The Guthman Musical Instrument Competition is a glimpse into the future of music-making—one shaped by engineers, musicians, and inventors pushing the boundaries of sound. Held annually at Georgia Tech, the event brings together instrument-makers that reimagine how music is played and experienced.
This year’s finalists formed a striking range, some engaging with sound through raw physicality—breath, bowing, plucking—while others channeled electromagnetic forces or algorithmic intelligence. But whether digital or analogue, acoustic or electronic, this year’s instruments foregrounded the relationship between performer and instrument, inviting touch, resistance, and direct interaction.
At a time when music technology often prioritizes seamlessness and automation, Guthman remains a space where invention thrives in unexpected places: sometimes in high-tech circuitry, sometimes in the simple act of striking, scraping, or coaxing sound from an object.
Since its inception, the competition has evolved dramatically. It began in the 1990s as a piano competition, founded by engineer and Georgia Tech alum Richard Guthman, in honor of his wife and pianist, Margaret Guthman. Over the years, it has evolved into something broader and more conceptually rich—a reflection of how musicians, engineers, and inventors approach musical expression in an era of rapid technological change.
As Georgia Tech’s music technology program grew, the decision was made in the mid-2000s to expand the focus to include new musical instruments. Today, it exemplifies Georgia Tech’s mission of merging technical expertise with creative expression: “This competition is really about taking advantage of what we do well at Georgia Tech: bringing together engineering, design, and music technology to create something that exists at the intersection of science and art,” says Jeff Albert, associate music professor at the university and head of the competition. For those who enter, it’s a chance to showcase their work in front of a panel of experts, as well as a curious niche of the public eager to glimpse the future of music.
Each year, the competition brings together some of the most forward-thinking minds in music technology, design, and performance. This year was no exception, with judges including King Britt, the veteran producer, composer and performer who has worked with the likes of De La Soul, Madlib, Miles Davis and Solange. (Britt also works as an educator at UCSD, where his Blacktronika course explores the contributions of people of color to electronic music.) Also on this year’s panel is Paul McCabe, senior VP of research and innovation at Roland, who has played a key role in shaping the future of music technology, particularly in his leadership of Roland’s Future Design Labs.
Finally, Laetitia Sonami is a sound artist and educator known for her innovative instruments, like the elbow-length Lady’s Glove, laced with 30 embedded sensors and social commentary, and which in many ways predated today’s wearable tech. Her experimental approach to sound and performance, including her ongoing experiments using neural networks for realtime audio synthesis, keeps her at the forefront of cutting-edge music creation. Past judges for the event have ranged from Laurie Anderson and Young Guru to Roger Linn and Tom Oberheim.
The competition attracts inventors from around the world, submitting designs that range from advanced digital controllers to reinvented acoustic instruments. Past winners have included everything from brainwave-controlled synthesizers to mechanical ensembles powered by robotic actuators—and even the occasional breakout commercial hit in the music tech world, like the original Teenage Engineering OP-1 and Roli Seaboard.
The competition has always endeavored to answer an essential question: What makes a great musical instrument?
Yet for all its technological ambition, the competition has always maintained a deep focus on human expressivity; instruments that don’t just dazzle with their engineering, but fundamentally expand the way musicians interact with sound. The competition has always endeavored to answer an essential question: What makes a great musical instrument? Is it the richness of its sound, the intuitiveness of its design, or its potential to revolutionize musical expression? For Sonami, the answer is all of the above: “It is exciting that one may use different paradigms and not only think of orchestra, stage, or studios, but of networking and relationship to places, people, and environments,” she says.
Among this year’s winners, an instrument called the Chromaplane took the top prize, embodying a retro-futuristic vision of musical interaction. Developed as a collaboration Passepartout Duo & KOMA Elektronik, the Chromaplane was the one instrument in the competition that’s actually been manufactured for wider audience than just the creator—albeit for a relatively small number of crowdfunders, when it was released in 2024.
It’s an analogue, polyphonic instrument played by moving electromagnetic pickup coils over a field of electromagnetic signals, and is equally adept at both drones and more agile melodies. A 4-pole low-pass filter and lo-fi delay add depth and atmosphere, while adjustable tuning screws and an online tuner allow for custom, sharable tunings. With its unique interface—essentially an array of sensors translating hand movements into sound—it transforms gesture into melody, allowing for fluid and expressive musical performance.
This year’s second place prize went to the Mulatar, which bridges centuries of instrument-making traditions with modern digital control. Inspired by classical stringed instruments but augmented with electronics, it allows for microtonal exploration and seamless timbral shifts, opening new expressive possibilities while remaining deeply rooted in the tactile experience of playing its strings.
The event’s third-place winner, Dinosaur Choir taps into something arguably even more primal, evoking the sounds of ancient worlds. Using neural networks to generate vocalizations that mimic prehistoric creatures, it’s more whimsical and conceptual than the other winners. Blurring the lines between instrument and sound installation, it turns speculative paleontology into an accessible and intuitive form of musical expression.
As Sonami points out, at the end of their selection process, the judges noticed something of a historical arc to the instruments they’d chosen: “The prehistory with the Dinosaur Choir, then the Mulatar, which is really about tradition incorporated into a new instrument—it puts hundreds of years of instrument-making into this one instrument. And then [finally] the Chromaplane, which was more futuristic. So there was this interesting arc from prehistory to sci-fi.”
As for why the latter came out on top, she says, “I think because at the end, you're still looking for new ways of making sound.” For them, it was ultimately the innovation that moved them, not just in the building and performance of the instrument, but also the technology that drives it. “Coils and magnetic fields alone are not innovative—it's been done for a long time—but turning them into a tunable instrument [was].”
Beyond the top three winners, the competition also honored instruments that reimagined musical control and accessibility. The 3 Axis MIDI Guitar earned the Judges' Special Award for its innovative approach to multi-dimensional expression. With a pressure-sensitive trackpad and unique effect control implementation, it allows guitarists to manipulate sounds and effects in natural ways that go beyond traditional fretting and bending.
The Udderbot, a playful and highly expressive breath-controlled acoustic instrument, and ModuMIDI, a polychromatic MIDI keyboard designed for ergonomic performance of microtonal music, with magnetic keys that can be removed or rearranged into customizable layouts, both received commendations for their unique contributions to the evolving landscape of instrument design.
Together, these winners highlight the competition’s ability to balance innovation with playfulness and tradition with experimentation. This year’s entries underscored an impulse to reconnect music with the body, the moment, and the audience.
Whether through touch, breath, or gesture, the winning instruments seemed to prioritize physicality and play over abstraction and automation; while digital and algorithmic processes are certainly present in several, they function in service of more tactile forms of performance, rather than replacing them. This is particularly evident in the Chromaplane: despite its futuristic, touchless interface, the instrument relies fully on the performer’s gestures to shape sound in real time. Similarly, the Mulatar and 3 Axis MIDI Guitar enhance traditional instrumental techniques rather than attempting to automate them.
Perhaps this focus on performance over novel or groundbreaking technology aligns with a broader shift in music creation and culture. In recent years, music production and consumption has of course been increasingly dominated by software workflows—DAWs, massive online sample libraries, and AI-assisted composition and sound generation tools—that optimize for convenience and efficiency. Many of this year’s Guthman finalists, by contrast, seem to push back against that very paradigm, emphasizing unpredictability, embodied control, and the physical presence of sound.
That emphasis may not be accidental. As Sonami notes, this year’s entries had a distinct performative energy, fostering connection between musician, instrument, and audience. “Maybe creating community and connecting with people, that kind of performative activity, is coming back in music,” she suggests, reflecting on how the pandemic, and perhaps even the broader social and political landscape, have shifted creative priorities. “If it means blowing the bottle or blowing through pipes or just making it accessible … I just think that people spend so much time creating tracks, and I’m hoping that maybe music is coming back to the stage, or if not the stage, to the street.”
It’s an observation that seemed to echo throughout the competition. Whether through new instrumental interfaces, unconventional tuning systems, or speculative sonic concepts, the 2025 Guthman finalists seemed less concerned with efficiency or automation and more invested in fostering friction—the kind of creative resistance that sparks genuine musical exploration.
It’s certainly something Sonami thinks about often. She herself has long explored the boundaries of machine learning in the context of musical expression, but over time she’s grown increasingly wary of how these technologies can shape artistic practice. “I don’t use the word AI anymore because it’s so loaded,” she says.
“I use [the term] machine learning because AI implies so many things that aren’t actually happening.” From her perspective, the value of machine learning in instrument design lies not in its ability to optimize performance, but in its capacity to create new creative tensions. “So much of technology is about being frictionless, and I’m for friction. I think we learn through friction.”
"So much of technology is about being frictionless, and I’m for friction. I think we learn through friction"
She sees a growing divide between machine learning as a tool for accessibility—which can help musicians with physical or cognitive limitations express themselves more freely—and its role in adaptive technologies that seek to theoretically “improve” performance. “Technology has a way of being restrictive,” she explains. “Like, my little machine learning model is going to understand how you play, so it can make you play better tunes. And you go: ‘No! See, I don’t want that!’
“One worry I have is that this kind of exciting exploration that can be done with machine learning gets more and more into ‘adaptive technologies’—which can be great, but also, ‘let me make you a better this and better that.’ I don't like what you call ‘better’. I'm not interested in what you call ‘better’! It's not artistically relevant.”
Regardless of the form that it takes, for Sonami, the magic of a new instrument lies in its subtle unpredictability—this essential friction of creativity. “It should surprise you—how it engages the body, the sounds it creates or allows you to make, the interaction with other instruments or with the environment. While you want to master it, you also want it to teach you, make you discover.” Albert, the head of the competition, agrees: “The best instruments aren’t just tools—they’re collaborators in the creative process. And that’s what makes this competition so exciting every year.”
This shift feels particularly resonant in an era where digital tools increasingly mediate musical creation. While so many of today’s creative tools, services, and listening platforms attempt to push us towards a frictionless future, the Guthman finalists remind us that friction—fingers against strings, breath through air columns, feedback loops between performer and instrument—is where human expression lives.
As technology races forward, musicians continue to seek ways to anchor themselves in the immediacy of sound. This year’s competition suggests that the future of musical innovation may not be about removing barriers but embracing them: the rough edges, the resistance, the unpredictability that makes music feel alive.
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