Max Graf on a mountain peak in the Peloponnese
On a peak in the Peloponnese

I am a Research Engineer at Image Line, the makers of FL Studio, working on machine learning for music creation.

Before that, I was a Machine Learning Engineer for the CORPUS project, working on large-scale music analysis and generation systems.

I completed a PhD in AI & Music at the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). My research was located at the intersection of machine learning, mixed reality technology and human-computer interaction.

Drop me a message at max.graf@live.at.

News

  • 03 Aug 2026

    Joined Image Line as a Research Engineer

    I joined Image Line, the makers of FL Studio, as a Research Engineer, working on machine learning for music creation.

  • 30 May 2026

    Two Stable Audio 3 projects

    Two new projects built on Stability AI’s recent Stable Audio 3 release: Stable Audio Remix, a browser app for audio-to-audio remixing that keeps the source’s tempo, key, and vocals intact; and SA3 Variations, an open-source plugin that generates Splice-style sample variations fully on-device, with a C++/MLX inference pipeline other audio developers can build their own JUCE plugins on.

  • 23 Feb 2026

    PhD Thesis Defense!

    I successfully defended my PhD thesis at Queen Mary University of London! I am very grateful to my examiners, Professor Rebecca Fiebrink and Dr Florent Berthaut, for their time, insight, and the thoughtful discussion.

  • 10 Oct 2025

    Springer LNCS Book Chapter Published

    The extended version of our CMMR work was published as a Springer LNCS book chapter: Multimodal Hand Tracking for XR Musical Instruments Using Electromyography.

  • 21 Sep 2025

    ISMIR 2025 in Daejeon

    Attended ISMIR 2025 in Daejeon, South Korea, representing the CORPUS project. A great week of music information retrieval research, super interesting papers & talks with the broader MIR community. 감사합니다!

  • 31 Mar 2025

    Joined the CORPUS Project

    CORPUS project logo
    I joined the CORPUS project, where I am working on AI and music technology including large-scale music analysis pipelines and related creative tooling.
  • 14 Nov 2024

    ADC 2024

    Audio Developer Conference 2024 logo
    Just got back from ADC 2024. It was great meeting this lovely group of people and chatting about everything from nerdy low-level high-performance audio in C++ to musical XR applications 🤟
  • 23 Oct 2024

    AWE EU 2024

    I will be attending AWE EU 2024 in Vienna, looking forward to meeting more people in the XR industry!

  • 05 Sep 2024

    Innovate UK ICURe Explore Grant

    Innovate UK ICURe Explore programme logo
    Very excited to join the September 2024 ICURe Explore programme. For the next three months I will explore collaborations and future directions for Netz, my XR musical instrument.
  • 06 Jun 2024

    AES AI & The Musician 2024

    Our paper When XR Meets AI: Integrating Interactive Machine Learning with an XR Musical Instrument was published at the 1st AES International Symposium on AI and the Musician at Berklee College of Music in Boston!

  • 20 Feb 2024

    Innovate UK ICURe Discover

    I got a place on the February 2024 ICURe Discover programme for my XR instrument Netz.

  • 25 Jan 2024

    NAMM 2024

    NAMM Show 2024 logo
    Had a great time at the 2024 NAMM show in Anaheim, CA! Nice meeting so many people in music tech and connecting with our friends at the MIDI association.
  • 13 Nov 2023

    CMMR 2023

    Going to Tokyo! Our paper Combining Vision and EMG-Based Hand Tracking for Extended Reality Musical Instruments was published at the 16th International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research and nominated for the best paper award 🎉.

  • 16 Sep 2023

    2023 MIDI Innovation Awards

    MIDI Innovation Awards 2023 winner badge
    Today Netz, my XR musical instrument, won the MIDI Innovation Awards in the category Software Prototypes and Non-Commercial Products!
  • 10 Sep 2023

    VRST 2023

    Our paper Reducing Sensing Errors in a Mixed Reality Musical Instrument was published at the 29th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology. Going to present it in Christchurch, NZ!

  • 01 Jan 2022

    Paper accepted at NIME 2022

    My paper Mixed Reality Musical Interface: Exploring Ergonomics and Adaptive Hand Pose Recognition for Gestural Control was accepted for NIME 2022!

  • 18 Jun 2021

    Part of Master's Thesis Published at AES 2021

    We published a paper adjacent to my master’s thesis at QMUL titled An Audio-Driven System for Real-Time Music Visualisation at the 2021 AES International Conference on Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality.

Press & selected mentions