Roger Dannenberg picked up the trumpet at age 11 to join his school band and hasn’t put the instrument down since. He’s maintained his passion through years of lessons, practice, and performance—even through a demanding graduate program in another field. While earning his PhD in computer science, Dannenberg (S’83) balanced private trumpet lessons with his courses, honing the multidisciplinary approach that still guides his work nearly three decades later at Carnegie Mellon. The professor of computer science, art, and music spends his workday in the classroom. But he is a performer as well, playing trumpet professionally both in Pittsburgh and internationally.
When music technology company The Way of H needed someone to develop an algorithm for a new iPhone/iPad guitar application, Dannenberg was perfectly suited for the job. Over the course of a year, he developed the pitch-recognition technology vital to the project, and the Rock Prodigy app was born. The application has a premise similar to that of popular video game Guitar Hero: A player follows a master recording of a song, gaining points for correct notes. The difference is that Rock Prodigy demands far more of its users—they play along with the recording using a real guitar instead of the simplistic plastic buttons of the Guitar Hero game. Dannenberg’s technology enables the device to pick up guitar signals and to identify correct and incorrect notes, providing immediate feedback to self-taught guitarists.
The app’s potential as a teaching tool was recognized at the annual Appy Awards, where it garnered the 2011 Appy Award for Education.
—Olivia O’Connor (A’13)
