Inspired by the original in-house audio R&D team called Record Engineering Development Department of the 1950s to 1970s, Abbey Road Red was set up in 2015 to build relationships with those innovating around music and emerging technologies.

Abbey Road Red is Europe’s first ever incubation programme for audio tech start-ups, spanning the gamut of technologies from audio signal processing to machine learning, adaptive and generative composition, lyric visualisation, 3D playback and spatial projection.

Aiming to reinvent music innovation and production, we have collaborated with Microsoft to transform the way we create and experience music. We’re putting the latest tools in the hands of the most forward-thinking creators to discover new and unexpected uses of AI technology, audio APIs and hardware integrations. Top industry mentors will assist participants as they work together to create solutions and explore questions like:

- How will artists create music in 2030? What tools, instruments, mediums will they be using?

- Shazam for Samples: Can you use computer vision or speech recognition to create Shazam for Samples? Can you dynamically change the sample to fit the track?

- Could you train AI to ‘play music’ and jam with you based on cues?
Sing a duet and use Cognitive Services to trigger different effects and sounds when it identifies a particular person’s voice.

- Can you play or create music using emotions to trigger different sounds, samples, parameters or effects?

Our brief is open and we will inspire you with more precise questions on the day, but anyone who creates a concept moving us into the future of music making will have a chance to win one of our amazing prizes.

Main Prize from Microsoft for the best use of AI: Team Rapple

AI Powered Rap Battle Opponent, which listens to your freestyle on a beat and responds to you with a punch line to the same line. Not only it does it work in real time, but it also relates the punch line to your freestyle and gets better during the battle.

Team members: Giorgia Cantisani (we met Giorgia at HAMMER hack in Paris during the ISMIR conference, where she won the Golden Ticket to Abbey Road Red Hackathon), Ondrej Cifka, Diego Di Carlo, Kilian Schulze-Forster,Tim Christian Kirby, Alejandro Delgado Luezas.

Second Main Prize from Miquido for the Best User-Friendly Thinking: Team HRMNI

Team members: Alex & Bridgette Powell, Pedro Leonardo Garlaschi, Rob Hyde, Glyn Hanmer.

A mobile app allowing multiple users to create sounds on their phone and control them by moving closer to each other.

The London Field Brewery Prize: Team XtraSynth

Team members: Tomasz Rudzki, Pedro Sanchez Alvarez, Ed Storey.

A VR and AR Synthesizer, creating a hyper-realistic XR experience, where you generate music by kicking the objects in the VR space.

The Jury’s Choice Prize (with a bag full of audio gadgets provided by Hackoustic and Juce): Amy Dickens for SoundSoup

SoundSoup is an additive synthesis effect, created by the audience pressing a vegetable image on their screen. Each vegetable is different and is assigned to a different frequency from an array of one fundamental and 13 harmonics.

The Chirp Prize: Team La Vaca Cega

Team members: Robert Blaauboer, Guillem Cortès Sebastià, Joe Munday.

A distributed speaker, which was an unexpected outcome of their attempt to synchronise multiple devices using Chirp. Team La Vaca Cega said: "Imagine if you could utilise the crowd as your distributed speaker" and they sent sound to all the mobile devices in the room, the delay caused by internal clocks created a beautiful distorted sound effect passing in waves across the room.

The Queen Mary University Prize: Team xAmplR

Team members: Adrian Holder and Alex Milanov

A user-friendly browser-based sampler connected to an unlimited free library from Audio Commons.

The Cloudinary Prize: Team Crator

Team members: Aleix Claramunt, Kristian Ruud, Daniel Balcells, Enric Calabuig, Francesc Lluis, Aritad Choicharoon.

A tool to help DJs when organising and creating their music catalogue.