Music man

Student finds harmony between engineering and music

Electrical engineering junior Jason Morris is passionate about music.

"I'm a musician," he says, explaining that he once planned to make music his major. "I play the piano and the trombone, and I love them!"

Jason's musical training began more than a dozen years ago. "I started off on the piano, playing classical music, and for a very long time that's all I played," he recalls. "There was a hint of jazz every now and then, just because I would beg my teachers— but they were very classically oriented, and I was preparing to audition to major in music. When you do that, no matter what type of music you eventually want to play, you have to know how to play classical."

The trombone, he says, was different. "I never had a private lesson—I just learned through school. By the time I got to high school, I was in every band and orchestra that they offered. I eventually got into jazz with the trombone, and that was when the piano and the trombone kind of merged for me, and I started playing all types of music on both instruments."

Ultimately, however, Jason turned to another one of his passions when it came time to choose a major. "I was always into electronics, and I like taking things apart and putting them back together," he states. "I wanted to find something where I could use my technical abilities, because I like math and science." Engineering in general seemed like a good fit. And when he read what electrical engineering was, he knew it was the right choice for him.

Even so, his love of music factored into his decision to attend Penn State. "I really wanted to find some sort of cross-sectional area where I could combine engineering and music. It's one of the reasons I picked Penn State—it has an engineering school and a music school."

As it's turned out, Jason has been able to do exactly that by enrolling in the College of Arts and Architecture's music technology minor. This interdisciplinary program includes courses in musical acoustics, digital audio, sound design, and audio recording, and it allows students to focus on advanced topics such as music software programming, multi-media, or entertainment systems.

This semester, for example, Jason is taking a course titled "The Science of Music." "We're learning about the properties of sound, why an instrument sounds the way it does, and what makes it sound different than another instrument, scientifically," he explains.

In addition to minoring in music technology, Jason has found another outlet for his love of music by performing with two instrumental groups at Penn State: Concert Band and Sinfonietta, a full-size symphonic orchestra.

Concert Band is open to students in any major, but auditions are required and the practice schedule is quite time-consuming. Jason was in Concert Band for two semesters, but he has since given it up due to the rigorous demands of his engineering curriculum. Sinfonietta, on the other hand, does not require auditions, and practices are held only once a week. Jason joined Sinfonietta his first semester and continued with it through his sophomore year. It didn't fit into his schedule this fall, but he hopes to have time for it in the future.

"It's great," he says. "The attitude is: 'Let's play music, let's sound good, and let's have fun while we're doing it!' It's good that I don't have to give up playing while I'm at Penn State, because it can definitely help with stress. It's really therapeutic."

As for his career plans, Jason is still exploring his options, but he's certain about one thing: he wants a job that combines engineering and music. Right now, he's leaning toward the digital signal processing area of electrical engineering. "With an instrument—any type of effect that's not the natural sound of that instrument—you can distort it and make it sound like all different types of things. That's due to digital signal processing," he explains.

He's also considering audio engineering, which deals with microphones, speakers, and headphones, as well as opportunities in the recording industry, a field he learned about through his membership in the Audio Engineering Society (AES).

"AES had a speaker come in last year, a Grammy-winning recording engineer," Jason says. "He's the guy who sits in the studio behind the panel with all the controls. He talked about what he did, and it seemed really interesting to me. So that's another option I'm thinking about."

"And obviously I'll never stop playing the piano and trombone," he adds. "Nothing's stopped me yet. It probably never will!"