The So-na performer Liu Wenwen and the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra played the Concerto “Hundred Birds and Phoenix” at 2019 Tandun New Year’s Concert (Photo: Fang Yingxin, People’s Daily）

China's top music university is recruiting PhD students majoring in music and artificial intelligence (AI), as the country is moving quickly to embrace AI technology. 

The Beijing-based Central Conservatory of Music started to recruit students with the combined ability in music and AI on March 1st for a three-year PhD program to nurture them in both disciplines, according to its official website.

The project is open to students who major in computer, AI and electronic information, and the university will also test their musical capabilities.

The university said it believes that “science and technology is one of the main driving forces of musical development, and artificial intelligence will be another important opportunity for musical development in the future.”

AI studies could help musicians create music by capturing the music patterns of popular music or customizing music by calculating various parameters, including music genre, rhythm, instrument and mood, according to AI specialists reached by Global Times.

Music relies heavily on science and technology. It cannot be seen but every musical instrument and song is produced from accurate math calculations, Zhang Zhentao, a musician and professor at the Music Research Institute at the Chinese Academy of Arts, told the Global Times.

The university has recommended five books for students on algorithms, AI theory, machine learning and basic music theory.

Sun Maosong, a professor at the Institute for Artificial Intelligence at Tsinghua University and Wu Xihong, a professor at the School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science at Peking University, have been invited as instructors of the PhD project. However, some is not optimistic about the job market for the music students specializing in AI technology. It seems that the commercial application market of AI music is unprofitable and still in the initial stages.

The recruitment will end on March 15.