New Harmony Line
Becky Ogilvie set a great example for her students by composing right alongside them as they explored Hyperscore. We will be sharing the student’s work with Parent/Guardian permission. First, let’s enjoy Becky’s offering. She called it “Teacher Model”. We’ll call it “Joy”!
Please enjoy past and present members of the “Shades of Yale” as they enchant us with “Amen/We Shall Overcome” in this beautiful virtual choir. My music classes at City High enjoyed this as one of many renditions of “We Shall Overcome” that we learned in preparation for celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2020. May we forever work toward his dream!
In the video posted above, Peter wrote Hyperscore motifs for members of the early Harmony Line staff and paired them, using Perl, with the Avatar images drawn by Facemelter. The first image is M.I.T. student designer Mary Farbood, followed by Bhob Rainey, Facemelter, Richard Resnick, Garry Griffin, Sunny Chang and Henry Kaufman (who all had adorable Avatar names that shall remain unpublished unless I’m given permission to blog them here!). Peter calls this work “a combination of visual art and music in that the music was inspired both by the people and their avatar personae, which were inspired from the people as well”.
Peter Torpey, New Harmony Line’s Chief Technology Officer, has been involved with Hyperscore since WAY BACK. Peter grew up interested in choir, the violin and a recorder group. In the mid 90’s, he dabbled with composition, looking especially for a technology program to compose with. In 2003, Peter met some of the students who were working on Hyperscore at a conference. He became a dedicated user of H-Lounge (an online Hyperscore Community) and was well-known to Harmony Line due to the “…over 100 bug reports I submitted”. Not surprisingly, he was invited to do Beta testing for Harmony Line from 2006-2007. He “liked the way Hyperscore thought about the process of composition” and how it used the rules of western harmony.
Tod Machover, Professor of Music and Media, met Peter in 2007 and encouraged him to apply for Machover’s Opera of the Future Group through the M.I.T. Media Lab. Peter received his Doctorate from M.I.T. and now works as an “independent contractor providing services that span the possibilities of integrating technologies into live performance and artistic experience”. PLEASE check out his amazing work using this link: https://web.media.mit.edu/~patorpey/
In his spare time over the last 10 years, Peter has been re-writing Hyperscore to be web-based. His goal is to create a stable web platform that evolves and won’t become obsolete as code changes. Starting in December of 2021, he began working on the back end of the web-based version with the future vendor and most looks forward to changing the instrument sets as he sorts through various sound sources. June Kinoshita, Executive Director, and I are constantly amazed at the vision and resources Peter provides for a product we all love. Thank you for sharing your time and talents, C.T.O. Torpey!
We are so lucky to have Chief Technology Officer Peter Torpey on the hunt for archived videos, files and articles on the history of Hyperscore. Peter discovered a video of M.I.T. Media Lab student designers Egon Pasztor and Mary Farbood sharing an early version of Hyperscore on Scientific American Frontiers with host Alan Alda in 2003. Mr. Alda seems absolutely delighted with the presentation on the technology. We also hope you’ll be delighted by the joy in this video–thanks Peter!
Becky Ogilvie, an Iowa City Schools elementary music teacher, gave us the best Christmas and New Year’s gift–a joy-filled video of her talking about her experience of sharing Hyperscore with her in-person and online 5th and 6th grade students! Four of her students chose to share their pieces with Parent/Guardian permission and we will be debuting these pieces over the next couple of weeks. A big THANK YOU to Becky for being a Beta pilot tester, to all of her students for completing the pilot and for those students who were willing to share their work!
What a delightful surprise this week to receive an email from Chief Technology Officer Peter Torpey that included a video of Morwaread “Mary” Farbood and Egon Pasztor in the 2000s demonstrating an early version of Hyperscore! Both Farbood and Pasztor were students in the Opera of the Future Group in the M.I.T. Media Lab when they designed and implemented Hyperscore. If you are interested in reading their Master’s Theses on the creation of Hyperscore, use this link https://newharmonyline.org/resources/hyperscore-in-depth/ or go to the Resources page on this website. Enjoy!
Take a peek “behind the curtain” at the history of Hyperscore by visiting the Resources page on our website under “Hyperscore: In-depth“. With New Harmony Line’s upcoming launch of Hyperscore as a web-based, user-friendly composition tool, we think it is important to acknowledge the students who wrote the program, Morwaread “Mary” Farbood and Egon Pasztor, who were in the Opera of the Future Group at M.I.T. Media Lab, and Kevin Jennings, a PhD candidate at Trinity College Dublin. Please enjoy a look back at 2004 when the original Hyperscore creators were profiled in this IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications article.
Here they write: “The fundamental idea of Hyperscore is that anyone can perform two key creative activities without musical training: compose short melodies and describe the large-scale shape of a piece. Providing graphical means to engage in these two activities forms the basis for Hyperscore’s functionality.” This powerful insight by the original creators explains why Hyperscore has enduring appeal and remains unique to this day among music technologies for education.
Currently, Egon is Founding Engineer of Relyance AI. Mary is an Associate Professor and Associate Director of Music Technology at NYU. Kevin is Global Director Talent Development at Study Group, an international education provider.
IEEE is the not-for-profit Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers with the mission of “advancing technology for humanity”.
New Harmony Line announces that Group 3 has started the Beta test model of Hyperscore. Our group includes teachers in Iowa, Canada and Portugal. Our first high school Adaptive Music class is learning to use Hyperscore. I am thrilled to visit them this afternoon as I was their teacher last year before I retired!
Hyperscore Beta testing will continue into the winter and spring. Please let me know if you have any interest in a free subscription with materials and support! Contact me as Director of Education at: cecilia.roudabush@newharmonyline.org.
What an incredible adventure Kickstarter gave the New Harmony Line team and board these past few weeks! First, we were chosen as a #ProjectWeLoveKickstarter for the program’s “brilliant creativity”. We received daily emails on our goal progress, a big motivator. Finally, to read the email announcing that we had met AND exceeded our goal was the ultimate thrill! Thank you to our backers, those who shared the project with friends and family and those who took the time to watch the videos or check out our sites. We hope we’ll be making music with YOU!!
New Harmony Line has 5 days left in its $10,000 Hyperscore Kickstarter Campaign. Check out #ProjectsWeLove! Of course, I love Hyperscore so much I want everyone to have the opportunity to use it after teaching thousands of students to compose with it. In the mid 2000’s, my 12 year-old 7th grade Music Tech student at North Central arranged this piece using Hyperscore. She used the motifs in the Library and combined them in such a sophisticated way. If you’re out there Randalette, I want you to know that you’ve inspired many students to start making music! If you find us, I’d love to feature your WHOLE piece on our website and YouTube! Contact me at cecilia.roudabush@newharmonyline.org.