The Engineering Behind The Music

Akshay Anantapadmanabhan, Engineer turned Professional Musician, Music Technology

I applied for engineering schools simply because I thought I was good at math and physics.  While I did not know what electrical engineering was when I applied for college, my experiences during undergraduate and graduate school definitely made me realize the importance of my major and how it affects people’s lives daily.  Like the majority of engineering graduates in the world, I was recruited by a company that was in an industry outside engineering – and I chose to roll with it!  The two greatest takeaways I captured from working on the engineering and software teams of a wealth management firm was 1) engineering can be applied to any field – it is not just a major but it is a form of thinking 2) I do not belong at a 9-5 job!

These were probably my two most impactful epiphanies in my life (so far) because they have led me to where I am today – pursuing my passion of music as a career.  Rightly so I guess, since I started learning music much much much before I started learning engineering!  However, even today I continue to publish papers in international academic journals in collaborations with different universities in the space of music technology (specifically at the intersection of music and signal processing, which was my major in college).  I am happy to have published one of the first signal processing papers on the mridangam and kanjira.  This is the literal side of my engineering background that I am still in touch with, but the soul of engineering is in the thought of the engineer – and that I use every single day! 

I think people generally pin music as far away from engineering as possible but I don’t see it that way.  My approach to my music projects, the thought process that goes behind preparing for concerts, the method to practice and learn and essentially set up a more efficient life as a musician are all influenced by my engineering background.  I definitely have my experiences at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art to thank for all of this.  And with that, I would like to say that engineering is probably one of the most versatile fields if you can look beyond the book – engineers CAN be anyone!