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From silence to song: writing music from curiosity alone

For the May edition of our Second Saturdays composition workshop, we chose not to write from a prompt. It can often feel risky or intimidating to face the prospect of creating “something from nothing” – where to begin? It was precisely for this reason that we wanted to experiment with this process. Hyperscore shines when composers lead with an open mind, and can help to lower the barriers of “the blank page”. Composers of all experience can learn to trust their musical intuition with the tools of Hyperscore.

Using Hyperscore, we simply began by choosing an instrument set -folk band – and putting down some notes into a percussion window. We added one percussion instrument at a time, reacting to what we were hearing when we played it back. What does this instrument sound like? Do we want fast or slow notes, on the beat or off the beat? Most importantly, how does it feel to listen to it, and do we want it to feel different? We ended up with a steady, dense rhythm that was heavy on syncopation and evoked a slow, erratic march:

Next, we moved on to add some melodies. We agreed to start by creating a bass line riff that could repeat throughout the piece, forming a solid, catchy underpinning. Going through several iterations and asking each other what we heard and what we imagined was essential for the composition process. The bass developed into a two-instrument section, with one bouncy, quick motif complementing a swaying legato figure. After listening to them all together in a Sketch window, we made some edits to the melody windows so they would stand out and complement each other better and landed on our final versions:

Adding all three motives into the Sketch window, we decided to use the Classical harmonic mode and to experiment with creating regions of tension and release with the Harmony Line. Fine tuning these sections meant plenty of listening back, making slight changes, and then listening again.

We had rhythm, a bass line and a basic harmonic structure – now a piece was really starting to develop! It was time to bring in more melody. We created two variants on one melodic theme – a lightweight twinkling dance on a music box, and a half-speed repetition of the same theme, lower and more dramatic, on guitar:

We also decided to add an additional, more stripped down version of our main rhythm theme to add some variety and interest throughout the composition.

Weaving together all the elements in the Sketch window, making edits and additions following our intuitions and desires, we landed with a piece that had an uneven yet regimented feel. For us it was evocative of animated clocks ticking in and out of time. It reminded one of our participants of the classic tune “My Grandfather’s Clock”, after which we named the composition.

Listen to the final composition and watch the recording of the the full workshop, including our process of brainstorming and editing, here!

Photo of clocks courtesy of Andrew Seaman via Unsplash

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Removing barriers to creativity with Hyperscore

Getting students invested and excited about music can be one of the most challenging aspects of teaching the subject, as many educators know all too well. Students may come to conclusions early that music just isn’t for them, that they’ll never understand, or decide that they don’t want to learn all the complicated lingo and notation just to be able to express themselves. Hyperscore was built with this in mind, designed to open up surprising new avenues for learners and slip between the gaps in the barriers that block students from being able to access their musical curiosity and wonder. In a recent EdSurge feature article, music educator extraordinaire and Hyperscore enthusiast David Casali shares his personal experience of how Hyperscore inspired his classroom to express their creative talents for music in previously unimagined ways.

Musical voices blossom

Casali came across Hyperscore at the height of the pandemic, at a time when remote classes made it even more difficult to connect with students. Facing disengagement from students and wanting to find ways to bring the most reticent voices in the classroom into the fold, Casali decided to experiment. Inspired by his students’ love of playing games, he had the idea to integrate Hyperscore into Scratch, the popular program used by millions of children to program computer games, and ask his students to compose music to add to Scratch games. The experiment was a resounding success, and Casali saw the barriers falling between students and their previously out-of-reach musical inspiration. One student who was had been convinced that she had no musical talent submitted an assignment using Hyperscore and Scratch that spoke to quite the contrary! Throughout the classroom, students showed off their creative voices for music – some for the first time in their lives.

Making music education work for students

This experiment in Hyperscore and Scratch was a crucial step for Casali in rethinking how a music classroom could be relevant and accessible to students, and how to remove artificial barriers to creativity. With these groundbreaking tools, students do not have to be restricted by pre-existing ability to play an instrument or decipher the nuances of traditional musical notation. When these barriers are lifted, students can express musically what is already in their hearts and minds. They can take a leading role in their musical education rather than only following rigid and inflexible curricula. When teachers are willing to listen to the needs of their students and hear what excites them, tools like Hyperscore are there to support them in uplifting and amplifying their students’ voices.

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A space for creating music

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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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.

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Accelerated learning for music

by June Kinoshita, Executive Director, New Harmony Line

“Next time you hear the phrase learning loss, think about whether we really want to define our students by their deficits instead of their potential.” – Ron Berger, “Our Kids Are Not Broken,” The Atlantic

As schools navigate the post-lockdown world, educators are turning to “accelerated learning” as a method to make up the ground lost over the past two years. But this moment can be about so much more than clawing back lost time. This is also a moment to open our minds to new possibilities. “Acceleration does not mean assigning some students to remediation while others are allowed to fly,” writes Ron Berger, senior advisor of teaching and learning at EL Education. “Accelerating learning means moving students into exciting new academic challenges with a growth mindset for their potential.” 

An accelerated learning approach for music education is precisely what we are championing through the use of Hyperscore and our “inverted pedagogy.”

Hyperscore is an intuitive, graphical composition tool developed at the M.I.T. Media Laboratory by composer Tod Machover and a team of musician-engineers with deep knowledge of composition, music theory, artificial intelligence, and interface design. Hyperscore has been used in Machover’s Toy Symphony and City Symphony projects, in which hundreds of school children composed original music that was incorporated into symphonic works. These children have heard their work performed by major orchestras including the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Toronto Symphony, and Lucerne Festival Orchestra.

In these projects, we saw how Hyperscore completely shifted the relationship between children and professional musicians. This technology, in the hands of creative, inspired teachers and mentors, empowered children to share their stories and experiences through music. The children were treated with respect, their voices validated.

How Hyperscore works

In the Hyperscore environment, melodic motifs are created by “dropping” dots and lines in a “melody window,” a grid in which the vertical axis represents pitch and the horizontal axis represents time. Motifs are assigned a color, and then that color “pen” is used to draw a contour in a “sketch window.” The position of the line changes the pitch of the motif. Multiple motifs can be layered and combined to build more complex musical structures. A horizonal “harmony line” can be dragged up and down to create harmonic tension, release, and modulation. The user can also impose classical western harmony on the composition with the click of a button.

“My students absolutely loved creating their own songs with ease,” enthused Jenn Stiegelmeyer, the General Music teacher at Wickham Elementary in Coralville, Iowa, who tested Hyperscore in her classroom this past spring. “The program made sense to them right away and they felt very successful from day one. They came into class excited and ready to get started, and they often wanted to share their creations.”

“Hyperscore represents a quantum leap—rather as if someone could speak in a foreign language simply by deciding what one wanted to say and using one’s body in a natural way,” says Howard Gardner, the cognitive psychologist renowned for his theory of “multiple intelligences.”

Putting creativity first

Embodied in Hyperscore is a different philosophy about teaching creativity and engaging children in music. It’s a playground for kids to experiment, go crazy, have fun, and then the teacher can guide a conversation about what they just did. How does that make you feel? Why do you think that is? What could you change to get a different effect? What’s the story you want to tell? Let’s think about how we can do that.

How does this fit in with accelerated learning? According to a Carnegie Corporation report, accelerated learning includes:

  • Deeper learning through complex and meaningful problems and projects;
  • Prioritizing high-level skills and content and creating teaching and learning pathways;
  • Access to grade-level content despite the absence of some knowledge and skills from previous grades;
  • Identifying the most crucial knowledge and skills that students need and integrating those into lessons;
  • A long-range plan, building on a foundation of assets, not deficiencies;
  • Assuming all students can learn literally anything with the right instruction and support.

In the hands of teachers who understand its capabilities, Hyperscore meets all of these criteria. It empowers users to compose deeply personal, original music. What could be more complex and meaningful? Hyperscore prioritizes high-level skills, such as constructing a sonic journey, which then opens pathways to teaching about underlying ideas such as pitch, rhythm, harmony, and counterpoint. Because it starts at the high level and “back fills” basics concepts as needed, students won’t get left behind. The ideas and skills students need become naturally integrated into work on their composition, in the service of a goal that is personally rewarding.

Composing with Hyperscore enables an empathetic educator to recognize each student’s assets—their singular stories, their unique experiences and feelings—and celebrate and validate them. It doesn’t matter if the student does not know a quarter note or a key signature at the outset. They will learn it when they have a reason to do so.

Set your imagination on fire

For educators who have not previously taught music composition, or even composed themselves, the prospect of coaching a group of students to compose can be daunting. Even for those who have taught composition, it may not come naturally to overturn their traditional training. Recognizing these hurdles, the team behind Hyperscore has developed a variety of tools and resources. These include:

  • Short video tutorials on Hyperscore basics;
  • Teaching modules which map to national arts standards and can be customized for different grades;
  • Monthly office hours on Zoom for Q&A with the Hyperscore team. Educators who are new to teaching composition to students can learn tips for running creative composing workshops for different ages and backgrounds.
  • Virtual, one-hour workshops in which anyone—educators, students, the general public—can dive into creative composing experiences in a supportive, judgement-free environment.

Hyperscore is a versatile, flexible tool that serves a broad range of backgrounds and musical genres. It brings a fun, game-like element to a variety of teaching methods and curriculums. But Hyperscore truly soars when teachers recognize its unique capabilities as tool that empowers children to explore self-expression and musical storytelling.

Our mission, ultimately, is to transform individuals’ relationship to music. When children are given the opportunity to create music, they will start to experience music in a deeper, more personal way. They will begin to venture beyond what’s popular, what’s the latest earworm, and start to discern the intention behind many different types of music. When children are given the tools to find their voice, they will also be better able to hear what other voices are trying to say.

Take away the barriers that we put in the way of young people, give them permission and space to create music, and support them in drawing out their authentic voices. The results may be among the most rewarding learning experiences they, and you, will ever have.

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Learning from the kids

We recently participated in the CreatedBy Festival to celebrate STEAM week at the Boston Children’s Museum. It was an honor to be among the 30 or so organizations chosen to take part. It was quite the learning experience.

We were given a tabletop on a third floor corridor where we vied for the attention of children who were dashing by to check out the Brio train displays and a spectacular view of the harbor. Happily, when we asked, “would you like to make some music?” most kids were all in.

Making Hyperscore controllable through touch screens was a great move on our part, as every child within seconds became engrossed with tapping the Melody Window to see what sounds came out. What we hadn’t anticipated is that they would want to use Hyperscore as an instrument. They were so excited by the sounds they could make that it took some persuasion to get them to understand that they could make melodies and re-play them. They needed to make a big leap.

We also observed that when we showed them the Sketch Window, the children, not surprisingly, tried to use it in the same way as the Melody Window, poking at it to try to make a sound. We realized they needed to make another big mental leap to understand that lines drawn in a Sketch Window offered a higher level control over the melodies created in the Melody Window. Once they got the idea, though, their excitement was palpable. One boy couldn’t stop leaping about and dancing in delight. It made our day.

In a structured, classroom setting, it might be easier to teach children how to use Hyperscore. But in an unstructured, festival exhibit setting, I feel like it would be beneficial to come up with other ways to guide kids through the journey. If you have ideas, we’d love to hear them!

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Asserting our humanity through music

Cecilia Roudabush, Director of Education

Connecting the people of our world through music

Musical diversity is a part of your daily life, even when you’re not expecting it. Today’s music varies in the short musical segues between shows on your radio, the music in the elevator or on hold. How about that podcast theme song or the celebration and festivals in your town? Hopefully, like me, you celebrate the old and welcome the new. How lucky we are today to connect to anyone from anywhere at any time through music!

What was your first musical experience after the world shut down for COVID? Mine was as a music teacher who loved YouTube! I found my first experience in March 2020 through a video of the people making music on their balconies in Italy. Amazingly, these people gathered nightly with whatever they had in their homes and made music together. Wonderfully, their voices echoed across the streets below and they joined their humanity together through music. What power music has to enrich our lives!

Finding comfort and healing through music at home and around the world

Vedran Smailović performs in Sarajevo’s partially destroyed National Library in 1992. Created: 1 January 1992 by Mikhail Evstafiev.

Last weekend I was going through a box of those things you’re going to use someday, and found an article I’d pulled from Reader’s Digest in 2013. In accord with our month’s theme, it was about a man, cellist Vedran Smailovic, that inspired a musical diversity connection from Sarajevo to England and beyond.

On May 27, 1992 during the Sarajevo Civil War, a particularly brutal attack occurred that killed 22 people at 4 pm in the afternoon. Sadly, they were simply waiting in line for flour near a local bakery. Smailovic, a cellist in the Sarajevo opera, spent the next 22 days, at 4 pm, in full concert attire playing for his townspeople. With great courage, Smailiovic played Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor to an empty chair near the bakery despite the fact that the shellings continued.

From Sarajevo to England to Yo Yo Ma

In 1992, Englishman David Wilde composed The Cellist of Sarajevo, Op. 12 for unaccompanied cello. Wilde hoped to honor the feelings created by his own understanding of Smailovic’s act of bravery and in solidarity with his cause. Someone who heard and understood the importance of the piece was none other than cellist, Yo Yo Ma.

Extending the chain of international musical connection, on a stage bare except for a single chair across from him, sat Ma. It was 1994 as he played Wilde’s piece at the International Cello Festival in Manchester, England. A story is told that in the poignant silence that followed Ma’s last note, he reached out and gestured an audience member forward. Ma met Smailovic in the aisle with the audience on their feet and everyone weeping. How lucky those audience members were to be exposed to the musical diversity of our world. How lucky was I that Reader’s Digest shared that richness with me!

New Harmony Line is making music across the world

Speaking of international music experiences, we are happy to be hosting our Beta pilot teacher Odysseas Sagredos from Athens, Greece as our Office Hours guest next Tuesday, November 1st at 7:30 pm ET. During his pre-recorded interview, he talked with such passion about what his students were doing with Hyperscore. When he shared their work to post on Hyperscore’s YouTube, I realized with glee that one of their songs was a remix of “The Final Countdown” by Swedish rock band, Europe. Everywhere, every day, we are all connected through music!!

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Native pop fusion

Our colleagues at MusicFirst were out of the office on Monday, October 10th in observance of Indigenous People’s Day, which is not yet a state holiday in Iowa, where I live. Thank you MusicFirst for celebrating the day and giving me an opportunity to learn. This week, I’d like to celebrate Indigenous People’s Day through Native American artists’ contributions to the world of music.

Musical diversity in my classes

Last week, I mentioned that I could fill blog after blog with the composers, performers and cultures my students studied. This week, I am happy to remember finding Jana Mashonee to share with my students. Jana, who is of Lumbee and Tuscarora descent, has been nominated twice for a Grammy, and performed for both the Bush and Obama families during their respective presidencies. As a multi-talented artist, she has also written her first book “American Indian Story – The Adventures of Sha’kona” and starred in the movie “Raptor Ranch”. Mashonee has a charitable foundation for Native American Youth called “Jana’s Kids”. Most importantly, she received nine NAMMYs (Native American Music Awards) for her singles and albums.

Fusing Native traditional music with modern pop

The first piece that I found to share in my classroom was Mashonee’s single “The Enlightened Time“, which was from her second Grammy nominated album. As the video begins, we are seeing her and others in traditional dress with traditional instruments and lyrics. Then a pickup truck pulls up and she begins singing in English. My students found this combination very interesting, and this piece remained my example of this genre the rest of my teaching career.

Mashonee performed this piece at Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina. Mashonee was quoted in their newpaper, the Sun News. “I pride myself in being able to be influenced musically by many other cultures and styles of music. It is my mission to break down the stereotype that all Native musicians perform just pow wow style music. There are a lot of Native musicians out there today who are performing hip hop, country, and blues but put their Native twist on it.” I know as a teacher that I really appreciated sharing Mashonee’s style!

New Harmony Line will continue to celebrate

Our fall pilot introduced us to Odysseas in Greece, Frederico in Portugal and Carroll in Toronto along with all of our pilot teachers in the U.S. No doubt, we will continue to meet people around the world as Hyperscore is shared across the web! Please continue to enjoy the pieces we upload on our YouTube channel include the latest from Odysseas’s students in Greece. Odysseas will be our pre-recorded guest for November Office Hours and we hope to pre-record with Frederico for December. Thank you for bringing your own background to your musical contributions, Hyperscore users!

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Celebrating diversity in music

by Cecilia Roudabush, Director of Education

Recently, I was looking at a webpage that mentioned that October is Global Diversity Awareness Month. Putting that date on my Google Calendar led me to see that Hispanic Heritage month is September 15th-October 15th. This gave me pause, because I was not aware of these two important events, yet I listen to globally diverse music daily!

Celebrating the rich musical diversity in our world today is easy with access to the internet’s resources. Have you ever paused to think about your ability to listen to diverse music from anywhere, any time of the day? Let’s take this moment to celebrate these musicians that enrich our daily experience.

Musical diversity in my classes

In my 32 years as a music teacher, my students listened to, played along with, danced to and sang songs from across the U.S. and around the world. In my last 18 years at junior high, access to content providers like YouTube gave me the music of the world with actual musicians from their countries of origin. When we talked about tonality, I played Idjah Hadidjah’s Tongerret from Java. Erghen Diado was our exciting example of harmonic and melodic shape performed by the Bulgarian State Radio and Television Female Choir (Global Divas: Voices from Women Around the World is a “don’t miss!”). Of course, when we were learning to play 12-bar blues in the guitar unit we started with the great Robert Johnson and the students new favorite song, Joe Turner Blues. This celebration list, covering a 32-year career of sharing musical diversity, is absolutely endless…trust me!

Students sharing musical diversity with me

My last year of teaching, I had the privilege of having a brand new student who had just immigrated from Honduras. Imagine his amazement that I could sing the great oldies like Celia Cruz’s hit “Quimbara” from Cuba. Yes, I found Celia on YouTube when searching for an example of Latin music. My students loved her beautiful hair, clothes and radiant vibrancy!

My new student shared his favorite Hispanic pop stars Ozuna and Maluma with me. Fittingly, they have become part of my daily soundtrack. Of course, they played along with my long-time favorites Camila Cabello, Enrique Iglesias, Shakira, Gloria Estefan, etc. I listen as I blog or do daily tasks with my toe tapping and my body moving. Do you want to put some fun in your work day? Try Reggaeton! How lucky my students were to be exposed to the musical diversity of our world. How lucky was I that they would share that diversity with me!

What will New Harmony Line celebrate next?

As you can see on our Projects page, New Harmony Line has also experienced great musical diversity connections. City Symphony projects using Hyperscore motives as the basis for the arrangements were completed in Philadelphia, Lucerne, Toronto, Skaneateles (NY), Perth, Detroit, Armenia and, currently, in Bilbao. Fittingly, our Hyperscore YouTube Channel contains original pieces from the United States, Greece, Portugal and anonymous contributors that could be from anywhere. With music as our universal language, we could have musical diversity connections every day. A great reason to celebrate, don’t you think?!!

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Collaborative Composing

by Cecilia Roudabush Director of Education

Collaborative composing for band, orchestra or choir is something that would seem unfathomable to me if it weren’t for the City Symphonies work of MIT Opera of the Future Professor, Tod Machover. Hopefully, you’ve seen Hyperscore and understand the beauty of its simple design for the individual composer. However, if you are a visionary like Machover, all individuals who lead a musical ensemble would be clamoring to have their musicians compose together with Hyperscore, or as an arrangement of individual’s motives. Following that, the leaders would print the work in traditional notation using the export feature and, finally, perform their work for an adoring audience. What a challenge, and amazing experience, that could be!

If you took piano lessons, band, orchestra and/or choir like I did throughout my school years and into college, it was rare to play contemporary and diverse original works of music. As we learned in a July 2022 NPR online article featuring Dr. Rocque Diaz, Ms. Daria Adams and GSHARP, we should be playing original music from every culture and genre in addition to the Classics. I came across this 2014 Reddit comment thread when searching for a discussion on the benefit of playing the Classics of every genre and era as compared to composing and/or playing original work.

Stick with the Classics? Write original works? Collaboratively Compose?

Under the comment title below, it says “Posted by u/zamboniman06 8 years ago”

“Don’t get me wrong, I like to learn songs whether its tab or someone teaching or my earz (sic), but I get such a thrill creating a tune that it makes me [happy?] more often writing songs than learning songs… if that makes sense. EDIT: discuss.” Astoundingly, this one simple comment from u/zamboniman06 brought a long discussion thread of 135 comments.

To argue the benefit of learning music that’s already been created, JeeBusCrunk wrote, that “Great songwriters like Billy Joel, Elton John, and Stevie Wonder think the Beatles are the most important thing that ever happened to pop music (I tend to agree), and I believe you’re doing a great disservice to yourself as a musician if you don’t truly understand why they feel this way (even if you disagree)”. Anonymous, however, simply stated the opposite point with the simple words, “I don’t really create the songs I write, I hear them”. Sounds like something John, Paul, Ringo, George and Wolfgang would have said! Similarly, many of my students have said that when they use Hyperscore they never really know what they’re going to do until they start composing and like what they’re hearing!

The joy of an original composition

Probably, my favorite Reddit thread commenter was alividlife. This person stated Hyperscore’s philosophy to a T:

“…I’ve noticed in writing my own material, as soon as I take it seriously, and try and write something “awesome”, it’s a struggle of frustration. What has been proving a better way, is to almost be joyful…

It’s just a matter of getting the basic idea.
Verse.
A Hook of some sort.
A chorus.
Then maybe a bridge.

…Keep it simple, and as it becomes refined, work on creating each part as a breathing whole. But ideally stick to the real simple fundamentals of harmony, and simple melody…I think a huge issue with creation in general, all art forms, is that inner-critic…Enjoy yourself, and your audience will appreciate you for it.”

Raise your hand for collaborative composing!

New Harmony Line is looking to emulate the work of Professor Machover with a visionary ensemble leader who is interested in collaborative composing, guiding their musicians to create and perform an original work. Realistically, in today’s work world I wouldn’t know a single ensemble leader who would have time to run the unit then arrange the resulting piece. Thus, we are looking for freelance arrangers as well. Raise your hand if you are the visionary! Raise your hand if you are the arranger of that future collaborative piece! Then contact me, cecilia.roudabush@newharmonyline.org, and we’ll write about your work in the New Harmony Line News blogs to come!

Empower kids to tell their stories through music.

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