Rockstars among us

Posted by Catherine Motuz on August 28, 2012

There has been a lot of coming and going in the lab over the summer months, people heading off in all directions for their weeks off. Some visiting family, some taking a holiday, and one touring the Americas with their highly successful rock band. That would be Gabriel. Gabriel is the Ph.D. student in the lab responsible for making OMR work: He does the nitty gritty of turning black-and-white images into sources of information. His screen is constantly filled with staff-finders and note shape processors which he writes, tests, and tweaks, unassumingly and patiently developing some of the most cutting-edge technology in the world.

But this year, Gabriel has been whisked away by his band of a former life, Lucybell, onto a reunion tour that marks their foundation at the Universidad de Chile 21 years ago. He has already played to packed houses all over Chile, and will be heading to Peru and Mexico soon. Lucky for us, there will be a collision of worlds as his band comes all the way up to play in Montreal on Sept. 14th. We’ll be there!

But Gabriel isn’t our only star of the popular music world - the other sits next to him. Jason Hockman is a very active DJ, known to some as “Jason oS”, who together with Joseph Thibodeau (together they form “Daat”), just put out a single called “Orange Line.” It comes in the form of a 12-inch vinyl record (a lot of his released come on vinyl) and has been enjoying a lot of success in the uk, becoming EDJ 12’s single of the week. In the lab, Jason (who is not strictly on the SIMSSA project but who often provides helpful advice for those who are) has been mostly working on beat detection, mostly in drum and bass and related genres, as well as developing a score-following programme for use on our MIDI-Harpsichord project.

You can read more about both Gabriel and Jason on the lab’s “people” site.