Author: BlogMeister

The Hyperscore Challenge

Welcome! We invite you to write music using Hyperscore. This web application allows you to compose music by drawing dots and lines on the screen. With Hyperscore, you can create music in any style, as simple or complicated as you want. The challenge is to complete your piece and share it online or at an in-person performance on June 21, 2024, which is Make Music Day, a global celebration of music-making.

Watch this video on YouTube

Below is our timeline of announcements, but you can start at any time. Just be sure to plan well ahead if you want to involve others to help arrange and perform your piece on June 21.

Get started

Recruit students to join the Challenge team! Use these:

Team leader recruitment flyer (for K-6)
In-school team recruitment flyer (for K-6)
Team leader recruitment flyer (for middle & high school)
In-school team recruitment flyer (for middle & high school)

Everyone participating in the challenge will receive a free Hyperscore account for the duration of the challenge. If you want to lead a team, fill out the form below. A team can be just you, or you plus others. Only the leader should submit the form. We will send you an email with instructions to set up your Hyperscore account and join the Hyperscore Composing challenge. Once you have your group leader account, you can invite your team members through the Hyperscore team dashboard.

Children age 13 and younger will receive instructions to get their parent/guardian’s consent at the time they create their account.

If you do not have a Hyperscore account through MusicFirst Classroom, and are signing up independently, please fill out the form below.

If you already have a Hyperscore account through MusicFirst Classroom, and want to sign up through your school’s account, please fill out the form linked here.

Prompt reveal

Every week, we will release new video prompts here. They include classic silent movies, animations, and video game clips. Many people find a prompt to be helpful. But using the prompt is not required. We don’t want to get in the way of your creativity!

Get practice and advice

Attend our free monthly Office Hours to learn Hyperscore tricks and get answers to your questions. It meets over Zoom on the second Tuesday of each month at 7:30 p.m. ET (adjust for your time zone). Sign up here to get the link and monthly alerts.

You can exercise your musical imagination at our Second Saturday composing workshops, a zero-pressure, safe and fun Zoom meeting where we collaborate on composing a new piece in just one hour. It meets on the second Saturday of each month at 10:30 a.m. ET. Sign up here for the link and monthly alerts.

Hear your piece performed live!

It’s amazing to hear musicians perform music you created. Here’s what you need to do:

Music composed with Hyperscore can be downloaded as an audio (mp3) or MIDI file.
The MIDI file can be uploaded to software that takes MIDI input (such as GarageBand, Sibelius, SoundTrap, Soundation, NoteFlight, Ableton Live) and converts it into standard notation.
You will need to arrange the score for the ensemble that will be performing it. If you don’t know how to do this, you could ask a music teacher for help.
OR, you can download an MP3 audio file and play it as a digital soundtrack.

We encourage you to find collaborators in your area. It could be a music teacher, a friend who plays in a band, college students majoring in music… If you can’t find a way to have your piece played by musicians, you can share the digital version. We will post your composition on the Hyperscore YouTube and Soundcloud channels. Details will be announced as we get closer to June 21, 2024.

Watch this video on YouTube

Support us!

We are a nonprofit organization. Your generosity makes the Hyperscore Challenge possible and enriches lives by enabling individuals of all ages and backgrounds to engage with music as active listeners, learners, creators, and connectors.

Donate

A Hyperscore jam with Orff instruments

Post author By BlogMeister
Post date October 13, 2023
No Comments on A Hyperscore jam with Orff instruments

by June Kinoshita, Executive Director, New Harmony Line

We’re constantly discovering new and wonderful ways to play with Hyperscore. Recently, Peter Torpey and I were invited to give a series of talks to music education masters students at the Longy School in Cambridge, MA. Their instructor, Garo Saraydarian, mentioned the students were in the middle of unit about Orff instruments. We had not thought about integrating Hyperscore compositions with Orff or any other type of acoustic instruments so we arrived in class without a plan.

We showed the basics of Hyperscore composition to the class of around a dozen students from diverse parts of the world and then turned them loose to compose. They worked in clusters of two to four students for about a half hour. Because all of them were already experienced in instrumental performance and theory, they could dive right in, although none of them had composed collaboratively before.

When the time was up, Garo asked each group to share their composition. And here’s when he made a simple but brilliant suggestion. After sharing the composition, they were asked to use Orff instruments to improvise an accompaniment to the Hyperscore piece.

The effect was utterly charming! The digital sound of Hyperscore set a foundation to which the students added a variety of expressive rattles, buzzes, and melodious metallophone sonorities. It was all so playful and everyone was pleased with the outcome. It was such a simple idea – any music teacher could replicate it–and yet captured the essence of music-making, with delightful results. Watch:

Tags music education

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Meet the “wildlife DJ”

Chatting with Ben Mirin was one of those unforgettable meeting-of-minds moments. Ben has recorded a Noah’s ark of animal sounds in the wild and then remixes this non-human chorus with his own beat boxing. It’s entertaining, but it’s more than that. Ben is on a mission to use music to make people care deeply about our natural world–protecting endangered species and restoring habitats.

This resonated with us. One of the core ideas we emphasize in our work is “active listening” — opening up your ears to hear the world around you fully. We want you to become attuned to the wealth of information that sounds carry to our brains but also to become aware of the feelings these sounds stir in us.

In our 45-minute conversation, we cover some of the diversity of Ben’s output. He shares video from Indonesia of the amazing vocal prowess of male birds of paradise. We get to enjoy a video of Ben’s beatboxing video from the National Arts Center of Canada’s Great Orchestra Field trip, featuring sounds from the rainforests of Kalimantan. He walks us through “BeastBox,” a game he created with the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, where you too can be a wildlife DJ. (Visit Ben’s website and click on the BeastBox link.)

We talk about his journey using music technology to create his work. I ask about an idea to create a Hyperscore instrument set using bird songs with varied pitches and timbres and Ben launches into a discussion of the “acoustic niche hypothesis.”

Now working on his PhD at Cornell, Ben shares stories about his field research in Java, where there is a booming trade in songbirds. The local people prize their feathered divas, training and entering them in American Idol-style contests complete with judges, cheering spectators, and prize money that could support a family for ten years. It’s a big business that brings jobs and money into the local economy, and people are passionate about their birds, but it’s also having a devastating impact on wild bird populations. “We all love birds,” he says. He wants to build on the shared love of these wonderous creatures to “plant the seeds of conservation.”

Click on the image below to watch.

Watch this video on YouTube

Tags arts education, bird song, creativity, Hyperscore, MIT Media Lab, music composition, music composition for kids, music education, music software, music technology

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“Dance of the Fireflies”

The inspiration for our Second Saturday composition last month was this remarkable photograph of a nighttime forest illuminated by countless fireflies. We shared the image over Zoom and for two minutes we each wrote down words evoked by this vision.

To begin creating our composition, we began with a percussion window. Imagining all of those fireflies flashing their lamps in the dark, we created a rapid, scintillating beat, steady punctuated by small irregularities–the way we imagine Nature to be.

Next, we composed a jaunty “firefly theme song,” orchestrated for dulcimer. Peter suggested including an almost-identical melody as a second version of the theme. Again, the almost-but-not-quite-the-same quality of living beings.

We had our musical fireflies, but not the world they inhabit. To portray the beauty and mystery of the nocturnal forest, we composed a bass line of “forest music.”

A breeze blowing through the grove:

Add a sprinkling of pixie dust:

With the musical building blocks for our world in hand, we went to work, first establishing the mood of the forest at night, a place of mystery that erupts with rapturous swarming dance of fireflies. Things get a little wild!

Watch this video on YouTube

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A space for creating music

Projectory members work together on an original composition.

By June Kinoshita, Executive Director

This past month, Tod Machover and I were invited to give a workshop to introduce Hyperscore and music composition at Projectory, in Seoul, Korea. Projectory is a center established by NC Cultural Foundation for the purpose of providing a space for children to give free play to their creativity without interference from adults. While South Korea’s public education system is regarded as among the best in the world, critics say it is too test-driven and brutally competitive. At Projectory, members are free to direct their own activities in any way they choose. They work with “crew members,” young adult mentors who are trained to support the children without prescribing what they should do.

In our workshop, Tod introduced the idea of composing as a form of personal expression and story-telling that could be about “anything you want.” Using a large projection screen, I then showed the basic features of Hyperscore.

The kids were then off to the races! They worked in groups of 2 or 3 brainstorming with paper and crayons to come up with topics ranging from baseball to fighting cats. They then shared laptops to compose their first-ever original tunes. We were all delighted by the results and later heard that the children are eager to keep composing. We’re excited to see if Hyperscore will take root and spread in Korea.

Here’s “RBR,” composed by Projectory members.

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DIY Workshop

If you’re interested in trying out Hyperscore to teach music composition but are not ready or able to fully commit, this article is for you. This is for the retired educator who wants to help out his daughter who is homeschooling her kids. This is for the teacher who doesn’t have it in her budget this year but is eager to find a way to engage the kids in her classroom now. This is for the nonprofit foundation that wants to run a music camp next summer. This is for the after school club seeking an exciting project….

Step one. Decide if everyone will gather around a single computer or if everyone will have their own device.

Step two. Each device / individual should sign up for the Free Trial version of Hyperscore.

Step three. Decide on the type of composing activity you want to lead. Most can be done as collaborative or individual activities. Check out our blog for ideas.

Pro tip 1: The free trial version of Hyperscore cannot save more than five compositions in the cloud, so remind participants to download and save their compositions locally on their device.

Pro tip 2: Let the participants lead the way. Your role is to encourage exploration and discussion. There’s no right or wrong way. Be the guide on their side, not the sage on the stage.

If you are using Hyperscore successfully and wish to continue, we recommend a basic, premium, or supreme subscription. These are affordable options for small groups and will allow you to:

Create up to 5 user profiles
Save more scores (compositions)
Use more melody and sketch windows
Unlock different instrument sets
Unlock more themes
Export audio and MIDI output

If you would like to use Hyperscore in larger classrooms and manage your students’ work, we recommend that you license the classroom version through MusicFirst or by contacting us.

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Bach BOT

by June Kinoshita, Executive Director, New Harmony Line

Okay, I made up the title to riff on music AI, only to discover there really is a Bach Bot out there. It’s a system that uses AI to generate Bach-like music. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Music AI bots are proliferating alongside other generative AI programs. Major media and music companies are investing in AI-generated music, raising alarm among those who care about musical culture.

In a recent article, the Washington Post reported, “AI music has found its way into the mainstream — you’ve probably heard a few seconds of it even today: soundtracking ads on YouTube and Facebook, or providing the emotional context of a TikTok video.”

Some music AIs are designed to suck up all the music you listen to and generate more music that sounds similar but isn’t composed by an actual human. Think of all the royalty fees these companies won’t have to pay. Other companies are developing algorithms to generate tunes that will optimize your mental state.

But can such sounds, generated without any human intention, without a living person trying to communicate their experiences and emotions, be considered art? With art, it takes two to tango. You need an artist with an intention to provoke a response, and a recipient who brings their own sensibilities to bear on how they respond. Intention and framing matter. That’s why John Cage’s 4’33, the piece that famously asks you to listen intentionally to the world around you for four minutes and 33 seconds, is art while my silent procrastination is not. When I sit through a performance of 4’33, the composer is communicating with me, even if the man is no longer living. Without the artist mediating the experience, it’s just me projecting.

“Pieces of music aren’t just pieces of sound,” says Tod Machover, the composer and co-founder of New Harmony Line.. “They’re because some human being thought something was important to communicate and express.”

There is an appropriate place for AI in music, says Machover. In his own work, “I try to make models that are productive and useful and interesting and beautiful,” he says, “and I personally believe in a kind of collaboration between people and technology.”

This belief helps us appreciate Machover’s intention behind the creation of Hyperscore. Here is a tool that utilizes technology to remove barriers to music composition. That doesn’t mean it automates the process of composition. Hyperscore takes away the parts that untrained musicians find hard and leaves the kernel that is most important: What is it you need to say?

In a world where we are losing more and more of the human touch, where nearly everything we use in daily life, from our clothes, work tools, and food, is manufactured by machines, we crave ways to express and celebrate our human moments. Witness the explosion of interest in preparing food, knitting, DIY projects.

People are hungry for channels to express themselves creatively. Music is among the most direct, powerful ways to tell our stories. We must elevate and celebrate authentic, human music by supporting artists, music education, and the means for everyone to participate.

Coda

Just after posting this, I was struck by the irony that I had used an image (below) that I had generated using DALL-E (“Baroque-style etching of J.S. Bach as a robot”). It was fun, but I agonized over whether I was unknowingly stealing bits actual artists’ work or undermining the market in which they made their living. Is there a place for AI-generated illustrations? What do you think?

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Best music software for classrooms

Post author By BlogMeister
Post date February 3, 2023
No Comments on Best music software for classrooms

The marketplace is awash with software for music, from toy-like games to complicated digital audio workstations (DAWs) for professionals. How’s a teacher to choose? Music educator Cecilia Roudabush, a 30-year veteran of the Iowa City schools and director of education for New Harmony Line, is always on the lookout for tools that produce satisfying results in real classrooms. She reviews some popular and favorite applications.

Chrome Music Lab
“Chrome Music Lab is a website that makes learning music more accessible through fun, hands-on experiments.”

User age: All ages

Best features
– No account needed; click on any experiment for immediate use
– 14 experiments to choose from
– Shared Piano, Songmaker, Rhythm and Kandinsky all feature music making as their core purpose
– Shared Piano and Songmaker can be posted or shared
– Shared Piano can involve live collaboration with another user
– 6 of the experiments feature the ability to use your voice as part of the music making or conceptual process
– Quick connections to science, art, coding and math as well as musical concepts
– Every experiment has a question icon that loads a text description of how to use the experiment or what concept it is demonstrating
– All the tools are visual icons that most people will have used, seen as a computer user or can understand from experience (walking figure versus running figure for tempo)
– Works on any device that can load Chrome

Ease of use:
– Composing feature in Songmaker and Melody Maker is intuitive with experimentation
– Most students will explore the tools and use the ones that work easily for them
– Kaninsky requires a touch screen which is not evident
– May hold the attention of younger users for a longer time than older users; Rhythm is very fun but doesn’t expand beyond the 4 choices and is not something you can save or share

Teacher review:
There are many wonderful features to this online technology for elementary students. Experiments like Arpeggio, Harmonics, Piano Roll, Oscillators and Strings are useful for presenting a facet of a concept. Melody Maker and Songmaker would be excellent introductory composition tools. Shared Piano would be interesting for creating melodies that someone else could play back, but the synesthesia method used is backward from the usual “drop from the top and touch the key you need to play”. If elementary students haven’t used synesthesia videos from YouTube to learn songs on the electronic keyboard, that might not be an issue.

As 7th and 8th graders, my students were given the option of using Chrome Music Lab but most students chose not to use it as they had used it while in elementary school. The best usage of this in a one-trimester or -semester music technology class in secondary school is as a choice for free-time music making.

Pricing: Free

Hyperscore
A new way to compose music
“Lay down some notes, listen, react and evolve. Hyperscore is an innovative web application with an intuitive graphic interface that puts creativity first and encourages active listening and purposeful composing.”

User age: All ages. Under 13 need parent or school permission to create account.

Best features:
– Easy free account set-up. For Hyperscore Classroom, instructor sends email invitation for students to join classroom.
– Intuitive composing workspace: drop notes into the extendable rhythm and melody windows, listen, edit and continue to create melodic and rhythmic motifs; motifs can be arranged in the harmony sketch window alone, or in combination with, other motifs
– Music is composed visually, allowing the user to manipulate note values, place pitch and arrange motifs with their eyes as well as their ears
– 1-minute video tutorials accessible to all users
– Teaching modules for elementary to secondary included in Resources for Educators
– User can customize note shapes, instrument sets, visually themed workspaces, and rainbow-themed diatonic scale
– Unique harmonizing tool in the sketch window: “general” and “classical” will adjust notes to fit harmonic principles.
– Unique Harmony Line function allows the user to add tension, release or drama to their composition
– Cloud version saves work automatically; projects can shared and remixed, and moved to a personal account once the class is complete

Ease of use:
– Creative composing feature is very intuitive. Most students of any age or ability will be able to use the program
– Students will explore and use the tools with little support needed once they learn the basic composing process (write, listen, edit)
– Students will quickly learn their preference for monophonic or polyphonic melodies with some instruction needed for stacking musically rather than just filling the space
– Intentional composing can be achieved with storytelling or prepared composition prompts
– Scaffolded curriculum would allow students to collect their work year-to-year in a portfolio showing increasing sophistication in their compositional style
– Contact district technology department prior to creating accounts to make sure emailed account codes arrive directly in student in-boxes
– New Harmony Line’s Privacy Policy contains a prepared Parent/Guardian consent form for family/student users under the age of 13

Teacher review:
As 7th and 8th graders, my students used the original Hyperscore as a composing and arranging tool. The majority of students could compose independently with the program because of its intuitive tools. Seeing music written visually was considered to be a strength of the program. Students were able to edit and arrange motifs, and to judge what they liked and did not like about their choices. Students also used the dynamic, tempo, harmonic tools, tone color and copy/paste features once they were presented as options they could choose to utilize.

The upgrade to the web-based version in 2021 has allowed students from ages 3 to 18 to compose original works of music with simple instruction on using the tools. By inverting the pedagogy and allowing students to compose before structuring the theoretical understanding of their process, students showed amazing leaps of creativity in their rhythm pattern choices, melodic shapes, use of non-traditional time signatures and harmonic combinations. Asking students to name their piece often elicited a peek into the imagery within their work. Giving a student a storytelling or prepared compositional prompt also yields amazingly creative work.

Composing, editing and arranging are its best usage in a one-trimester or -semester music technology class. Musically motivated students would find a trimester elective in composing with Hyperscore invaluable, which may lead to some career pursuits or lifelong interaction with music. Elementary general music teachers would benefit from using the program as a K-6 portfolio of mastery of compositional techniques.

Pricing:
– Free Starter Plan (5 projects)
– Basic $3.99/month (5 seats and 10 projects)
– Premium $9.99/month (5 seats and 20 projects); $8.00/month with annual plan discount
– Supreme $14.99/month (unlimited); $12.00/month with annual plan discount
– MusicFirst educator license. 30-day free trial. $199/year unlimited seating for 1 year; 3-year subscription $189.05/year unlimited seating
– Hyperscore Classroom license. $199/year plus $2 per seat.

Incredibox
A fun, interactive music experience
“Create your own music with the help of a merry crew of beatboxers. Choose your musical style among 8 impressive atmospheres and start to lay down, record and share your mix.”

User age: Any age, as this program does not require account creation. Parental Control button available in settings.

Best features:
– Immediate use with no account required (more content with downloadable app but not necessary to enjoy the experience)
– Very intuitive program; visual and textual help screens pop up once you choose your first mix set
– Available in 6 languages
– Drag and drop pre-recorded loops onto each beatboxing character which provides them with a themed “outfit” and a sound associated with their character
– You can record and save your mix (appears to be a cloud save because you do not enter any personal information although you can give yourself a handle for your mixes
– Name and share links immediately; the Playlist button allows you to see what’s been recorded in the last 24 hours as well as a Top 50 playlist of popular mixes

Ease of use:
– Arranging and mixing feature is very intuitive with visual/text guides if needed
– Most users will find this very fun and motivating
– You can spend hours listening to all of the mixes others created–inspiration to be found from the simple to sophisticated mixes

Teacher review:
As 7th and 8th graders, my students used Incredibox completely independently as a mixing and arranging tool. Most students used it purely for fun–they didn’t even realize they were making musical choices as they “played”! Some used their mix as their final product for the composition unit and turned it in for a grade since their final product requirement was to spend 3 class periods ‘making music using technology’. Although peers found it very entertaining, I made sure to label it as “mixing and arranging” rather than “composing”.

Incredibox could be a wonderful introductory program into other mixing, arranging and editing programs or as a way to introduce composition during a one-trimester or-semester music technology class. A few students will enjoy this for one class period and then be ready for something more sophisticated and not return to it again, whereas others will continue using at home or on their phone and share the website URL with others. Most elementary students would find it just completely fun, although I did have a student or two who expressed concern that the beatboxers were bare-chested until you “dressed” them. As a teacher myself, I find it to be a fun distraction that I return to a few times a year.

Pricing:
– Alpha version on website is free
– Educational Version 12 seat minimum for $12/mth
– App available on App Store, Steam, Microsoft Store for $4.99
– Merchandise store with coffee mugs to art ranging in price from $14.99 to $147.99

Soundation
Make music in an online DAW
“An online studio where you can make beats, record & edit audio/MIDI, mix, and collaborate. 20000+ loops and samples. 15 audio effects.”

User age: 13+ (use granted for those under 13 with Parent/Guardian permission)

Best features:
– Easy account set-up (Google login) for immediate use
– Video tutorials and user step-by-step guides
– Drag and drop pre-recorded professional loops from the Sound Library
– Choose audio effects for each loop
– Share links, collaborate or place your work in the Community forum

Ease of use:
– Composing feature is not intuitive
– Motivated students will explore the tools and use the ones that work easily for them
– Features a QWERTY virtual keyboard but does not have a step-by-step guide for using it
– The right toolbar has icons that are useful but not defined–most students will need to be taught their purpose and how to use the export feature

Teacher review:
As 7th and 8th graders, my students used Soundation independently as an editing and arranging tool. No student chose to compose with it because they were too impatient to watch the videos and it was not intuitive for composing. Students were able to independently understand editing and arranging sound loops and to judge what they liked and did not like about their choices. Many students used the channel features but only at the surface level. I had to teach students how to export their files to me for their final grade.

Editing, mixing and arranging are its best usage in a one-trimester or -semester music technology class. Elementary students would be able to use the program with mixing and arranging lessons and guided practice.

Pricing:
– Free (3 projects and 1 GB storage)
– Starter (10 projects) $9.99/month; annual plan $4.99/month
– Creator (unlimited projects) $14.99/month; annual plan $9.99/month
– Pro (unlimited projects) $49.99/month; annual plan $29.99/month

Soundtrap
Make music together. Online. Your everywhere studio.
“The best collaboration platform for making music online.”

User age: 13+ (use granted for those under 13 with Educator School Account)

Best features:
Easy account set-up (Google login) for immediate use for 13+ users
Video tutorials for all features
Light and dark mode for personalization of workspace
Drag and drop pre-recorded professional loops from the Sound Library
Choose sophisticated audio effects for each loop with tutorials for using effects
Record,edit and collaborate on any device and store your work in the Cloud
Auto-tune feature offers the ability to pitch and modify voice recordings
Audio editing tools (volume, pan, filter sweep effects)
QWERTY synthesizer that allows you to easily play a virtual keyboard using the keys on your computer keyboard (dozens of sound settings available with effects settings) or a piano roll that allows you to click from low to high and extend the value with your mouse monophonically or with polyphony
Connects your microphone, guitar or any other electronic instrument to the program
Patterns Beatmaker tool allows you to make your own beats with 18 percussion instruments associated with a traditional trap set
Record, transcribe to text and edit your own Podcast which can be uploaded to Spotify or downloaded as a link for you to post anywhere
Educator Account links to all major LMS platforms and provides many of the features present in a personal use account with additional lesson plans and assignments

Ease of use:
Composing feature is sophisticated and would take multiple lessons for a student to learn the tools
Motivated students will explore the tools and videos and make incredible music; students who are taking a required course will need lessons and step-by-step assignments to use the technology and may find the vast resources overwhelming without finite boundaries
Beatmaker tool seems to only be quarter note values–there’s probably a video tutorial for that!
Easy to share, post, collaborate

Teacher review:
As 7th and 8th graders, my students used Soundtrap independently as an editing and arranging tool. The composing tool has improved dramatically since we last used it. Most students were able to independently understand editing and arranging sound loops and to judge what they liked and did not like about their choices. A small number of students used the array of features, but the majority of students used it only at the surface level.

Editing and arranging loops are its best usage in a one-trimester or -semester music technology class. An entire trimester or semester music elective would be needed to allow focus on the usage of all of the features of this online music technology tool which may lead to some career pursuits or lifelong interaction with music.. The podcast feature could be used by Language Arts, Drama, Musical Theatre and Music Production electives as well as in a Music Technology class through which a student could share their work, the work of others, reviews of current music or insights into the music they love. Elementary students would be able to use the program with mixing and arranging lessons and guided practice.

Pricing:
– Free plan
– Music Makers Premium $9.99/month; annual plan $7.99/month
– Music Makers Supreme $14.99/month; annual plan $11.99/month
– Storytellers (podcasts) $14.99/month; annual plan $11.99/month
– Complete $17.99/month; annual plan $13.99/mth
Education Version–30 day Free Trial (up to 500 seats with all features); School or District Plan $349 plus applicable taxes for 50 minimum seats ($6.98/seat); price per seat lowers as you add additional seats

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Creating a Character through Music

Post author By BlogMeister
Post date January 15, 2023
No Comments on Creating a Character through Music

Think of one of your favorite characters from any form of media. Chances are, they evoke some emotional response in you that has drawn you toward them. Characters can be abundant sources of joy and inspiration for all of us, as can be seen from just a glance online at the copious amounts of fan art and works created by all sorts of people motivated by their passion for all sorts of characters.

We used a character as the foundation for making music with Hyperscore at our most recent Second Saturdays Zoom workshop. We began by coming up with a character: one attendee brought up her affection for capybaras, and we soon landed on Cappy the capybara as the protagonist for our musical story.

We brainstormed a list of association words and phrases that we imagined Cappy to have, to inspire the composition of his leitmotif – a musical theme associated with him that would repeat throughout our piece. “Sleepy”, “determined”, “furry”, “plump”, “aquatic”, and “adorable” were among these descriptors. Thinking of these words, we started laying down some notes in a Hyperscore melody window that would encapsulate Cappy’s energy, using the warm sound of a french horn.

Cappy the capybara’s theme

The next question was, what’s the story? Cappy needs an exciting adventure. Imagining various scenarios prompted a second character–a hungry alligator!

The alligator’s theme

There should be more than danger motivating our story. What is something that would make Cappy happy? Why, some delicious fruit, of course.

The fruit theme represents Cappy’s snack

And where does all this action take place? Alligators inhabit rivers, so we needed music to suggest rippling water.

The water theme accompanies Cappy when he goes for a swim

Now that we had our main characters and setting, what about the action? Cappy goes out for a stroll and come to a river. He starts swimming but Alligator enters the scene. When Cappy realizes he is being stalked, he starts swimming faster. There’s a race culminating in Alligator lunging at Cappy!

A two-bar percussion figure depicts Cappy walking and racing, as well as munching on fruit

Here’s “Cappy’s Day.” Listen to hear the different themes and find out Cappy’s fate!

Watch this video on YouTube

Hear the motifs that represent the characters and story elements, as well as the final composition.

Here is the full Second Saturday workshop showing in real time how we put this composition together. Peter shares a ton of subtle Hyperscore tricks and hacks!

Watch this video on YouTube

Want to try this out yourself? Sign up for our free Second Saturdays workshops here.

Tags events, workshops

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Exercising creativity

by June Kinoshita, Executive Director

There’s a lot of discussion these days about the importance of creativity. “Creativity is the skill of the future,” proclaims a 2018 article in Forbes. So many skills that were once essential for a livelihood have been replaced by machines, computers and now, AI. Artificial intelligence. What remains unique to people are personal histories, their embodied experience of the world, empathy, social intelligence, and originality.

Composing music is a fantastic way to exercise our creative muscle. It is about expressing a feeling or story in order to make a connection and evoke a reaction from the listener. Musical sounds are not necessarily representational, so you can invent your own sonic vocabulary. Music is wonderfully freeing because it is abstract. You can only judge it on its own terms. Is it pretty? That’s great. Does it set your teeth on edge? Intriguing! Does it fill you with emotions you can’t put name to? That’s powerful.

Traditional music pedagogy puts up many barriers to composition. We designed Hyperscore to lower those barriers so that more people can have access to music as a creative pursuit. Technology can be a powerful ally of human curiosity and creativity. But we don’t want technology to replace activities that are meaningful to humans. It’s a delicate balance that we work hard to maintain with Hyperscore.

Because our roots lie in the MIT Media Lab, we are of course thinking about AI. In what ways can AI enhance musical creativity? In what ways could AI undermine it?

Curious to see how good AI is in another domain, writing, I tested the capabilities of ChatGPT, an AI-powered conversationalist. I asked it to “write a 100-word creative story about my cat Muji that makes some logical leaps.” Here’s what it came up with:

“Muji was an adventurous cat with a curious mind. She was always exploring her surroundings and getting into mischief. One day, while out on a walk, Muji spotted a bird perched on a tree branch. Without hesitation, she leapt into the air, determined to catch the bird. To her surprise, the bird flew away, leading Muji on a wild chase through the neighborhood. As she chased the bird, Muji made all sorts of creative leaps and bounds, jumping over fences and scampering up trees. Eventually, the bird led Muji to a beautiful garden where she was able to catch it and bring it home as a prize. Muji was proud of her catch and couldn’t wait to show it off to her humans.”

I would give this a B or C (if I were feeling cranky). It’s a serviceable story stitched together from clichés and a literal reading of “logical leap.” A real child would likely have injected more personality into their cat, sharing their pet’s singular quirks and inventing an adventure that would have surprised and amused the reader.

I’m reassured that machine intelligence won’t pass the Turing Test for now, at least if it were pitted against a bright eight year old. That’s probably to be expected, because current AI systems are designed to trawl huge amounts of publicly posted factoids and phrases and come up with an anodyne result. (I do wonder how older students would do, after they have been pumped full of received wisdom, rubrics, and recipes for “correct” writing….)

It wouldn’t surprise me if engineers are already working on AI systems designed to generate something unexpected when commanded to “think outside the box.” AI challenges us to ponder what each of us puts out into the world that is unique to the individual and adds value to others’ experience. Someday soon, AI will be able to simulate creativity. We will be forced to ask, is creativity the pinnacle of human endeavor? How will our definitions of creativity shift? What is the relationship between creativity and art? What is art in an age of ingenious machines? How might we envision worlds where we collaborate with these machines in transformational and truly equitable ways? That’s a topic for a future blog post…

Image credit: “Thinking outside the box, musically,” generated by DALL-E.