Serving on the International Sound Awards jury, Rithik Kundu ’22 Traces His Love for Emerging Music Technology Back to CA
This year, Rithik Kundu ’22 is serving on the jury of the International Sound Awards (ISA), an annual competition dubbed the “Oscars of Sound.” One of 25 jurors, the recent New York University graduate joined this multinational panel of audio experts while still a college senior. Already building a career advising companies on emerging music technology, Kundu is now evaluating ISA nominations in categories as diverse as corporate audio branding, gaming music, interactive voice response, audio startups, and acoustic design for museums and other public spaces.
His interests converge in the intersection of music and artificial intelligence. At NYU, Kundu founded the GenAudio & AI club, an interdisciplinary group that studies the intersection of AI and music technology. GenAudio established partnerships with commercial music tools to encourage creative use of generative AI technologies at the school.
Music technology is also his research area. For his capstone project in NYU’s Music Technology program, he conducted a pilot blind-listener survey to compare perceptions of human-made and AI-generated music, using songs from one of his advisors, Grammy winner Mr. Sonic, in the genres of Latin trap, reggaeton, cumbia nortena, and garage pop. He also presented the methodologies at Sony’s technology conference in March. While this research is still ongoing, Kundu found that in certain genres, some listeners may prefer AI-generated music “because it feels more unique,” but that many still nonetheless favor a touch of humanity. Regardless, he adds, “what we’re seeing is that people do have ideas about what AI-generated music is going to sound like.”
Will AI overtake artistry? “You have to approach that question with nuance,” Kundu says. “There are legitimate concerns, particularly around data scraping and copyright. It’s a very complicated issue, but there are also creative benefits.”
As a digital music producer, he points to the creative assistance that AI offers, for example, for creating a melody or drum pattern. More important to him is assistive production technology, which extends to mastering and mixing tracks. “If you’re an artist who knows how to compose a song but not how to make it label-ready, let’s say you use a mastering algorithm that’s tailored to you, trained on reference tracks you select,” he says. “Suddenly, you have a near-record-ready release that you can then send out to people who can help your career.”
Kundu began producing digital music in his 9th grade year at CA, where, in addition to programming and engineering clubs, he was active in the Producers Club. He had been playing piano for years and sang in a cappella groups, but he says creating digital music became an ideal creative outlet as he adjusted to his new school and tried to find his place.
Early on, Kundu assumed he’d go into computer science or become a mechanical engineer. His trajectory shifted midway through that first year at CA, when he released his first song. “My friends would play my song in the Pit, and I’d get embarrassed, but it was nice. There weren’t that many people who released music, so I became someone who was known for that.”
He remembers an influential film scoring class he took with Nate Tucker as well as a class on digital storytelling with Kirsten Hoyte P’22 ’24, where he explored how sound interacted with other media. “I wasn’t sure what I was transitioning into, but I had a lot of support from my friends and the faculty,” he says.
“I’ve always been on the train that music tech is the way to go,” he says. “If it weren’t for getting introduced to Ableton through the Producers Club, I wouldn’t have developed this skill set.”
He advises students interested in music technology to follow their curiosity. “Try to take as many classes as you can, but also don’t be afraid to explore on your own and show what you’re doing to other people,” he says. “And post publicly about the work that you’re doing. This helped me a lot in cultivating recognition of GenAudio and the other initiatives I’ve been part of.”
