Author: Cecilia Roudabush

Songbirds in the trees of Cuzco, Peru = musical! Vacuum = musical?!

For the 18 years I taught junior high General Music, discussion about what constitutes musical sound ended up being a contest between songbirds in the forest and that BIRD that wakes you up 47 minutes before you actually have to get up in the morning. My toddler son found the vacuum cleaner soothing; I found that sound to happily mean “clean!”. My students did not agree that a vacuum was musical because most dreaded that sound and that chore. Whether you prefer the oboe over the flute or the synthesizer to the theremin, we all know that sound being musical can be more of a personal opinion rather than a fact.

As we conducted studies with the Beta version of Hyperscore 5, students consistently expressed a desire for more sound choices. The Beta version had ten melodic choices featuring band and orchestral instruments and eight percussion choices. Requests included mainly electronic musical sounds but there were also sound effects wishes. So, take a guess at what CTO Peter Torpey is working on now?

Peter has been combing the internet for musical sounds, timbres and appropriate visual representations for the large library he hopes to put into place in the final version. June would love to have real songbirds and I’d love to have ocean waves and rain drops–one student was hoping for a car engine revving! Based on the robust sound library in the first commercial version of Hyperscore, Peter’s sound library will be complete, fantastic and visually appealing. We all can’t wait to hear and see it–no pressure, Peter!!

What a delight to meet so many wonderful people at the at the Texas Music Educators Association Conference 2022 in San Antonio. It’s been almost a week since June and I met Jonathan Ochoa and we are still talking about him! He stopped over to say “hi” and inquire about Hyperscore. Before the conference was over, we’d sat down with him three times to answer questions, write down all of his great ideas and get him set up to start using Hyperscore with an after-school club this week. Not surprising that he wanted to practice using it with students before introducing it in his music room.

Jonathan’s reaction so reminded me of myself piloting the original Hyperscore around 2007. I knew instantly it was what I had needed in my classroom to allow my students to become composers. Before our last moments together, Jonathan agreed we could quote his exclamation, “This is the missing link for composition–for ALL MUSIC!”

June and I agreed Jonathan was so fun and enthusiastic! We expect that the San Angelo Independent School District, and all of his students, also know what a gem he is!

I am at Day 2 of the TMEA with Executive Director June Kinoshita. Undoubtedly, we are having a blast introducing Hyperscore to piano teachers, band directors, music educators and a very excited 5 year-old! We are also meeting people who remember it from the early days when it was first created. They are thrilled to see it back again as a web-based product! One fan said it is the only graphic interface that he’s found that can adapt to his microtonal composition interests. It is a pleasure to share the creative work of Mary Farbood, Egon Pasztor, Kevin Jennings and Tod Machover from the program itself to Tod’s City Symphonies. Wish us luck as we move into the 21st Century!

As I was preparing to blog this morning about Hyperscore, I came across a beautiful introduction to a movement in Canada on Facebook. Diving into the link, I discovered a civil organization called “MusiCounts” that is Canada’s music education charity associated with The Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and The JUNO Awards. Since 1997, MusiCounts makes music education inclusive, sustainable, and accessible for youth across Canada by providing musical instruments, equipment, and resources.

In honor of Black History Month, MusiCounts is featuring an educational series of 4 lessons on Hip-Hop. They focus on Canadian rappers like Maestro Fresh Wes and Rascalz but also mention Haviah Mighty and Choclair. Of course, there is information on Canada’s most famous rapper that is known around the world as DRAKE!

Please take a moment to look at this valuable resource. I wish I was in the classroom having my students write hip-hop beats on Hyperscore 5 while studying the history of this enticing and exciting genre around the world! Every month can be Black History Month when you’re talking about music!

Today, Becky’s classroom offers the gift of “The Anthem” by one of her 5th grade students. It is a perfect example of the pilot requirements! Watch it on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgMVEgU81BE&list=UUSccCX2HRqavoJ5-yvUI6qA&index=31

Rhythm, Melody, Harmony and Dynamics Requirements

“The Anthem: includes one or more Rhythm Sketch Windows (yellow and orange), one or more Melody Sketch Windows (light blue and dark blue) and a Harmony Sketch Window that combines all of the previous windows. The dark blue window is sophisticated, including 3- to 4-note chord stacks creating polyphony. Typically, students at this age are not yet able to successfully create polyphony. In the Harmony Sketch Window, we see that the student chose the “Classic” button which would adjust any potential dissonance in the chord stacks. I always called that button the “Mozart” button! To their credit, the chord stacks sounded beautiful together–maybe a piano player with some training with chords?!

It does not appear that the student chose to change the default mezzo forte dynamic setting as the lines are all the same thickness (lines that are thin are soft and lines that are wider are louder)–as the composer they would, of course, have that privilege!

Tone Color and Form Requirements

This student composer did a wonderful job of choosing multiple tone colors in this piece. The melodies both use the piano (see the piano icon in the light and dark blue windows). The yellow and orange rhythms feature bass drum, snare, Tom, triangle and woodblock.

Finally, the visual shows a perfect introduction (light blue) followed by a statement of the A theme

and then a B section (which would technically be A1 because they continued the ostinato in the lower notes) and then an exact repeat of A with no coda (optional).

A+ for “The Anthem”!! Thanks for sharing your work with New Harmony Line!

“Some [students] would share that they did not think their creations had a “place”…this gave me the opportunity to talk with them about what I could hear that they could not hear and perhaps why I was hearing it.” – Rebecca Ogilvie, Iowa City Elementary Music Teacher

For the next 2 weeks, I will be sharing the work of 5th and 6th grade students in Becky Ogilvie’s class. I share “Ghost Fog” first for two reasons: 1) it showcases the “settings” that CTO Peter Torpey created so that students had choice over their workspace visual ; and 2) this is the piece that gave Becky the opportunity to have a discussion with her student who felt their music “had no place”.

Becky saves the day

In one of those wonderful ‘teachable moments’, Becky shared with her unsatisfied student that listening to their piece made her think of black and white scary movies with ‘something’ lurking around the corner. Thankfully, this inspired the student to use a different visual setting called “High Contrast” which changed the workspace to black, the sketch windows to white and the notes to neon colors. The name “Ghost Fog” came from the student thinking of scary movies and the visual that the setting created.

The darker settings remind me of my days in the classroom when students wanted to turn Google Doc paper black and write with white letters! To each his own–with 18 choices in Hyperscore! Finally, let’s enjoy “Ghost Fog” as you picture yourself in the theatre seat with your popcorn almost spilling from the fear of what’s to come…

Here are picture examples of the other settings and the 6 NEW ones just uploaded:

“High Contrast” setting

“Classic” setting

“System Preference” setting

“Dark” setting

“Sunlight”

“Black Light”

“Minimalist”

“Chalkboard”

“Springtime”

“Nighttime”

“LCD Screen”

New settings and how to access:

The are 7 are BRAND NEW settings including the visual “Cinema” seen at the top of the article. To update your version to include these new settings and some bug fixes, use the buttons in the upper right corner (“i”–choose “update now” then refresh window) and then settings (gear) to change the visual workspace to ANY of the 19 choices.

“Carnival”

“Serene”

“Cotton Candy”

“Magazine”

“Comic”

“Toy Symphony”

Enjoy this musical gift from Becky’s classroom and the technology updates from Peter Torpey!

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”.

Early interests in Music Technology

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.

Media Experience Artist

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/

Web-based Hyperscore 5

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!