Episode #4: Marcelo Wanderley
Happy 2026! We are SO back. More snow, more ice, and more podcasts! After taking a much needed pause over the holidays, Music, Movement, Machines continues with new episodes coming out roughly every couple weeks. As always, thank you for tuning in, and if you know of others who might like to listen, please share it with them.
In this episode, I sat down for a conversation with my former PhD co-supervisor, Marcelo Wanderley. Marcelo is a professor of Music Technology at McGill University where he leads the Input Devices and Musical Interaction Laboratory. He is also the current director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology, a multidisciplinary research centre that serves several Quebec universities.
Marcelo is well-known across the world of music technology, and especially in the area of musical interface and digital musical instrument design. His ongoing work, teaching, and supervision has helped music tech research evolve as a truly interdisciplinary field, and under his leadership CIRMMT continues to redefine what this can mean for the future.
Links and show notes
Below is a list of relevant links and information about some of the things that we talk about in the episode.
- The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT)
- The Input Devices and Music Interaction Laboratory (IDMIL)
- Guests continue to be closely affiliated with IRCAM and NIME, and Marcelo is no different. Fun fact: Marcelo Wanderley is the Most Cited Author in the first 20 years of the NIME Conference! (source)
- Trends in Gestural Control of Music (2000) is an e-book (originally published as a CD-ROM) edited by Wanderley and Marc Battier. It is one of the earliest sources of literature on gesture and interaction for computer music.
- Also mentioned in the episode: Problems and Prospects for Intimate Musical Control of Computers (2001) by David Wessel and Matt Wright, which should have been in Trends... but instead was published at the first year of NIME!
- Finally, Marcelo mentions one of the publications he and I co-authored, Stability, Reliability, Compatibility: Reviewing 40 Years of DMI Design (2018) as we discussed expanded musical practice (one of CIRMMT's four research axes).
