We’re excited to announce that the Music Intelligence Lab now offers a Vertically Integrated Project Program (VIPP)! For more info on the general VIPP framework at AUB, see this link.

Through VIPP, you can now join the lab for course credit, contribute to long-term research projects, and explore the intersection of music and technology. Projects are team-based, interdisciplinary, and designed to evolve semester after semester; bringing together undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty.

Here are the three main overlapping thrusts of the lab projects:

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1. Music in Motion (Physical Intelligence)

Music is first and foremost a physical act: sound emerges from motion, vibration, and embodied performance. This thrust focuses on:

• Instrument design: creating new physical and digital interfaces for music-making.
• Acoustics and physics of sound: studying oscillations, resonance, and timbre for acoustic instrument design and sound synthesis.
• Gesture-to-sound mapping: turning movement into expressive sound.

This research direction is rich with problems. In particular, the lab currently is exploring musical possibilities in designing a smart music glove instrument (a wearable interface translating hand gestures into sound), and mapping gestures to sound in Virtual Reality.

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2. Mathematics of Music (Symbolic Intelligence)

Music also has hidden structures (scales, rhythms, transitions) that can be revealed through theory and mathematics. This thrust explores:

• Music information retrieval (MIR): extracting structure from audio.
• Graph and network modeling: representing musical systems as interconnected structures.
• Dynamical systems: viewing music as evolving trajectories in time and space.

We're currently excited about reveal graph-based structure in Arabic Maqamat, mapping modal systems unto networks that can be analyzed and used for music generation. We also explore the relationship between dynamical systems and music and symbolic representations of music from audio recordings using machine learning.

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3. Generative Music & AI (Machine Intelligence)

With advances in AI and machine learning, we can now generate, improvise, and collaborate with machines. This thrust addresses:

• Generative models: creating new music using AI. The creative opportunities and ethics that will change how we make music.
• Human-AI co-creation: keeping the performer in the loop.
• Interpretable (non-ML) systems: ensuring AI-generated music reflects meaningful structure.

We aim to create AI-driven improvisation systems inspired by Arabic music traditions. Integrating generative models with custom interfaces (like the Glove).

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Join the Program!

The VIPP in Music Technology welcomes undergraduate, master’s, and PhD students. Depending on your level, you'll take on different responsibilities: from prototyping instruments, to coding algorithms, to developing new theories of music intelligence. Projects are hands-on, collaborative, and deeply creative. Through music, you’ll engage with engineering, physics, AI, and cultural traditions. For more information, send an email to jb50@aub.edu.lb.

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