Senior Spotlight: Allen Zhu

Undergraduates from any school or college across CMU can enroll in one of the Integrative Design, Arts, and Technology (IDeATe) network’s 10 minors. For senior Allen Zhu, who is finishing the last semester of his Electronic Music major, exploring the Sonic Arts minor was a natural extension of his studies in the College of Fine Arts.

Now, Zhu is preparing for his senior capstone concert that will combine electronic music, jazz, and visuals, an interdisciplinary performance born out of his major’s expertise and IDeATe’s freedom to experiment. We sat down with him to learn more about his work, and his overarching goals as an artist.

Q: Tell us about your journey pursuing music.

A: I’ve been into electronic music since elementary school — I discovered it on YouTube through channels like NoCopyrightSounds and Monstercat. I really liked the sounds that came out of those videos, which led me to go deeper into exploring electronic music as an art form and how these sounds are made.

Jazz, on the other hand, I didn’t really listen to until I got to CMU. I was part of jazz band in middle school, but I didn’t really pursue it in high school. In college, I learned that CMU had a jazz club, and started going to jam sessions. Then I started listening to jazz recordings of the greats performing, to explore how to get better at soloing and improvising.

The reason I chose the electronic music major at CMU is because I knew I would develop artistically here — that beyond the tools of my trade, I would also learn where what I do sits in the broader context. There’s discourse, a conversation, that is represented by the music people make — the ways people listen to, influence, and take from one another. What does it mean to be an electronic musician? That’s what I wanted to find out.

Q: How has IDeATe impacted your time at CMU?

A: IDeATe is the coolest place on campus bar none. It’s where you get to collaborate, meet lots of people, and build things together. The emphasis is on creation, and I fully buy into that. The whole point as a creative is to make something, and many of the more practical, project-based classes on campus are IDeATe ones. I’ve explored physical computing, participated in Exploded Ensemble, and also taken an animation class with Johannes DeYoung. I’ve gotten to meet so many cool people, and work on really cool projects.

IDeATe’s Media Lab is such a nice space, too — it’s a blackbox studio with an eight-speaker ring setup, which is essentially true surround sound. It’s a very very rare experience to be able to feel like you’re fully immersed and in the sound, and because of the way the lab is set up, it’s possible to fill the space at very low levels of volume, rather than making everything too loud. 

Q: What project are you currently working on?

A: My senior capstone concert is essentially a live performance, with an audio and visual component. It’s primarily me on saxophone, with additional music playing back and a video that’s responsive to what I’m doing in real time. In terms of the sonic aesthetic that I’m going for, I’m trying to bring the ethos of jazz to electronic music, which is traditionally a very fixed medium.

For the visual component, I’m using a program called TouchDesigner, which is a realtime programming environment suited primarily for audiovisual work. It approaches video from a computational perspective — video is data, and data can be manipulated, which is the basis of all the operations you can perform. It’s a very interdisciplinary software, and you can do anything with it. 

Q: What can you share about your plans for the future?

A: I’m going to be doing a fifth year here at CMU, getting my certificate in Audio Recording & Production through the Advanced Music Studies program, focusing on audio recording and production with Riccardo Schulz and Kristian Tchetchko. Then I plan to seek out a masters program focused on the business side of music, which is a current gap in my education that I’d like to fill. I’m looking at the University of Southern California and California State University, and while I’m in LA I’ll also be grinding out gigs, networking, and getting to know people. That will be the launching point for the next step of my career.

Q: What’s a lesson you’ve learned through IDeATe that you’ll take with you after graduation?

A: Trusting your collaborators is super important. The people working with you are going to make something amazing with you if you trust them to do what they do, and focus on what you’re good at yourself. If someone else is more experienced, let them take charge. Learning to trust other people and what they can do has been huge for me, and really opened my eyes to the possibilities of interdisciplinary collaboration.