“Most of the code has been written from scratch. “This thing has changed so much since we started,” says Ndubuisi. Ndubuisi shakes his head a bit at how far he and Li have come with SoundSpace. “Everyone was always going to Mike with programming questions, so I knew he was the guy,” says Li. He knew just who to turn to: Michael Ndubuisi. I e-mailed a bunch of professors proposing an independent study class and Bruce Land, senior Lecturer in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell, said ‘yes.’”Īs Li got deeper into the project, he realized he needed someone with serious programming skills. “But after that, I realized I could mesh engineering and music more seriously.

“It was fun to make, but in the end it was not very musical,” says Li. Li’s interest in combining engineering with music came into sharp focus at the end of his sophomore year at Cornell, when he created an electrical instrument modeled on the traditional cello. “The musician was not tied to knobs and dials and buttons.” Adds Li AEP ’14 “You are free to just use your hands and move and make music that way.” To understand what Li and Ndubuisi are talking about, it makes sense to play this video before you read further. “For me, it clicked when I saw that it really did make sounds based on gestures,” says Ndubuisi CS ’14. I am not really sure how it turned into all of this.” “Originally, we won a thousand dollars from the Cornell Council for the Arts and were committed to doing a demonstration. It’s become a bit all-consuming.” As Li speaks, both he and Ndubuisi smile at the thought of how much time they have devoted to SoundSpace. “We came into this year with no intention of really working on this so much. Li and Ndubuisi built on that success and presented a concert with a chamber orchestra in May of this year. An earlier incarnation of SoundSpace, (called Aura), won the Bright Idea Award from The School of Electrical and Computer Engineering’s Innovation Competition in the winter of 2013. Their creation, called SoundSpace, has already created quite a buzz around the Cornell campus. It is one of the basic rules of music.Ĭornell Engineers Ray Li and Michael Ndubuisi have set out to break this basic rule. But whichever of these you decide to do, you need an instrument. To play music, you need an instrument, right? You can pluck a string or vibrate a reed or strike a surface or force air through an opening. Ray Li '14 Applied and Engineering Physics and Michael Ndubusi '14 Computer Science

Pushing the limits series in order