This is the third article in a series on music museum integration. Check out Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s $1.5M Tech Upgrade and Grammy Museum Overhauls Audio Approach.

The Experience Music Project (EMP) is Microsoft co-founder and noted music buff Paul Allen’ s paean to both music in general and Seattle’s most famous native music son, Jimi Hendrix.

The Frank Gehry-designed building opened in 2000 and showcases mostly rock memorabilia and artifacts through technology-intensive multimedia displays. EMP got a significant upgrade in the last year in several of its performance areas, and the Nirvana exhibit, slated to open in 2011, will have a custom-produced 16-channel ambient audio track playing through the length of the gallery, created by noted Grunge producer Steve Fisk.

EMP is more than a museum displaying legacy artifacts, Brian Phraner, manager of museum technology, stresses. “The place does what music and sound are supposed to do – inspire you to be involved with music,” he says. “It pulls the creative juices out of visitors. I get letters all the time from people who have been through here how it touched their lives.”

The emphasis in a music museum is naturally on audio systems, but video also plays a huge role in the post-MTV era. The upcoming Nirvana exhibit is a good example. Fisk’s interpretive grungy score (which incorporates samples of Nirvana tracks though no complete songs) is stored on an IMS media server and is comprised of 16 discrete channels of sound that are each looped through one of 16 JBL Control 25 speakers mounted above on the lighting truss and three JBL SB2 subs located along the length of the exhibit.

Photos: Inside the Experience Music Project

Several interactive video displays along the way allow visitors to interact with a pair of ELO ET2639L 26-inch LCD touch screens set into tables. Screen one gives them several key events in the timeline of the band; their choices come up as a narrative on the second screen. To hone in on the audio at these stations, visitors put on AKG K77 closed-back headphones hard-wired to each station allowing the background score to continue playing. “They sound decent but most importantly, they don’ t break, given all the use they get,” Phraner says.

Hendrix gets his own gallery, where clips from two hours’ worth of his live performances play back on a 46-inch Samsung 460 LCD display. Five audio stations offer headphones that play back specific tracks and voices offering narratives about the guitarist’s career and influence.

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