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Composer Stacy Garrop on teaching with Hyperscore

Composer Stacy Garrop was invited by the Ying Quartet’s David Ying to lead a series of Hyperscore composing workshops for the 2011 Skaneateles Festival. The resulting works were performed by string quartets at the Festival. In an interview with us, Garrop shared some of her lessons learned from mentoring non-musicians to compose music using our software. You can listen to her in the video.

Some key points:

  • Teachers need to be committed so that the kids won’t  just put it down after one day. Teachers who are passionate about the project will communicate that passion to their students.
  • With high school students, you may run into the problem that many students know notation and may try to replicated note for note the music they already know.
  • The visual representations of music in Hyperscore gets kids excited and is helpful.
  • You need to break things down into building blocks. Design lessons around what’s important in music and what’s meaningful in music.
  • The colors helped isolate different elements of music and provide a way to talk about their different functions in the music.
  • People who are already in a creative field really get it.
  • I created lots of exercises to help people learn about the tools in Hyperscore. For example, we did an exercise about range.
  • Everyone needs a goal. Before my first workshop, I gave people small assignment that they can have ready for me to  look at and a goal for the end of each workshop.
  • Make sure you know what the equipment needs are. A good sound system is important!
  • Also really important – You need enough computers so that the kids can be working on their pieces while I’m going around the room. If I have enough time, they can get enough work done during a class to get feedback at the end of class.

Garrop remarked that she found it “very enlightening” to talk with much younger students. Overall, it was a “really fun” experience for her.

If you are interested in inviting Stacy Garrop to lead workshops in your school or organization, she may be reached via her website at http://www.garrop.com/

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Listen Projects

Musical offerings from Toronto kids

Several hundred school children in Toronto have been giving their Hyperscore programs a good workout, composing music about their city for composer Tod Machover’s collaborative “A Toronto Symphony” project.  Some of it may end up in the Machover’s new orchestral work, to be premiered in March 2013 by the Toronto Symphony. Take a listen to some of the kids’ compositions here.

HyperscorePieces-Kids

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Listen Read Watch

Hyperscore enables “Amazing accomplishment”

As we reported previously, Hyperscore is being used by hundreds of school children in Toronto this fall to compose music for Tod Machover’s “A Toronto Symphony” project. How has it worked in practice? We found out last Friday when Tod met with around 300 kids gathered with their teachers on the campus of Toronto’s College Français. There to witness the occasion was Musical Toronto‘s John Terauds. He writes:

Hyperscore offers synthesized audio output of its own, but orchestrated by a real composer and played by the excellent young musicians on stage, these miniature compositions from pint-sized composers sounded remarkably sophisticated.

Here is one example, from Broadlands P.S. student Nebyou. What you see on the projection is the Hyperscore screen. The crazy doodle is the composition. The music is being played by members of the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra:

Terauds says, “I have to admit that the ease with which the user becomes a creator worries me, because it feels too easy. Part of me considers this to be a form of pseudo creation, that only the careful application of pencil (and eraser) to notation paper is real creation.”

But the results have convinced him otherwise:

These children, many of whom I’m sure haven’t had any lessons music theory, were truly and fully engaged with the act of creating music.

Isn’t that what we all dream of?

The fact that their work will eventually find itself performed on the stage of Roy Thomson Hall seems almost superfluous after this amazing accomplishment.

Read John Teraud’s full post here: Toronto school children become engaged composers in Toronto Symphony experiment

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News

Hyperscore for the holidays

Give the gift of musical expression this holiday season by giving Hyperscore. The software is suitable for anyone between the ages of 5 and 105. Hyperscore’s innovative graphical annotation system puts music composing powers into the hands of anyone who can manipulate a mouse.

Here’s how to purchase Hyperscore as a gift:

  1. Purchase Hyperscore online.(Available for a limited time at the discounted price of $39! Just subscribe to this blog* and you will receive a discount code. Please enter this code when making your purchase.)
  2. You will received a link and purchase ID to download the software.
  3. Email the download link and purchase ID to your gift recipient!

Click here for minimum system requirements and FAQs

* You must subscribe using your email address. If you follow the blog via a WordPress account, we will not have a way to send you the discount code.

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Watch

Hyperscore has role in new film!

It’s Hyperscore meets Hollywood in a new documentary film, Music is My Voice, about Dan Ellsey, a young man with cerebral palsy whose life was transformed when he learned to compose music using the software. Dan was featured in this TED Talk by Tod Machover, in which he performs a song he composed before a live audience. The new film, directed by Jesse Roesler, is a semi-finalist in the Focus/Forward contest. Here’s the trailer and a chance to vote!

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News

Archeological Find!

We were Googling around for some images of Hyperscore and unearthed this five-year-old blog from Harmonyline Music, back in the early days of the company. It’s fun to read and there are some wonderful nuggets! Read the original Hyperscore Blog.

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Watch

A to A: The World in Harmony (Video)

Enjoy this video of a concert of Hyperscore original music performed at the Armenian Opera Theater in February of this year. The music was composed by children in Armenia and America and performed by the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra and DOGMA, one of the country’s most popular rock bands. The event was co-sponsored by the LUYS Education Foundation and the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan to celebrate the embassy’s 20th anniversary. LUYS Foundation director Jacqueline Karaaslanian explained the motivation for the project:

Hyperscore wakes up the genius within children and instills in them a desire to better understand a whole universe of worlds they had not previously imagined or considered. When children know that their elders and professionals will play their music, they are empowered. This process is beyond encouraging words; it validates children as thinkers and creators.

Read more about the project here: From the U.S. to Armenia, Kids Build a Musical Bridge

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News

When a “DREAM” comes true

We just spotted this blog post by the Armenian rock band DOGMA, about their collaboration with children in Armenia and America that resulted in the creation of four new songs, written using Hyperscore. It’s interesting to see the process from the point of view of professional musicians who were asked to stretch their own boundaries.

Here’s an example of one of the songs that resulted from the collaboration:

Members of DOGMA and Tod Machover mull the Hyperscore songs composed by Armenian and American kids

Read the full blog post: When a “DREAM” comes true 🙂

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News

Hyperscore in Toronto Schools

Hundreds of school kids in Toronto will have a chance to get their hands on Hyperscore and contribute to creating a new work for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. The project is the brainchild of composer Tod Machover, who was commissioned by the orchestra to write a new piece to be premiered at the New Creations Festival in March of 2013. Rather than retreat to the solitude of his studio, Machover decided to open up the composing process to the entire city. A group of adventurous and committed school teachers took up the challenge and have developed a most creative and engaging curriculum around Hyperscore. We can’t wait to see what their students come up with!

Here’s the project’s website: A Toronto Symphony: Concerto for Composer and City

Watch the video:

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Listen

Music from Skaneateles

We recently received audio recordings of several compositions by participants in the Hyperscore II project for the famed Skaneateles Music Festival. In April and May of 2011, composer Stacy Garrop visited schools in upstate New York, teaching students what it takes to compose music. Stacy helped kids of all ages to discover the music within; participants ranged in age from 10 to adult and included students from A.J. Smith Elementary in Union Springs, West Genesee Middle School and Skaneateles High School, as well as employees of ChaseDesign. The project culminated with the Hyperscore II Community Celebration at the 2011 festival.

We were very impressed by how each piece expresses a distinctive personality and diversity of structure. Click on the gallery images below to see what these pieces look like in Hyperscore. Do take a listen and share your thoughts!

“Dark Dreams”
Untitled piece by Doug Whitehouse
Untitled Hyperscore piece by Hannah Thurston
Untitled piece by Daniel Kringer
“Flipilicious” by Anita and Leah

Empower kids to tell their stories through music.

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