our ability to create art and music. Yet we’ve seen. Can computers “listen” to music? And how can you generate music with AI? This week, we’re exploring the intersection of music, creativity and artificial intelligence with experts from Spotify, Amper and Audioburst.

Schedule:

6:00pm – Networking and Pizza
6:30pm – Kickoff and Sponsors (ThoughtWorks, IBM)
6:40pm – Talk #1: Drew Silverstein, Amper Music: How to Create Music with AI
7:10pm – Talk #2: Assaf Gad, Audioburst: Building the Google of Audio Discovery
7:40pm – Talk #3: Eric Humphrey, Spotify: Machine “Listening” for Music
8:10pm – Extended Q&A and Open Member Discussion

Talk #1: How to Create Music with AI

Bio: Drew Silverstein is the CEO and a founder of Amper Music. Previously, Drew was an award-winning composer, producer, and songwriter for film, television, and video games in Los Angeles at Sonic Fuel Studios. Drew graduated from Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music, where he studied Music Composition and Italian, and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Talk #2: Building the Google of Audio Discovery

Bio: Assaf Gad is VP Marketing & Strategic Partnership at Audioburst, which aims to be the Google of audio search. Assaf has helped build the world’s largest-growing audio library at Audioburst, an audio search engine pioneering the future of audio consumption/interaction. At Audioburst, Assaf has managed to partner with popular smart home devices such as Amazon Alexa, Google Home and Microsoft Cortana and was an integral part in the acquisition of Robin, an AI on-road assistant. Prior to N-trig, Assaf served as CMO at PointGrab Ltd., a leading provider of IoT smart sensors for the building automation industry. Before joining PointGrab, Assaf led product management and marketing teams at Powermat Technologies,modu Mobile and Telmap Ltd. (acquired by Intel). Assaf holds BSc. in Computer Science from The Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya.

Talk #3: Machine “Listening” for Music

Bio: Eric J. Humphrey is a research scientist at Spotify, and acting Secretary on the board of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR). Previously, he has worked or consulted in a research capacity for various companies, notably THX and MuseAmi, and is a contributing organizer of a monthly Music Hackathon series in NYC. He earned his Ph.D. at New York University in Steinhardt’s Music Technology Department under the direction of Juan Pablo Bello, Yann LeCun, and Panayotis Mavromatis, exploring the application of deep learning to the domains of audio signal processing and music informatics. When not trying to help machines understand music, you can find him running the streets of Brooklyn or hiding out in his music studio.