Keith McMillen currently operates Keith McMillen Instruments which has created the QuNeo and QuNexus controllers. Keith has been an innovator in audio and music technology for nearly 30 years and has been working his entire adult life on one single problem – how to play live interactive music in an ensemble using extended instruments moderated by computer intelligence. The Kronos Quartet has used his K-Bow Bluetooth sensor bows to perform the 1st truly interactive string performance in 2011. Pursuing this goal has required him to create dozens of new instruments, patented inventions and numerous successful companies in order to advance the technology sufficiently to reach his musical objectives. Keith began his audio career in 1979, when he founded Zeta Music. The company’s revolutionary electronic instrument designs created a new market in the music industry, and the brand Zeta is the “gold standard” for electric and electronic string instruments.
In 1992, as Vice President of Gibson Guitars, he founded and ran G-WIZ (an R&D lab for Gibson); and led the effort to devise ZIPI (a musical instrument control language that avoided many of MIDI’s limitations – ZIPI later evolved into OSC). Keith worked with UC Berkeley’s CNMAT and created a new technology group focusing on audio networking, synthesizers and string instruments. As Director of Engineering at Harman Kardon in 1996, he headed a division dealing with complex audio processing and distributed music networks. In 1999, Keith founded Octiv, Inc. an Internet audio signal processing company that addressed the problem of inconsistent audio quality across disparate delivery platforms. Octiv produced the best-selling “Volume Logic” plug-in for iTunes as well as fundamental advances in teleconferencing. He led the company as both technologist and business guru raising over $20M from VCs such as 3i and Intel Capital. In April of 2005, Keith sold Octiv to Plantronics and is personally funding the current operations of the BEAM Foundation.
Keith received his BS in Acoustics under James Beauchamp from the University of Illinois where he also trained in classical guitar and studied composition with Herbert Brun, Scott Wyatt and Sal Martirano. Keith has spent 25 years developing MAPPS – an integrated computer composition, notation and performance system. In addition to running KMI and the BEAM Foundation, Keith performs with TrioMetrik, a string trio using McMillen’s technology.