Welcome

Introduction

Thank you for visiting the homepage of Kundalini Software and Systems Integration, LLC, which is an Akron, Ohio-based software and technology company created by Benjamin Pritchard.

Kundalini Software is named after a style of yoga called Kundalini Yoga, a branch of yoga which emphasizes techniques for tapping into the vast creative potentials within us.


Kundalini Piano Platform

Our flag-ship offering is the Kundalini Piano Platform, our unique music-learning system that unleashes creativity, teaches programming, and promotes true ambidexterity right from the beginning of a student’s journey into music.

The Kundalini Piano Platform is available as an embedded-system with a physical form factor, and was originally funded by a matching grant from the National Science Foundation and the Burton D. Morgan Foundation via the NSF ICORP sites program administered by the University of Akron Research Foundation.

And now, thanks to a generous grant from the No Starch Press Foundation, we are continuing our development, and taking this unique STEAM-based system of education directly into the schools to help students get started with music, programming, and ambidexterity-based fully brain development all at once– right from the begging of their musical education!

It is our passion to unleash the creativity of the next generation with our technology, and for sure our philosophy is to let the children lead!!

Mentorship

Because of the success of our startup, Kundalini Software is pleased to be in a position to have provided mentorship to two other highly successful and profitable ICORP teams: the Tidy Stitch® Thread Organization and OptimalWellness.Health.

Scholarships

Starting Fall 2024, Kundalini Software begun awarding annual scholarships:

  • “The Nicholas Constantinidis memorial scholarship for piano performance“, which is a 500 dollar scholarship for piano performance majors.
  • “The Kundalini Software scholarship for technological innovation in music education” which is a 500 dollar scholarship for music education majors.
  • “Fae Koelker Memorial Scholarship for Early Childhood Education”, which is a 500 dollar scholarship for music education majors.

All three scholarships will be award in June, 2024 — in time for the Fall 2024 semester, and are being awarded at the June Memorial fund-raising concert for Nicholas Constantinidis at the University of Akron.

Artificial Intelligence

Like everybody else, of course we have jumped on the A.I. bandwagon! The main ways I am utilizing it is to utilize Microsoft Copilot in my coding, and to use OpenAI’s API to integrate with the Kundalini Piano Platform.

so this is where it gets really neat. The Kundalini Piano Platform is designed to help even novice pianists sound like professionals (!) by executing scripts which help make the resultant music sound more musical. For example, the Kundalini Piano can insert or remove accents, help with dynamics, etc.

To achieve this, small .LUA scripts can be developed which help the piano know in advance what the piece “should be like”, which helps the Kundalini Piano know how to “help” the pianist. Learning to develop these small .LUA scripts is a big part of the vision of the Kundalini Piano because it means that students can learn introductory programming concepts as part of their musical education.

However, A.I. even makes this part easier because now with ChatGPT integration into the Kundalini Piano mirror (via OpenAI’s API), students can even just use prompt engineering (!) to describe in plain english what they would like the piano to do, and ChatGPT effortlessly translates their intentions into .LUA scripts!

For example, if a student says:

Kundalini Piano: help me create a crescendo starting in measure 10

the system will automatically create an appropriate .LUA script to help the student achieve their artistic intention in their playing:

function process_midi(measure, beat, status, data1, data2)
    -- create a crescendo, so that each note that we play will get louder
    if (measure == 10) then
        volume = 10             -- set initial volume to 10 (= quiet)
        increment = 1
    end
    volume = volume + increment;
    return status, data1, volume;      
 end

I would like to make a big SHOUT OUT to the amazing team at OpenAI who is making the magic of Large Langauge Models available to all of us. I feel like I am standing on the shoulders of a giant, and wow it is amazing what AI can do! And in particular, I would like to thank OpenAI for giving Kundalini Software early access to GPT4 during their public beta program.

Various Projects

GitHub

Much of the software we develop is open source, and released via GitHub:

Additionally, the source to some of our cooler open source projects can be browsed online using the awesome tool github1s.com

Education

I have been very blessed to have been part of Microsoft TEALS and to have helped bring CS education into the schools. (My school was Hope Academy, near Tower City, when I had co-working space in Tower City.)
I would also like to thank the No Starch Press Foundation for providing me with the grant that I used to take the Kundalini Piano Mirror into Impact Academy in Canton.

Finally, I absolutely loved working at Code Ninjas in Hudson, and teaching the kids to both program and play the piano was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

Additionally, I like to write educational blog posts about programming, to help students get started:

Special Thanks

I would like to thank Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose for meeting me at our office at Bounce Innovation Hub, and especially to Mr. LaRose for his subsequent interaction and enwith me via direct message on LinkedIN

I would also like to thank Mr. Charles Stack for providing me with free office space in Tower City through StartMart.

I would like to thank Jillian Harman from the Akron-Summit County Library Microbusiness Center for all your help.

Additionally, I would like to thank Mr. Doug Weinberg for funding the Bounce Innovation Hub where I rented office space while going through ICORP.

I would also like to thank Mr. Elias Bizannes for funding StartupBus and taking the University of Akron’s ICORP teams down to New Orleans.

I would also like to thank Melinda Kim for providing us free office space at People Space in Irvine when we attended the Orange County Venture Capital Fast Pitch Conference in 2018.

I would like to express my personal gratitude to the University of the Bahamas, The No Starch Press Foundation, The Burton D. Morgan Foundation, and the National Science Foundation for the grants you have given us; we could not have done it without you.

Additionally, being part of Microsoft TEALS was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, and I would like to thank the Cleveland Foundation for providing funding to bring Microsoft TEALS to Cuyahoga County.

Finally, thank you to Promise Academy in Cleveland for letting us bring TEALS into your school, and thank you to Impact Academy in Canton, Ohio for letting me bring the Kundalini Piano to your students.

Thank you for visiting; please have a nice day.