The Center for New Music and Associated Technologies (CNMAT) houses a dynamic group of educational, performance, and research programs focused on multidisciplinary research and the creative use of sound. CNMAT combines technical and science-based research with a humanistic critical-making perspective that focus on practical investigations into new music creation, sound, and data applications for music. The Center merges the laboratory and the stage to extend the boundaries of present-day music-making.
CNMAT invites diverse communities of composers, artists, researchers, engineers, scientists, faculty, students, staff, and the public to participate in the activities at the center. Our legacy, emerging digital tools, and publications are freely shared with composers, musicians, and researchers throughout the world. CNMAT produces numerous concerts, lectures, and symposia open to the public. The ECO Ensemble, a leading Bay Area new music ensemble is in permanent residence at the CNMAT.
CNMAT partners closely with the Department of Music and provides free and open software that fuels the current undergraduate music and technology curriculum. CNMAT further collaborates with several affiliate departments, presenters, and units on campus, including the Department of Art Practice, the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, the Department of Film and Media, the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation, the College of Environmental Design, the Arts Research Center, the School of Information, the Townsend Center for the Humanities, the Berkeley Institute of Design, Berkeley Arts and Design, the Berkeley Center for New Media, BAM/PFA, Cal Performances, and the Magness Collection of Jewish Art and Life. In 2024, CNMAT initiated a new program in Undergraduate Research that invites students who have completed several courses to join in active research at CNMAT.
Since accepting the Directorship of CNMAT in 2014, Professor Campion has focused on inclusion and the broadening of relationships between people, machines, and all the arts. Regarding the general working model at CNMAT Professor Campion explains, “We explore and create emerging technologies in parallel with the creation and performance of new music. This approach reveals technical issues and new ways of thinking about technology in direct relation to music-making. Concurrently, CNMAT Co-Director, Professor Carmine Cella, a composer, and mathematician, oversees music sciences at CNMAT as the Lead Researcher, facilitating science-oriented research endeavors and the publication of technical research papers. The software results are always shared on GitHub or in the Max Packages Manager. Recent advances include the visual metronome by the Technical Director at CNMAT, Jeremy Wagner.”
CNMAT AND THE MUSIC COMPOSITION PROGRAM IN THE DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC:
The Center for New Music and Audio Technology (CNMAT) is structured as an interdisciplinary research center affiliated with the Music Department and closely aligned with the music composition program. It includes faculty from the music department, staff, visiting artists, students, and researchers who collaborate on various projects. The center is co-directed by Edmund Campion and Carmine-Emanuele Cella, and involves contributions from multiple departments and centers, including Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) and the Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM).
At CNMAT, students, faculty, and visiting scholars can conduct research, produce concerts, attend and host workshops, record and produce new music, or develop DIY-invented instruments. The center supports projects that explore innovative music compositional approaches, improvisation, uses of technology in music, human/computer interaction, assisted music composition and orchestration, advanced real time sound transformations, instrument augmentation, spatial audio, and creative computing with machine learning.
CNMAT is equipped with state-of-the-art technology for music creation and research with advanced audio workstations and software for digital signal processing, custom-built hardware for sound synthesis and manipulation, high-quality sound systems for accurate sound reproduction and recording, augmented musical instruments integrated with technology, as well as MIDI controllers and sensors. The Main Room at CNMAT is equipped with a 16-channel Meyer sound system. The professional level Recording Studio, and the DIY hardware lab are maintained at the highest standards of audio and hardware engineering.
During the academic year, CNMAT offers a public concert season, special workshops, symposia, Music Composition colloquia, open labs, and collaborative events that emphasize the diverse range of practitioners in music and research. Graduate students are encouraged to participate in the community through the CNMAT Users Group (CUG). CUG organizes student-led events and research and presents the annual Spring guest ensemble in residence.