Parag Chordia is an assistant professor of music at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is part of the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology where he specializes in Music Information Retrieval (MIR) and Music Cognition research. Through his research, Chordia attempts to synthesize advances in machine learning and signal processing to create systems that can ‘listen’ intelligently. He is particularly interested in creating tools for live performance and computational ethnomusicology. His work in Music Cognition has focused on understanding how emotion is evoked. As a composer, he attempts to create new forms drawing on both Indian classical and electronic music, often using machine listening technologies and computational models developed in his research.

Chordia received his PhD in media ‘Computer-based Music theory and Acoustics’ from Stanford University’s CCRMA, and his BA in Applied Mathematics from Yale University. He completed his post-doctoral studies with David Huron on the topic of statistical learning and expectation-evoked emotion. Before turning to academia, he founded Bol Records, an Indian classical music label, where he served as CEO and artistic director. Most recently, he co-founded Yaari.com, a social networking tool for South Asians, where he served as CTO. Additionally, he is an active performer of Indian classical music on the sarod, and a disciple of the legendary Pandit Buddhadev Das Gupta. 

Selected Publications

• Mark Godfrey, Parag Chordia. “Hubs and Homogeneity: Improving Content-based music modeling.” In Proceedings of International Conference on Music Information Retrieval, 2008.

 

• Parag Chordia, Mark Godfrey, Alex Rae. “Extending Content-Based Recommendation: The Case of Indian Classical Music.” In Proc. of the 8th International Conference on Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR). (pdf)

 

• Parag Chordia, Alex Rae. “Tabla Gyan: A System for Realtime Tabla Recognition and Resynthesis.” In Proc. of the 2008 International Computer Music Conference (ICMC). (pdf) (presentation slides)

 

• Parag Chordia, Alex Rae. “Raag vidya: Real-time Raag Recognition for Interactive Music.” In Proc. of the 2008 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME). (pdf)

 

• Parag Chordia, Alex Rae. “Modeling and visualizing tonality in North Indian classical music.” In Neural Information Processing Systems,Music Brain Workshop, 2007 (NIPS 2007). (pdf) (presentation slides) (video of the talk)

 

• Parag Chordia, Alex Rae. “Automatic Raag Classification Using Pitch-class and Pitch-class Dyad Distributions.” In Proc. of the 7th International Conference on Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR). (pdf) (presentation slides — 30Mb).

 

• Parag Chordia. “Segmentation and Recognition of Tabla Strokes.” In Proc. of the 6th International Conference on Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR), pages 107-114. (pdf)

 

• Parag Chordia, Alex Rae. “A large-scale survey of emotion in raag music.” In Proceedings of International Conference of Music Perception and Cognition, 2008. (pdf) (presentation slides — 20Mb)

 

• Parag Chordia, Alex Rae. “Understanding Emotion in Raag: An Empirical Survey of Listener Responses.” In Proc. of the 2007 International Computer Music Conference (ICMC). (pdf) (presentation slides — 20Mb)