Artists perform music during the "Happy Chinese New Year Charming Beijing Tianjin Hebei" performance at the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, the United States, on Feb. 10, 2018. The "Happy Chinese New Year Charming Beijing Tianjin Hebei" event was held at the Saban Theater on Saturday to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year. (Photo/Xinhua)
China's top music university is recruiting PhD students majoring in music and artificial intelligence (AI), as the country is moving quickly to embrace AI technology.
The Beijing-based Central Conservatory of Music started to recruit students with the combined ability in music and AI on Friday for a three-year PhD program to nurture them in both disciplines, according to its website.
The project is open to students who major in computer, AI and electronic information, and the university will also test their musical capabilities.
The university said it believes that "science and technology is one of the main driving forces of musical development, and artificial intelligence will be another important opportunity for musical development in the future."
AI studies could help musicians create music by capturing the music patterns of popular music or customizing music by calculating various parameters, including music genre, rhythm, instrument and mood, according to AI specialists reached by the Global Times.
Music relies heavily on science and technology. It cannot be seen but every musical instrument and song is produced from accurate math calculations, Zhang Zhentao, a musician and professor at the Music Research Institute at the Chinese Academy of Arts, told the Global Times.
However, insiders believe that music students specializing in AI technology face a gloomy job market. AI specialists are extremely expensive, but the commercial application market of AI music is unprofitable and still in the initial stages.
The university has recommended five books for students on algorithms, AI theory, machine learning and basic music theory.
The recruitment will end on March 15.
The university declined to comment when reached by the Global Times on Tuesday, saying the school is not ready for the press.
Sun Maosong, a professor at the Institute for Artificial Intelligence at Tsinghua University and Wu Xihong, a professor at the School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science at Peking University, were invited as instructors of the PhD project. Both declined to comment.
