Exceptional CFI funding announced for the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology.
Researchers from the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT), housed at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University, received over $4 million in funding from the CFI and a total of $10.9M which includes matching funds from the Quebec Government and McGill University. This support will be used to create a unique interconnected research hub linking two exceptional spaces: McGill’s Multimedia Room and Université de Montréal’s Salle Claude Champagne.
The Multimedia Room at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University is a 7,000 cubic-metre, sound-isolated box-inside-a-box that can simulate the acoustics of just about any performance venue in the world. The Salle Claude Champagne at the Faculté de Musique at the Université de Montréal is a superb concert hall, iconic to music in Quebec. New funding will transform these two exceptional spaces into the world's leading facility for studying live performance, movement of sound in space, and distributed performance in which members of an ensemble are geographically separated, but performing simultaneously. Both spaces will be retrofitted with equipment to measure and manipulate the acoustics of the spaces as well as a grid of cameras and microphones to monitor the reactions of the performers and audience members. In these two interconnected spaces, researchers from the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) will help develop virtual acoustics to simulate concert environments and other technologies for audio recording, film, television, distance education, and multi-media artworks, while neuroscientists and psychologists will also be able to study the ways in which large numbers of performers coordinate their actions, as well as the factors that lead listeners to perceive the sounds of different instruments as blended or distinct in orchestral works. Applications include the reduction and prevention of injuries among professional musicians, improved hearing aids, improvements to the quality of both recorded music and live performance, and science-based music therapy.
"With this support from the CFI and from the Government of Québec, researchers at CIRMMT will have a unique integrated facility allowing us to study sound production by large ensembles, the ways in which performers coordinate with each other and reach the audience, as well as develop new technologies for live music performance and sound recording," said CFI-funded researcher, William Dawson Scholar and Associate Professor of Music Technology Marcelo Wanderley.
