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Jeff Bilmes’ Master’s Thesis on Music Gains More Attention

November 2, 2015

photo2The impact of Professor Jeff Bilmes’ master’s thesis on music perception is gaining attention, featured in an Inverse article on November 9, 2015. In 1993, while Bilmes was a student at MIT, he proposed a concept that paved the way for automated music personalization, which is used by companies such as Pandora.

Inspired by famous jazz pianist Art Tatum, Bilmes’ master’s thesis proposed a new theory, which he named a “tatum.” The concept, which defines the rhythmic structure of a song according to units of time, has led to the development of algorithms that allow the composition of music to be understood by computer programs.

Read the entire Inverse article.