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Connecting STEM with the Arts: Hyperscore Puts the A in STEAM

Students at the 2023 F2F Foundation Summer Music Camp create music with Hyperscore

Connecting STEM with the Arts is as simple as opening Hyperscore, New Harmony Line’s web-based music composition tool. Anyone of any age or ability can compose in Hyperscore. Due to our generous donors, the Hyperscore classroom is available at no cost and includes our team’s educational services. As an educator, you do not need specialized music training, nor do your students, in order to incorporate music into your teaching of other subjects. Music becomes another medium, just like writing, visual arts, and model-building, for students to explore and express their understanding of a topic. 

With Hyperscore, students create their own melodic and rhythmic patterns and assemble them into full musical compositions. It’s easy, intuitive and fun. Students can fine-tune their creative ideas by adding dynamics, form, different instruments and adding harmony such as chords. Finally, adding a title to the piece connects the listener to the composition’s themes.

Read on for specific ideas on how to use Hyperscore in STEAM education!

Connecting STEM with the Arts in Composition Workshops

With Hyperscore, teachers can link composition to various STEM concepts in group workshops. For example, through the Second Sunday Composition Workshop series, the New Harmony Line team has experimented with composing songs in Hyperscore inspired by mathematics, visual art, scientific concepts, technological achievements, and more. The open-ended intuitive structure of Hyperscore allows for students to take a wide variety of such inspirations. With guidance from a workshop facilitator, students’ creativity can bloom.

This images shows the columns of numbers and letters that are part of the first type of computing, a difference engine.
Replica of the Babbage Difference Engine
Fairy Door
Fraction Attraction
This photo captures the shades of blue and white present in a glacier that is now in water.
Melting Glacier

The following are some examples of compositions made in New Harmony Line’s Second Sundays workshops. “The Melt” was inspired by the sounds of a melting glacier. “A Song for a Forest Fairy” is a theme song for Haleigh Overseth’s fantasy character Daisy Rae whereas “Mr. Hank! and the Bucket” is a musical re-telling of the picture book There’s a Hole in the Bucket. “The Hero In You” contains a theme for each of the inner voices that challenge children to form their best identity, featuring the author of “Harmony Hare and Her Three Voices“, Tammy Vallieres.

“The Countess of Lovelace” is a piece inspired by the Babbage Difference Engine whereas “Algorithms and Music Composition in Hyperscore” takes its inspiration from programming, functions, and modular music composition. “Canon Fodder” is a reimagining of Bach’s “Canon in D” while “Dance of the Fireflies” was sparked by someone sharing a photograph by Daniel Kordan.  Using a team member’s fun bebop theme brought about “Lazy Bop“, while “Aire Currents” provided an opportunity to realize new music for a dance video from YouTube. We created “My Grandfather’s Clock” when a workshop attendee was fondly reminiscing about a folk song that he sang as a child. Thankfully this list will continue with our monthly workshop, but we’ll close this section with “Fraction Attraction” an idea that came from a team member’s unit on division of the musical beat and its connection to the study of fractions in math class.

Schools, Museums, Festivals and Camps

New Harmony Line shared Hyperscore in the Boston Museum’s “Created By” Festival, the Cambridge Science Festival and Iowa City Artsfest and Jazz fest. These events allow children, their parents and community members to create music using our technology. As expected, these festivals celebrate STEAM programs that promote ingenuity, creativity and innovation. Click the play button on the sketch window to activate the linked innovation video, created by a 4 year old. What great spaces to share Hyperscore!

a child and parent are composing music using Hyperscore at a science festival in Cambridge
This brightly colored icon represents the sunny beginning of summer as Iowa City celebrates the Summer of the Arts.

Students Pre K through 12th grade have written simple harmonies to incredibly complex pieces with our technology tools. 2nd grader LS completed her assignment to create whole, half, quarter and eighth notes in a percussion window. This achievement earned her independent creativity time. WOW! Step away and look what can happen. She discovered how to set the melody window to 32nd notes on her own. Indeed, her video on our YouTube channel has 120 views, more than any other student piece and rightly so.

In 2022, the F2F (Faith to Form) Foundation hosted a Hyperscore segment in their summer camp founded by composer Vel Lewis. For 2 years we had the opportunity to work with inner city youth in Houston attending his summer camp. In addition, CS4Youth hosted a Hyperscore project in 2024 for the last day of BotBall Robotics Camp held in Massachusetts. Campers created a theme song for the debut of their robot as it moved through its obstacles. What a delightful way to use technology in TWO ways!

Both the United States and international countries have enjoyed access to Hyperscore. Music Teacher Odysseas Sagredos, Greece, loved Hyperscore so much. He taught his elementary and secondary students to use the technology with incredible results. The Projectory in Seoul, South Korea hosted an interactive Hyperscore session in 2023 with students creating their work in teams. Teacher Frederico Ferohna shared Hyperscore with his music students. His classes chose two pieces to share live from Portugal on a Zoom with us to our delight.

The Hyperscore Challenge

The Hyperscore Challenge is an idea that has became hugely successful due to the embedded YouTube video prompts into the Hyperscore workspace. Anyone who participated from March to May could submit their composition(s) for our website. We published our galleries, 2024 and 2025, on International Make Music Day.

As one can imagine, the addition of video prompts added multiple STEAM opportunities:

What does outer space (age 8) sound like? Which instruments (ages 2 and 4) best portray chickens hatching and baby birds being fed by Mama bird? How does one musically describe a little girl mimicking the dance moves of a robot (age 58)? What instruments portray each character (age 3) seen in an under-the-sea vignette?

Incidentally, we discovered that the video prompts were very effective with Pre-K students as they easily chose a composition focus. With an adult utilizing a mouse, young children are able to make story line musical choices by guiding the adult’s hand and clicking the left button.

Where will Hyperscore take STEAM next? Where will STEAM take Hyperscore?

The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts defines arts integration and STEAM as “an approach to teaching in which students construct and demonstrate understanding through an art form. Students engage in a creative process which connects an art form and another subject and meets evolving objectives in both.” The internet and social media abound with praise for initiatives such as Arts Integration and STEAM.

New Harmony Line has had amazing experiences in the last few years with STEAM through Hyperscore. Currently, a connection with the Institute for Arts Integration and STEAM led to exhibiting at the Creativity Rising Conference in July of 2025. Over 40 music teachers, arts integration specialists, classroom teachers and arts integration administrators registered for the Hyperscore Classroom. We are already planning the trip for next year!

Would you or your team like to attend a series of workshops? Professional development is at your fingertips with our workshop offerings. New Harmony Line is in the planning stages with the Arts Integration and STEAM team at BYU in Utah. We will also be presenting and exhibiting at their Arts Express Conference in 2026.

The Dallas Symphony will be debuting a wall-sized interactive Hyperscore exhibit in the Jeanne R. Johnson Music Innovation Lab in the coming month. In addition, our team is also excited about an opportunity to work with Emily and Bryan at the Lexington Public Library in Kentucky. Emily was at Creativity Rising and has some wonderful plans to use Hyperscore in their STEAM room at the library!

Your turn! Where can Hyperscore take YOUR program?

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MC Animosity-Master of Generosity

This image is a picture of rapper MC Animosity who is a solo artist and also performs with The Uniphonics.
MC Animosity, AKA Derek Thorn

I have been volunteering as a music teacher at an Iowa City youth detention facility over the past two years. To be honest, I found it challenging to engage the youth. They would have loved nothing more than an hour of streaming their favorite hits. However, the facility does not allow internet access, and the music they were passionate about was not in my wheelhouse.

In comes MC Animosity, rapping to the Spotify instrumental of their favorites. Hitting the flow with his lyrics about taking a different path. Becoming the person you were meant to be. Not being defined by the path they took that landed them in detention. Freestyling with the words they shouted out, melding into the poetry he was unveiling. His presence was magical for our students.

Not your typical music education student

MC Animosity, AKA Derek Thorn, is a music education student at the University of Iowa. Derek has won the hearts and minds of his professors and fellow students at the School of Music. He is well-known in the Iowa City community as a solo performer and as a member of The Uniphonics. In mid May, he was the first music ed student to rap as part of his senior recital. Imagine–Schubert’s lieder followed by a Polo G instrumental backing up his clever rhymes!

Derek hails from Ohio. He frequently mentions the importance of his mom and pops, wife, family and friends in his freestyling. Derek ends every conversation with the most sincere wish for “peace and love”. He projects a positive and loving attitude. It’s easy to see how he brings warmth and wishes for good change into the rhymes he shares with the youth.

MC Animosity and Cece: collaborating with New Harmony Line

I owe my participation at the Youth Center to Dr. Mary Cohen, a Professor of Music Education and Professor in the School of Music at the University of Iowa. She led the Oakdale Prison Choir, “The Inside Singers”, along with community members from 2009 until 2020, when COVID closed the program. Unfortunately, after COVID restrictions ceased, the new warden would not allow the program to begin again.

As a passionate prison abolitionist, Mary found a new way to share the power of music in a local youth detention center. Her U of I students, including Derek, have participated in the weekly sessions with the youth since September of 2023. She invited me to join the group in March of 2024 with the goal of sharing an opportunity to create music using Hyperscore.

Mary begins every session with a check-in, an interactive word game to get everyone talking, and then introduces Derek. His section begins with posting his new lyrics and discussing the positive message within. Then he shares his highly anticipated reveal of a new rap with lyrics. He checks Spotify weekly. Making sure his backing beats come from a new or popular hip hop artist, Derek wins the hearts of these listeners.

When Derek learned that my contribution to the lesson was a breakout session with Hyperscore, we started to collaborate on having the youth make beats. This led to his position in the New Harmony Line team as our beat maker. His awesome prototypes are posted in the Hyperscore Classroom Community, where they are remixable and shareable.

MC Animosity and Cece: “Raps and Beats” at the Mercer Park Rec Center

In February this year, Derek and I received the good news that the Lauren Dunne Astley Memorial Fund would be giving us a mini-grant to teach rapping and beat-making with Hyperscore at a local rec center for youth aged 12-18. The fund’s board was intrigued by our proposal due to Lauren’s interest in the arts and community service. Tragically, Lauren died in 2011 at the hands of her former boyfriend, a victim of breakup violence. Since 2013, the foundation’s mission has been to “promote dynamic educational programs, particularly those in the areas of the development of healthy teen relationships, the arts, and community service.”

In April, we began our journey by teaching four sessions at a local high school. Many of the students are begging for Derek to come back.

This was quite different from our experience at the youth detention center, where the students wanted to make beats like their favorite artists but did not know how to notate the complex patterns. As we had not published Derek’s prototypes yet, most of them chose rap-making over beat-making.

In contrast, at our weekly rec center class, we found students (mainly 6th graders) who will leave the gym and gossip circles to help us remix Derek’s beat prototypes. He presents his rap with their beat mix and has even had a few students rap the chorus. A group of six friends recently stayed for 40 minutes and promised to be back.

I hope our story inspires you to introduce children and youth in your community–at school, recreation center, Boys & Girls Club, YMCA, and other youth centers–to the Hyperscore Challenge. Encourage them to share their compositions on our online gallery for International Make Music Day. Sign up here.

P.S. We hope to apply for another grant to visit middle and high schools for an artist-in-residence style project next year. We hope Derek can continue on our team, teaching youth to compose beats and flow with their awesome, positive lyrics.

Hyperscore Challenge Gallery

Enjoy these recital pictures!

Derek Thorn performs with an all-star University of Iowa music ensemble who obviously shares his love of jazz and rap!
Rapper and performer Derek Thorn dresses up to sing "We Got the Funk" in a floppy hat and bright colors.
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Meet Max, master of musical magic

Screenshot

Max Addae is a regular volunteer with New Harmony Line who has mentored kids at Hyperscore workshops at the Boston Children’s Museum and UP Academy. He also oversees the team that is creating a brand-new musical experience at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, which will feature a room-size version of Hyperscore. The Dallas installation opens to the public next month.

Max is also an inventor. A recent graduate from Tod Machover’s Opera of the Future group at the M.I.T. Media Lab, Max created VocalCords for his masters thesis. His invention won First Place at the 2024 Guthman Musical Instrument Competition at the Georgia Institute of Technology. 

VocalCords “explores the design of a new digital music interface inviting tactile interaction and performance with the singing voice,” Max explains. “The interface makes use of physical rubber cords, acting as stretch sensors, which are pulled and manipulated by the hands of the singer as they vocalize to augment and modify their voice in real-time – as if they were able to physically ‘touch’ their own vocal cords. This approach allows for expressive, tactile control over the singing voice, which suggests a striking relationship between physical and musical tension. Through a series of prototyping iterations and a public performance with the interface, I explore the potential of touch-mediated vocal performance, as well as how this added tactile interaction may alter our experience with, and perception of, our singing voices.”

Machover, head of the Opera of the Future research group, noted, “From the very first time that Max showed me the initial concept for VocalCords, I could see that he had found a uniquely powerful and personal way to combine his singing, composing, computing, and performing skills. The mature system is so effective because it unleashes both the expressivity and the fragility of the human voice in ways that are simultaneously simple and profound. I am so proud of Max for winning first prize in the prestigious Guthman Competition, the only award in the world for visionary musical instrument design, and can’t wait to see how he continues to develop VocalCords for his own artistic purposes and also so that others—and especially young people—can experience the joy of vocal creativity and discovery.”

Max’s achievement is a great example of the motivation and ingenuity that is in the DNA of Hyperscore and so many other inventions coming out of the Opera of the Future group. We’re proud to be part of the family!

Here’s a CBS news story about the 2024 Guthman prize.

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Tips for new teachers

In our recent podcast (see video below), our director of education, Cece Roudabush, walks new teacher Sydney Pratt through the practical process of preparing her classroom to learn music composition with Hyperscore.

In developing her music curriculum, Sydney wondered how to incorporate the music creation standards from the national standards for arts education. “Most of the standards that I’ve applied only revolve around performance,” she notes. “Students never get to create anything, and I didn’t know how to incorporate it. Hyperscore seems like the answer.” 

Roudabush begins with a great example of a composition created by a fifth grader using only four notes. “It’s a beautiful example of inverted pedagogy,” she says. Instead of teaching chords and intervals as abstract concepts, Hyperscore lets the student stumble across them while creating music. The student learns the concept more deeply because they discovered it by themself. 

Next, Roudabush introduces a handy series of checklists and classroom materials that she has perfected through her years of teaching with Hyperscore and leading professional development trainings for educators who are new to Hyperscore. Watch:

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Composing “Lazy-bop”

This month, our team had an interesting challenge, to devise a short workshop for the F2F Music Foundation’s summer camp, which serves underprivileged kids in the Houston area. The camp supports youths in developing and honing instrumental performance skills. F2F’s founder, the multifaceted Hammond organist and composer Vel Lewis, was keen to give the campers hands-on experience with technology while introducing them to Hyperscore as a tool for composition. And he wanted the campers to produce an original piece that would be performed on instruments during the camp’s final concert. 

The campers range in age from seven to 17, and several participated in last year’s summer camp, so they would be able to help the novices with Hyperscore basics. But what could we do in the few hours allotted to the workshop that would be rewarding and relevant? 

The camp has a jazz orientation, so we decided to start with a jazzy melody. The campers’ job would be to add accompanying melodies, bass, and percussion. While the idea sounded good in theory, we had not actually tried it out ourselves. So that’s what we decided to do at this month’s Second Sunday Zoom workshop. We composed a bebop-inspired melody in advance. Here it is:

This is what it looks like transcribed into Hyperscore:

While easy on the ears, it’s rhythmically complex, with grace notes, syncopation—elements that make a melody “swing.” We decided to start by adding a bass line, something that could underpin the melody by marking the beat against which the melody would be syncopated. We wondered whether there was a chordal structure to work from, but as we were racing against the clock, we said “let’s just use our ears.” (Plus, we don’t know the rules of jazz harmonies…) We started with a basic descending scale with some jumps, a few eighth notes thrown in among the quarter notes, and a little “grace note” beat at the very end of the phase so that when we looped it, there’d be a nice little flourish to propel us sonically into the next cycle.

Once we got a bass line that sounded good to us, we wanted to add a second melody that could weave in and out. Maybe something that “echoed” parts of the main melody. To make the “echo”, Peter copied part of the melody and plopped it into a new melody window, positioning it right after the trombone melody plays. We chose a vibraphone (yellow melody window) for the instrument because it is a bright sound that contrasts and complements the trombone nicely. 

Now onto percussion! Percussion often follows the rhythmic pattern of the melody. We heard in our heads a quarter beat alternating with triplet eights. Again, copying and pasting from the main melody into the percussion window saved some time. At first, the resulting beat sounded a bit too mechanical and lacking in swing, but upon listening, it wasn’t half bad. We adjusted the volume and changed to a cymbal with a more resonant vibration and liked that much better. We threw in some other percussion instruments at various points for emphasis:

We gave it a couple more listens and enjoyed what we heard! Here it is:

We realized afterward that the process we used was a great example of motific composing, in which we copied and pasted bits from the original melody to create the other parts. This was true even as we were guided only by what we heard, not by theory. 

Some pro tips: The original melody was locked using keyboard command Ctrl – shift – L (L for “lock”). That way we couldn’t accidentally change it. Also, if you watch the full video of how we created this piece, you’ll see how we stacked various windows with the bars aligned so that it was easy to see the time relationship among the different parts. 

Finally, while our team managed to collaboratively create our piece in one hour, we felt this would be a very challenging project for a workshop with kids. We decided to provide more supports, including showing the chords. Unfortunately, just as we were planning this camp workshop, Houston was hit hard by Hurricane Beryl, with electrical power for much of the city knocked out for days. The camp was postponed. We hope Vel and the kids are safe and look forward to composing with them in the near future.

Here’s the full video of our Second Sunday session: