When most people think about the Grammy's, they think about the most talented musicians in the world. They think about the best song they heard in the previous year or their favorite band. They think about the red carpet, glamour and, of course, that really shiny trophy in the shape of a vintage record player. However, one thing that most people do not associate with the Grammy's is a mathematician.
On Feb. 10 Kevin Short, a mathematician and professor at UNH, will be walking down the red carpet with the chance to receive a Grammy for his restoration of a 1949 wire recording of a live Woody Guthrie concert.
"You don't exactly expect that as a mathematician," said Short. "Being able to say that you are a Grammy nominated mathematician is so unusual."
Short's journey into music restoration started with his discovery of Chaotic Compression Technology. With this discovery Short was able to stabilize a chaotic system with very little information, allowing the chaotic systems to produce over 26 thousand different wave forms that turned out to resemble musical instruments.
"We actually just started playing them out of speakers," said Short. "One of these wave forms might sound like an electric guitar, while another one might sound like a pipe organ. It sounded really cool, so people started asking me, 'can you use these wave forms to represent music that has really been recorded from true instruments', and I was successful there."
Through his discovery, Short was able to produce music files that were four times smaller than mp3s, which happen to be small enough to send to a cell phone. UNH filed for patents of Chaotic Compression Technology in 1998. Shortly after, Short used his discovery to start the company, Chaoticom, which is now known as Groove Mobile. So, not only is Short looked up to as being a Grammy Nominated mathematician, but he is also thanked every time a person's favorite band blares out of the speakers of his/her cell phone.
After Jamie Howarth, founder of Plangent Processes, a company that patented Clarity Audio Restoration technology, saw some of Short's work he got in touch with Short about doing musical restoration.
Short described musical restoration as using mathematics to fix a stretched out cassette tape. Through mathematics it becomes possible to figure out what happened to the signal and how to get it back to how it was before it got stretched out.
"I knew all of the mathematics because of the compression work that I had done, so it was a fun new application," said Short.
Short has also worked with Howarth on the restoration of the Grateful Dead classic, "Live at the Cow Palace" from 1976 and the audio restoration of the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".
Short said that the Woody Guthrie concert has been his favorite project so far because of the way it turned out.
"Most of the time when you're working on them, they're frustrating, so it is hard to enjoy them completely," said Short. "But, I like the way that Woody Guthrie turned out because it was the most noticeable to me. When I first got it, it was a mishmash, but hearing the stuff actually come out was pretty cool."
The Woody Guthrie concert was monitored by Guthrie's wife, and the two went back and forth telling stories, stories that Short could not understand at first. When Guthrie's songs would play, Short could not hear the lyrics.
"Suddenly, after I restored [the recording], I could hear everything perfectly, well not perfectly, but I could understand the story and I could understand the lyrics and that was pretty exciting," said Short.
Short is currently working on a project that may develop better stereo hearing aids, and another that may allow people to be able to detect trace materials of explosive devices from a long distance.
In the meantime, he is looking forward to his trip to the Grammy's.
"It is a lot of hard work," said Short. "It has historical value, it's not commercial music, so to have them recognize this is sort of nice."
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