Participants 2025
About the TEAM
Born in Beijing, China, Yun Hao is an accomplished piano soloist and chamber musician who has performed in China, Australia, the United States, Finland, and Croatia. She is highly praised by famous piano pedagogue Dr. Arkady Aronov for her truthful pianistic expressions and deep understanding of music as a pianist who plays with great sensitivity, strong conviction, and sincerity. Ms. Hao is currently pursuing her Doctor of Musical Arts degree working with Prof. Pavel Nersessian at Boston University, College of Fine Arts.
About the SONG
This is a short experimental electroacoustic piece, inspired by a series of composer workshops in New Hampshire this past June. During the workshop sessions, we recorded acoustic viola sounds as samples for later processing via REAPER. The violist already sounded amazing with the unprocessed recordings.
Some of the sample playing sounds resemble distorted radio frequencies, hence the title Interférence. Acoustic sound samples I chose and worked with are: harsh pressed sounds near the bridge; pizzicatos; and sliding harmonics. The electronic sounds are altered and manipulated from the acoustic recording samples, and mixed with AI-generated tracks (with prompts).
About the HUMAN-AI PROCESS
First, I listened back to the acoustic viola recording samples and made the selections that I liked, for example, the harmonic slide and pizzicato. Then I played around with the chosen samples, with different combinations, to see what music flows would come out from it. That would involve layering, shortening, or lengthening the original samples. Then I added different parameters to the acoustic samples to generate sounds that are interesting to me. I used REAPER for mixing/processing the tracks. Then, to add the AI component to the piece, I browsed the recommended tools via the AI Song Contest page and tried a couple of tools. Eventually, I used Jen Music AI and created three different tracks using text prompts. The tracks were also edited according to the music materials I already had to blend in with the overall project. I know I would need rhythm tracks and background ambient sound to merge with existing sounds, so having a particular plan and idea of what I am looking for using AI tools is very helpful. In the mixing, I adjusted the volume, panning, and reverb levels to make it sounding more interesting. This whole process is like an acoustic playground, where I create my own sounds.