Author: Cecilia Roudabush

As we prepare this week to bring Hyperscore to MusicFirst.com as a web-based composition tool for student composers (and beyond!), I can’t help but do a little reminiscing. I’ll never forget sitting in Tod Machover’s Hyperscore 2007 workshop at the University of Iowa watching him demo Hyperscore and thinking that this graphic interface was THE missing link for students to demonstrate their understanding of the elements of music through composition! Little did I know that thousands of my student composers would go on to express themselves musically with ease in our Hyperscore unit.

Believe in your vision

I would never have imagined that June and Peter would see my passion for the software and hire me as their Director of Education when I retired from teaching in June of 2021. June has such incredible vision for what Hyperscore can be and Peter just makes it all happen…and I get to work with THEM!

I’ve met incredible teachers through the Beta Pilot program from Iowa and across the U.S. to Portugal, Greece and Canada. The 2022 Texas Music Educator’s Convention introduced us to passionate teachers (Jonathan and Vel Lewis) and users (Ralph) and gave us the opportunity to meet Music Education Technology innovators and authors like Richard McCready (2013 TI:ME Teacher of the Year), Will Kuhn (2015 TI:ME Teacher of the Year) and Dr. Jim Frankel (Director of MusicFirst.com and Board Member of TI:ME). My time on social media introduces me to teachers like Odysseas, Frederico, Kerry and Amanda who loved the old Hyperscore and the new one even more!

From there to here

I am so glad to know now that behind that little unit I did with my junior high Music Tech students was a passionate project created by Mary and Egon in Professor Machover’s MIT Media Lab; that host Alan Alda laughed with delight when introduced to Hyperscore on Scientific American Frontiers; that Dr. Kevin Jennings and Peter Torpey still have many creative ideas about how Hyperscore could and should work; that June doesn’t stop trying to introduce Hyperscore to everyone in the world; and that Tod is preparing for yet another City Symphony, this time in Bilbao, Spain. New Harmony Line is an ever-evolving company committed to the simple-to-use yet musically complex software that is Hyperscore. May we continue to grow the creative community that appreciates and is passionate for what Hyperscore does, and can do, in the future!

Many of our Hyperscore student composers don’t think about naming their pieces. Accordingly, I always enjoyed helping my students come up with names based on how they feel or what they think about when they hear their piece. The first time I heard Y.S.’s piece, I thought of happiness. In playing it today, I’m just so grateful for a bit of cheer on yet another rainy April day in Iowa. Because Y.S. was an online student composer in junior high Music Tech 2nd trimester, I can’t ask for approval. However, I hope this “suggested” title does the piece justice. I’m so happy to have this as my background music as I work today!! A+ on all the elements (rhythm, melody, harmony, form) of your project by the way…

Check out the many past and present compositions on our YouTube channel: https://studio.youtube.com/channel/UCSccCX2HRqavoJ5-yvUI6qA/playlists

What a party it was last Wednesday for our students composing with Hyperscore! Music teacher Frederico, English teacher Gabriela and fellow teacher Antonio set up a wonderful presentation for N.R. and I.M. as the class composition winners for their 6th grade in Portugal. A number of students attended to help them celebrate receiving their Starbucks gift cards. We enjoyed N.R.’s “Instrument Battles” last week. Now is our chance to hear the second winner, I.M.’s “Horror Circus”!

Enjoy this wonderful picture of some of our Hyperscore friends in Portugal with their teacher, Frederico. I will be making a playlist of the many compositions submitted with parent permission for our YouTube channel under “Portugal Playlist”. I think we have some happy composers in his classes!!

Isn’t it funny that the title above could be read as “gifts” OR as a “presentation”? Well, teacher Frederico has given us both! I will be posting two pieces from his 6th grade students that were chosen, by their peers, as the class favorites. On Wednesday, I will be Zooming with Frederico, the English teacher/collaborator and the school principal as 12 year olds N.R. and I.M. each receive a gift card for their winning pieces. Today I present “Instrument Battle” by NR. I hope the students have enjoyed writing their pieces as much as I have had listening to them and working with their teacher! Thank you for piloting in Portugal, Frederico!

Watch and listen to “instrument Battle” on our YouTube channel:

Outside of the box. That is Ralph’s modus operandi when it comes to using his 2007 purchase of Hyperscore. Yes, he is an OG like me! CTO Peter was amazed that Ralph could get Hyperscore to create a microtonal scale. I am not traditionally a microtonal listener, but I have been enjoying Lofi the past couple of years and I would definitely compare these two genres. Listen for yourself–I am so glad Ralph gave New Harmony Line the gift of microtonal with his piece “032822”!

In my last blog I introduced a piece that Vidpat wrote. “Underground Dream” showed that Hyperscore could be used as a tool to write Deep House music. Well, of course, if you are a creative person and you have a powerful tool, you are going to dig in and find out what it can do and shape it to be what you need it to be.

Ralph is doing that! We met Ralph at the Texas Music Educator’s Conference where he was working at a national music booth. He came over 3 times to tell us how much he’d enjoyed using the original version of Hyperscore to write microtonal music. CTO Peter couldn’t comprehend how he could even make Hyperscore do that!

Ralph graduated with a Music Theory degree and his personal interest was not the traditional styles I’m used to. I made sure to listen to his music and some examples of microtonal music and discovered that it aligned with some of the new styles I’m liking on YouTube right now like Lofi and Deep House and Reggaeton. Some of his pieces reminded me of the Arabian and Middle Eastern music I found last week. Aren’t we so lucky to have YouTube to widen our perspectives?

Looking forward to hearing Ralph’s final Hyperscore piece he is tweaking as we prepare to share it through our blog and social media. From basic children’s music to Deep House to Microtonal, Hyperscore can do it all!

“Since its emergence in 1980s Chicago, house music has spawned many popular subgenres, one of which is deep house music. Deep house tracks combine the pulsing four-on-the-floor signature beat of traditional house music with harmonies and basslines inspired by jazz and funk. Compared to standard house music, deep house is also more likely to feature vocals.” http://www.masterclass.com: March 25, 2022.

I’ve been reading a book that I was meant to read right now: “Electronic Music School” by Will Kuhn and Ethan Hein (Oxford: ISBN 978-0-19-007664-1 available on Amazon). In Chapter 8 they talk about teaching songwriting and go in-depth on drum tracks. Chapter 9 is about “Outside-the-Box Projects” and details the newer genres of music that students listen to today. I issued a challenge to a Hyperscore user to create a Deep House piece using an example I found on YouTube. You answer the question: “can you write Deep House music with Hyperscore?”. My anwer is a deep YES!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbFz_QmVuR8

A fifth grade student from Becky’s classroom offers us all the opportunity to enjoy a lively dance-like piece featuring two rhythm sketch windows, (yellow and green) two flowing melody windows (dark green and red) and 1 window featuring polyphony (orange). Polyphony is a difficult concept for younger students because you are combining notes so that they play simultaneously, working to make them sound good together. I think you’ll agree that this student chose their polyphony wisely for this delightful little interlude!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzbw4pLyYaA&list=UUSccCX2HRqavoJ5-yvUI6qA&index=40

Have you ever wondered what a student in another country would write with the composition software you’ve used in your own classroom in America? I’m not surprised you haven’t, but I HAVE!! Caroll’s students sent pieces from Canada and Odysseas sent a class composition from Greece. Frederico has now joined the ranks with a huge folder of electronic music files for me to go through–thank you for the music from Portugal, Frederico and students, and I can’t wait to get started listening to everything!