Biography

Professor Emeritus Barry Vercoe was the head of the Media Lab's Music, Mind and Machine group, which developed structured audio technology capable of delivering the most complex, high-quality digital sounds quickly and at lower bandwidths, without losing quality. This technology was incorporated into MPEG-4, the world's first international standard for sound synthesis. Vercoe is credited with training virtually an entire generation of young composers in computer sound manipulation. He pioneered the creation of synthetic music with the development of the Csound software-synthesis language. Before coming to MIT, Vercoe taught at Oberlin College Conservatory and Yale School of Music. He holds a PhD in music composition, and was composer-in-residence for the Seattle-Tacoma public school system, where he wrote his first music involving computer performance. He is author of several languages for digital audio processing, and has hosted numerous workshops for composers and technology at MIT.