Adam Pultz Melbye is a double bass player, composer, and improviser working in the field of acoustic and electronic sound. Adam’s work spans live performance, sound installation, sound for dance, theatre, film, multimedia, sculpture, algorithmic design, and instrument building.
They have performed and exhibited work in Europe, Australia, the US, and Japan, while appearing on close to 50 albums. Adam often performs with autonomous and machine learning-assisted feedback string instruments, such as the FAAB (feedback-actuated augmented bass) and the Spectral Parrot. They hold a PhD from the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Sound and Music at Queen’s University Belfast.
Questions and Answers
3 FACTS
1: Artificial Intelligence is neither artificial, nor intelligent.
2: Privileges, biases, and power structures are not only perpetuated by large data sets, they are also embedded into the algorithmic fabric of AI.
3: The name of the instrument I have built for the upcoming concert at Radialsystem is “The Spectral Parrot”, which is a nod to the paper “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜 by Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, and Schmargaret Schmitchell.
11 QUESTIONS
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
The music that hasn’t been made yet. It’s a sort of speculative music that I want to hear, but which is just out of reach. That doesn’t mean I am not inspired by a lot of the music that’s already around, but I just find potential music fascinating.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
In 4th grade, my primary school music teacher asked the class who’d like to play electric bass at the spring concert. The kid in front of me raised his hand and my teacher mistook his hand for mine and assigned me the bass. My dad was a church organ player, which surely also helped keep motivation going.
3. How will you integrate artificial intelligence into your project and which specific AI technologies or tools are you using?
I have built an 8-stringed feedback instrument with digitally controlled motorized tuners. The instrument, which goes by the name of “The Spectral Parrot” tries to learn to tune itself to match any sound presented to it. It is very slow at learning and often fails spectacularly in the early training stages, which I find creatively stimulating. The particular learning architecture is a Proximal Policy Optimization algorithm, which is an instance of the more general field of Deep Reinforcement Learning Algorithms that achieved some fame by winning against the Go champion Lee Sedol in 2016. I also use some bespoke adaptive signal processing algorithms I have developed for string feedback management. The data I use for training is audio of myself playing the double bass.
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
Currently, paradoxes of creative possibilities, culture politics, colonialism, and human rights.
5. What’s your favorite place in your town?
My studio
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
Rectify. That is, make music.
7. What was the last record/music you bought or listen?
Last night I listened to Luc Döbereiner playing a phenomenal set at the concert series Algomystica. The last music I bought was David Behrman’s brilliant albums “Leapday Night” and “On the Other Ocean”.
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
I am really happy with all the people I already collaborate with. And rather than starting new collaborations, I should honour the ones I have already committed to. For example, I really need to send that audio that I’ve promised my dear friend and collaborator Matilde Meireles for months.
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
Moor Mother + Sumac with supporting act Pharaoh Overlord earlier this year (2025) was a high point.
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
A hammer is technology and so is a double bass. In that sense, technology is essential to my practice, and survival for that matter. If considering only the domain of digital technology, it has become an essential part of 99 percent of what I do.
11. How do you plan to present the results of your research at Radialsystem?
The Spectral Parrot will be presented as an installation running throughout the day, where it will slowly attempt to learn to tune itself to a select few sounds. At the end, I will play feedback double bass alongside the instrument. The Parrot will then try to learn to match the sound of the bass.
