ANALYSIS

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Abbey Road Studios holds first hackathon
to promote innovation in music technology
Communications
sector appears ripe for
disruption as climate
change takes hold

Abbey Road Studios Music studio hosts hackathon event to foster innovation at a more grassroots level. Sebastian Klovig Skelton reports
holds hackathon to push
musictech innovation

NHS trust takes a

healthy approach
to data security as
technology use evolves

Editor’s comment
T he world-famous Abbey Road Studios, where many of
The Beatles’ most popular songs were recorded, is look-
ing to support music innovation through technology, and
recently held its first hackathon event.
The studio runs a musictech incubation programme called
Abbey Road Red. The hackathon in November 2018 gathered 100
Buyer’s guide participants to explore new ways of using technology to create
to perimeterless
network security
and consume music. The participants – comprised of program-
mers, technologists, developers and music producers – were
CIO trends for 2019
given a number of questions to guide their creations, including
“How will artists create music in 2030?” and “Can you play or
Brexit implications create music using emotions to trigger different sounds, sam-
for data protection ples, parameters or effects?”.
The teams were supported by Abbey Road engineers and
Downtime
judged by an industry panel made up of judges from Universal

ABBEY ROAD STUDIOS

Music Group and Abbey Road Studios itself, as well as Microsoft
and Miquido, the event’s official partners. Participants had
24 hours to develop their ideas, after which the best two were
awarded prizes from the partners.

computerweekly.com 8-14 January 2019 8

 ABBEY ROAD STUDIOS
Teams of participants at work at the
Abbey Road Red Hackathon

Home

News

Communications
sector appears ripe for
disruption as climate
change takes hold

Abbey Road Studios

holds hackathon to push
musictech innovation

NHS trust takes a

healthy approach
to data security as
technology use evolves

Editor’s comment The Miquido prize went to HRMNI, a collaborative music instru-
ment that allows users to join a jam session with their phones. The
Buyer’s guide Microsoft prize was won by Rapple, a virtual battle rap opponent.
to perimeterless
network security
“One of the main questions at the hackathon was, ‘Could you
train AI [artificial intelligence] to play music and jam with you?’,”
CIO trends for 2019 said Kilian Schulze-Forster, one of the team members who devel-
oped Rapple. “Google developed a jam bot that can play melodies
Brexit implications and we found an app that transforms a short voice recording into
for data protection a rap-style song.”
Inspired by these findings, the team of six – all PhD students –
Downtime
developed an AI-powered rap battle opponent that listens to the
user’s lyrics and replies with its own punchlines.
“We focused on rap since it is easier to handle for speech rec-
ognition systems than singing voice. The product idea of a tool for
inspiration and training in lyrics writing stemmed from the fact
that we are all musicians and know how it feels to be stuck when
writing songs,” said Schulze-Forster.
Building on ideas
According to Karim Fanous, innovation manager at Abbey Road
Red, the aim of the hackathon was to build bridges between
ideas and future technologies in the music industry.
“We wanted to try to foster and explore innovation at a more
nascent, playful level – to inspire some new developers and artists
to inspire us and the wider music community,” he said.
An atmosphere of innovation and collaboration was also high-
lighted by Schulze-Forster: “We learned a lot from scientists,
developers, designers and mentors around us, especially about
project management and communication for such an intensive
project. Everyone was approachable and happy to help. One team

computerweekly.com 8-14 January 2019 9

 ANALYSIS

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News developed a drum computer, which is controlled by the user’s

face. One can play a beat through moving mouth, eyes, eyebrows, Programmers, technologists, developers and music
Communications and so on. It is not only fun, but also an innovative idea as a user producers took part in the Abbey Road Red Hackathon
sector appears ripe for
disruption as climate
interface for disabled people who want to play music.”
change takes hold Schulze-Forster added that although all of the team is busy with
PhDs, they are determined to keep working on Rapple together.
Abbey Road Studios “We want to develop it from the current prototype state into a
holds hackathon to push
musictech innovation working product,” he said. “This includes making its punchlines
more meaningful, as well as letting it rap with a nice, rhythmic
NHS trust takes a flow. We could imagine making an app out of it in the long term
healthy approach and would like to stay in touch with Abbey Road in this respect.”
to data security as
technology use evolves According to Fanous, the hackathon was also set up so that
Abbey Road Red could explore ways it could help at the “pre-
Editor’s comment incubation” level. “For incubation, [usually] we like the startups
to have an element of maturity. Ideally, our founders will be about
Buyer’s guide to develop some sort of accessible technology or bring a product
to perimeterless
network security
into the marketplace – that’s the point at which we can help the
most. However, we have worked with founders who have just had
CIO trends for 2019 an idea when we’ve believed in their potential to make it a reality.”
Abbey Road Red runs a six-month incubation programme, and
Brexit implications takes 2% of equity from the startups that participate.
for data protection “We want to support the music industry with the value we
provide at the incubator. We take a very small amount of equity.
Downtime
We’re trying to help brilliant founders usher in the next set of uni-

ABBEY ROAD STUDIOS

versally adopted technologies to the industry,” said Fanous. “It’s
not about spread-betting, it’s about researching, learning, think-
ing about what is going to have an impact, and searching for the
people who are going to make that impact.” n

❯Trans-global hackathon aims to develop apps to improve air passenger experience.

computerweekly.com 8-14 January 2019 10
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