2024 Finalists

Ten innovators from five countries have advanced to the competition's final round. They will meet on the Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta, Georgia on March 8 and 9, 2024, to compete for $10,000 in prizes. Each finalist and their instrument has a compelling story — these are the world's next generation of musical instruments.

The finalists will perform at the Guthman Musical Instrument Competition Concert with their instruments and Atlanta musicians on Saturday, March 9th at 7pm at Georgia Tech's Ferst Center for the Arts. Grab your tickets before they are gone!

Note: If you are a GT student, faculty member, or staff, please log in to use the GT student, faculty, or staff ticket option.

Babel Table

Jean-François Laporte – Canada

The Babel Table uses multiple arrangements of latex membranes and compressed air to produce a variety of voices, from deep percussive effects to electronic-like chirping. The instrument, originally made for a children's project called Babaloune, is designed to capture the attention of children and represent different characters in the project.

“I am a manual person and need to feel material pass in my hands. It is exactly the same with music and sound, I need to touch it and feel it in my body and throughout my hands, not only my brain.”

BodyMouth

Kat Mustatea and Yonatan Rozin – United States

The sound-movement instrument BodyMouth allows performers to sound out words using body movements in specific sequences.

“Being around other people who have obscure passions and are also undertaking wild and weird experiments, is pretty much why I went into being an artist in the first place.”

Bone Conductive Instrument (BCI)

Pippa Kelmenson – United States

The Bone Conductive Instrument (BCI) sends sound signals through the jaw that vibrate the individual resonant frequencies of the body. It's designed to help users across the hearing spectrum access musical sounds.

“As a lifelong musician, technologist, and sound artist with hearing impairments and tinnitus, I have always looked for ways to add a tactile dimension to sound to create a dialogue with the body.”

Circle Guitar

Anthony Dickens - United Kingdom

The Circle Guitar adapts the conventional electric guitar concept to use a rotating wheel that strikes the strings, creating rhythms impossible to perform by hand.

"Using a programmable wheel to strum the strings, the player can push past the physical limitations of conventional guitar playing to create new kinds of guitar music.”

The Lorentz Violin

Thomas Coor – United States

Marrying old techniques and new technologies, the Lorentz Violin is a portable electromechanical instrument using a guitar pickup and a variable-speed magnetic wheel to create different tones.

“There is little more exciting to me than strange sounds, and little more satisfying than controlling them.”

Sonògraf

Playmodes - Spain

The Sonògraf is an audiovisual instrument designed as a music learning tool for primary schools. Performers make music using drawing and collage, which are captured by a camera and transformed into sound.

“We wanted to bring children an accessible and fun way of composing music through drawing and collage.”

Thales

Nicola Privato – Italy

Thales allow users to make music by interacting with magnetic fields, using controllers containing magnets and multiple sensors.

“Thales is a very cheap and easy-to-build instrument, and I think of this feature as an invitation for artists to build their versions and experiment with it.”

VocalCords

Max Addae - United States

By using three rubber cords, singers can use VocalCords to augment and modify their voices in real time. Manipulating the cords by hand is intended to bring the relationship between touch and sound, shared by many musical instruments, to the singing voice.

“I would love for VocalCords to become a vessel for vocalists with varying degrees of performance experience and vocal comfort, … empowering people to creatively explore and express themselves through their voices in ways they may not typically imagine otherwise.”

X.E.K.I.

Orpheas Kofinakos, Herui Chen, Peter Zhang – United States

The eXpressive Electronic Keyboard Instrument (XEKI) encourages people to move while playing by incorporating body movement into musical expression.

"We looked for additional ways to incorporate motion akin to traditional instruments in the playing and performance of digitally produced music, as we found the devices most often used in this context do not focus on the role of body movements within musical expression."

YUAN

Chi Wang - United States

YUAN, a data-driven instrument controller, allows performers to use capacitive touch, brightness change, and motion detection to manipulate sound.

“As a result of instrument’s mutability, the composer can reimagine the sonic world with different combinations of YUAN. Performers can engage the instrument via capacitive touches, brightness changes, and motion detective movements.”

Start Your Music Technology Journey

At the Georgia Tech School of Music, our students combine technical skill with exceptional music talent to truly change the way the world experiences music. Learn more about our bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs in music technology, our pre-college summer studio, and our innovative research labs.

Get the Inside Scoop on Music Technology

Learn about our Guthman Musical Instrument Competition, the inventors we feature every year, and the music technology research and degree programs at the Georgia Tech School of Music. We will inspire your creativity and expand your perspectives on music!

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