ESP Biography



KEVIN GOLD, Professor of Computer Science at Wellesley College



Major: Computer Science

College/Employer: Wellesley

Year of Graduation: Not available.

Picture of Kevin Gold

Brief Biographical Sketch:

Kevin got his undergraduate degree from Harvard in 2001, got a useless patent in 2002, wrote an unpublished novel in 2003, was featured in New Scientist magazine for his robotic self-recognition research in 2007, and got a Ph.D. from Yale in 2008. He is currently a professor of Computer Science at Wellesley College, where he runs the Gold Intention Recognition Lab (GIRL) and teaches courses on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Web Design, and Games. You may have noticed that none of this qualifies him to teach a class on music theory and improvisation ... but he did take a class on it back in high school, and enjoys messing around with Garage Band.



Past Classes

  (Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

A2756: How to Pick Out Songs, Read Chord Symbols, and Improvise in Splash! 2009 (Nov. 21 - 22, 2009)
This course will teach the basic tools of the pop musician's bag of tricks -- the major, dominant, minor, and sus chords -- and how these building blocks form the basis of most pop music. We'll look at techniques for reverse engineering songs just by listening closely, figure out what's really happening when a musician plays a solo during an instrumental break, and show how a piano player can make use of all those guitar tabs for rock songs floating around on the web.