We explore the interplay between order and complexity in our Second Sunday workshop with Chief Technology Officer Peter Torpey. Peter, a musician and media experience artist, demonstrates how rhythmic and melodic alignment affects the structure and texture of music. With his examples, Peter shows how alignment, quantization, phasing and polyrhythms can shape a composer’s creative process using Hyperscore.
Predictable and synchronized OR complex and competing?
Order is created in music when there are predictable, synchronized patterns (alignment and quantization). Interest can be created with complex and competing patterns (phasing, polyrhythms). All of these concepts explore how a listener’s perception of rhythm and harmony is shaped by:
The established grid of the beat (quantization).
The deliberate breaking of that grid to create tension (polyrhythms).
The subtle shifting of that grid to create new textures and illusions of movement (phasing).
The vertical combination of pitches that can either support or clash with the rhythmic structure (chords/polyphony).
Alignment and Misalignment
In this workshop Peter begins by exploring alignment, the concept of positioning musical events precisely within a beat or measure. Using Hyperscore’s grid system, Peter shows how notes can “snap” to quarter, eighth, or even thirty-second notes. This snapping ensures rhythmic precision, helping students visualize music’s pulse and subdivisions. Any music teacher will appreciate the opportunity to have student’s workspace default to, perhaps, only quarter and eighth notes for rhythmic beginners.
But, as Peter illustrates, misalignment can also be intentional. Offsetting beats or melodies slightly can produce rhythmic tension, syncopation, or even graceful “sloppiness” that gives a piece character. Examples may include echoes, arpeggiation, chords, polyphony, polyrhythm and phasing.
Phasing, Polyphony, Polyrhythms
Phasing allows the composer to create multiple layers that move in and out of sync. Peter creates an example reminiscent of minimalist composers like Steven Reich, where identical melodies played at slightly different durations drift apart and realign over time. This phasing creates evolving rhythmic and harmonic relationships, much like we experience with the lunar cycles.
Similarly, polyphony and polyrhythms allow distinct melodic and rhythmic voices to coexist—each independent yet connected. Music activities with polyphony and polyrhythms increase student’s understanding of texture in music. With practice in both, students may learn, or improve, their musical skills such as hearing one musical line but performing a different line. What a wonderful way to prepare them for participation in performance music where their part might be one voice amongst many, all blending together to make the whole.
Learning the structure behind polyphonic and polyrhythmic music helps children gain a deeper appreciation for all kinds of music. Experiencing how different melodies and rhythms can fit together to create complex, engaging harmonies and rhythmic textures might broaden their listening choices. Accordingly, Peter noted that these complex textures are often found in jazz, rock, and African traditional music.
“Re-Aligned”
Throughout the discussion, Peter emphasized Hyperscore’s unique visual and creative capabilities: how grids, snapping, and harmony tools can help students understand not only when notes align, but why they might not. The workshop closes by celebrating experimentation—encouraging composers to show an understanding of alignment for clarity, and then breaking it intentionally for creative expression. The result is a fascinating look at how technology and musical intuition can harmonize in creative ways while composing music!
Enjoy the entire workshop here:
Peter shares his insights into the importance of alignment in composing music with Hyperscore, as well as the joy of breaking alignment through arpeggiation, echoes, phasing, polyrhythms and polyphony.
Emotions. We love them. We hate them. Feelings of warmth and affection connect us to others and build a sense of security and trust. Anger, resentment and sadness do the opposite and drive us to lash out and isolate. Emotions color so much of our lives, yet we aren’t born knowing what they are or how they drive our reactions. An essential part of growing up is learning to recognize and manage our emotions. These socioemotional skills form the basis for healthy relationships, learning and personal development.
Music is an effective way to teach about emotions. Just think about how as children we listened to a major and minor chord and were told one is “happy” and one is “sad.” Think how powerful it would be if children could express what they are feeling by creating their own music!
This has been one of our mantras, and so we were thrilled to meet Tammy Vallieres, a kindergarten teacher and co-founder of Raising Empowered Kids. Tammy came up with the concept of “Hero Intelligence” based on children learning to listen and talk to their inner voices – the “victim” voice, the “villain” voice and the “hero” voice that inspires a person to grow into their best selves.
Tammy just published a children’s picture book, Harmony Hare and Her Three Voices, which introduces these ideas to young readers (and the adults who read to them) through the character of Harmony Hare. Harmony Hare’s three voices are represented by blue, pink and golden butterflies. On a recent Second Sunday, we invited Tammy to join us and play with the idea of turning the three butterflies/voices and their interactions into music.
The session turned out to be the perfect combo of story, art and music. You can see how we used Hyperscore to reinforce a story with emotional resonance, complexity and a sense of play.
Check out “The Hero in You”:
And here is our workshop conversation, in which we discuss the composing challenge before us, brainstorm various approaches and ultimately decide which ones to use.
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.
Replica of the Babbage Difference EngineFairy DoorFraction AttractionMelting 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!
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?
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.
As the school year winds down, keeping students engaged and motivated can be daunting. The Hyperscore Challenge offers an ideal solution – a creative, collaborative, and celebratory project that energizes students and teachers alike.
The Hyperscore Challenge invites students of all ages and abilities to compose original soundtracks for short videos using Hyperscore, a web-based application that lets users “draw” music by manipulating dots and lines on a screen. Participants can share their pieces at an end-of-year party. They can also share their compositions online on June 21, Make Music Day – a global celebration of music-making.
Keeps Students Engaged Through Creativity and Choice
Hyperscore’s intuitive, visual interface removes traditional barriers to music composition. No prior knowledge of notation or instruments required. This empowers every student, regardless of background or skill level, to participate and succeed.
Students can compose in any style, from simple melodies to complex arrangements, giving them ownership and creative freedom over their projects.
Weekly video prompts invite participants to create soundtracks and keeps the experience fresh and engaging, sparking imagination right up to the last day of school.
Builds Community and Celebrates Achievement
The Challenge culminates in a school or community concert, where students showcase their compositions for peers, families, and staff. These end-of-year performances create a festive, supportive atmosphere and give students a sense of accomplishment.
Because the Challenge is open to all ages and abilities, it fosters inclusion and teamwork. Clubs and classrooms have seen students collaborate on group pieces, support each other’s learning, and celebrate each other’s progress.
Supports STEAM and Cross-Curricular Learning
Hyperscore is a powerful STEAM tool, blending music, technology, and storytelling. Students explore rhythm, melody, harmony, and musical form while developing digital literacy and creative problem-solving skills.
The platform encourages cross-collaboration with other subjects-students can compose music to accompany stories, visual art, dance and theater, science projects, or historical events, making learning interdisciplinary and meaningful.
Removes Barriers and Boosts Motivation
Hyperscore’s design makes music composition accessible to all, including students who may not see themselves as “musical.” This boosts confidence and motivation, especially for those who might otherwise disengage as the year ends.
Teachers report that even the most hesitant students discover their creative voices through Hyperscore, leading to increased participation and a positive classroom climate.
The Hyperscore Challenge provides free access to the Hyperscore Classroom platform for all participants, making it easy for teachers to manage student accounts and share work.
Clubs and classes can start at any time, and the Challenge is adaptable for in-school, after-school, or remote learning environments.
Comprehensive resources, including recruitment flyers, video prompts, and workshops, support educators every step of the way.
A Memorable, Joyful Finale
Ending the school year with the Hyperscore Challenge transforms the final weeks into a time of creativity, collaboration, and celebration. Students leave with a sense of pride in their achievements and a lasting appreciation for music and self-expression. For teachers, it’s a powerful way to keep students motivated, engaged and connected right up to the last bell.
Ready to make your end-of-year unforgettable? Join the Hyperscore Challenge and let your students’ imaginations soar!
Find prompts to get you started on this page. Prompts are short, silent video clips that need your music. Choose a prompt and create a Hyperscore soundtrack to accompany the video clip. Starting in March 2025, we’ll release new prompts each week. Be sure to create pieces in your Hyperscore Challenge group profile in order to access all Hyperscore features.
Week 1 — March 10, 2025
Spring is just around the corner! We celebrate the season with our first Hyperscore Challenge prompt, full of adorable, fluffy newly-hatched birds. From the excitement of a chick breaking through its eggshell to the cacophony of cheeping, imagine the music these chatty, hungry, and sometimes-sleepy young avians make!
The vacuum of outer space may mean that there’s little to no sound out there. Yet some of the most memorable pieces of music, and especially movie and television scores, are inspired by the universe beyond Earth. Mysterious, dramatic, beautiful, or surprising? What does life among the stars sound like to you?
Next, let’s take as a prompt this video of a girl teaching her new robot friend how to dance! What music do you think they are dancing to?
Now we head back to nature with sunlit trees and a few grazing sheep, for good measure. How do different places and different times of day make you feel? How can you capture the feeling of warm sunlight in music?
To close out our first batch of prompts, here is a gameplay video of an abstract, geometric world that evokes action and emotion by the way the viewer navigates a matrix of white lines. This video is ambiguous and provides a wide-open playground for your musical imagination.
Week 2 — March 17, 2025
Traffic, people, and the blinking signs and lights of towering buildings create a bustling atmosphere of different rhythms and activity. Cities are alive with their own sort of music and sounds. What do you hear in the different parts of your city? What music do these city images suggest to you?
Week 3 — March 24, 2025
Our first Hyperscore Challenge prompt for this week features a clip of gameplay from the puzzle-platform game Fez. Hyperscore is a great tool for composing background music and audio sprites for games of all sorts, including ones you can make on your own.
Fez (2012) – Video game
The second prompt this week is an amusing romp from the classic film archives. Charlie Chaplain’s lovable character and quirky antics are just the thing to be accompanied by a playful soundtrack made by you!
The Circus (1928) – The Lion Cage, Charlie Chaplin
Week 4 — March 31, 2025
Computer animated films can tell stories that are both relatable and fantastic in a compelling and stylized way. Here’s an abridged excerpt of the computer animation short Watermelon: A Cautionary Tale by Kefei Li and Connie Qin He featured by CG Meetup. What is the soundtrack you’d create for this story?
What do computers dream about when we’re not using them? A very different kind of computer animation, this prompt features clips of evolving fractal flames generated by the algorithms developed by Scott Draves for his Electric Sheep distributed computing project that started in 1999. The project takes its name from the Philip K. Dick short story “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” which was later made into the iconic movie Bladerunner. Drave’s Electric Sheep project relied on users to install a screensaver that would generate and upload to the Internet the colorful and mesmerizing images that idle computers around the world created. That’s all well and good, but what do you think these fractal dreams sound like? Now its your turn to compose the soundtrack for these mathematical fantasies.
Week 5 — April 7, 2025
Our first prompt for Week 5 includes another sequence from a silent film. The classic tale of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has been adapted from Lewis Carroll novel many times. The ever-changing landscape and curious companions Alice meets are sure to evoke all sorts of musical ideas.
Alice in Wonderland (1949) – Follow the White Rabbit
From urban rooftops to warehouses, this dance video has a gritty hip-hop vibe. What music do you imagine this fellow is dancing to?
Week 6 – April 14, 2025
So many things in life have a natural rhythm to them, as we’ve seen in the Hyperscore Challenge prompts thus far. The art of juggling is no exception. As balls cycle through the air and deft hands keep them afloat, the hypnotic ups and downs are simultaneously precarious—the carefully-timed system could fall apart at any moment—and whimsically amusing. It’s no wonder that this uniquely human talent has endured for millennia. The earliest known evidence of juggling dates back nearly 4000 years in Egypt and China, but likely was practiced well before that. Now it’s your turn to imagine a musical accompaniment to this mesmerizing pastime. Your score might even work well with the prompt video as an endless loop! (Note, you can enable and disable looping playback in Hyperscore by pressing the L key.)
Week 7 – April 21, 2025
We return to video games for this week’s first prompt with gameplay clips from the open-source racing game Supertux Kart. The high-speed, playful nature of racing games like this provide an opportunity to compose an accompanying soundtrack that gets the player’s adrenaline flowing. In addition to every twist and turn on the racecourse, the music can also provide sound effects for the obstacles, rewards, bumps, and spin-outs that competitors encounter.
We also have another classic film this week: the comedic antics of Snub Pollard. In this excerpt from the film Flip Flops, things go awry when fleas are surreptitiously added to a lovely bouquet of flowers.
Week 8 – April 28, 2025
Step dancing is a form of dance defined by a focus on rhythmic, percussive footwork. There are many forms of step dancing in cultures throughout the world. This weeks prompt includes clips of Irish step dance. Can you imagine what it sounds like? Can you feel the rhythm? Does your score feature percussion, or is in a lush texture that connects each step beat?
For something completely different, this computer animated short film brings drama, comedy, and redemption, as a group of adorable dust bunnies escape a housekeeper wielding a vacuum.
Week 9 – May 5, 2025
While there has been some hype around the recent remake of the classic vampire film Nosferatu: A symphony of horror, nothing can top the original 1922 film by the great F.W. Murnau. It’s a silent film, but it has “symphony” in it’s title, so it’s up to you to compose it!
Nosferatu (1922) – The classic vampire tale
Have you ever had that good feeling of completing something that you imagined and worked hard to make happen? Maybe it’s an idea for a musical piece that you were able to compose with Hyperscore. Maybe it’s a project for school that came out just the way you hoped it would. Imagine all of the hard work that goes into constructing a building from digging a hole in the ground to watching it reach into the sky! This week’s prompt is a time lapse video of just that. And not just any building, but the new MIT Media Lab building that was completed in 2010 right next door to the building in which Hyperscore was originally created.
Week 10 – May 12, 2025
This week’s first prompt combines a number of things we at New Harmony Line love: fantastic visuals, programming, and games. And music, of course… yours! This teaser video, courtesy of creator Bobby Lockhart, is for the new educational fantasy game Codemancer that explores the “magic” of programming. All this video is missing is your score. Stay tuned to meet Bobby on an upcoming episode of our Reimagining Music podcast. In the mean time, check out Codemancer, too.
Beyond the world of digital creation, the rhythmic musicality of machines has fascinated artists of all sorts. In the 1920s, a number of silent-era filmmakers were also inspired to capture the visual music of the mechanical and industrial world, from Ballet Mécanique (1924) by Fernand Léger and scored by George Antheil to “city symphony” films, such as Walter Ruttmann’s famous Berlin (1927). Silent films were never meant to be truly silent, with live musical accompaniment reflecting the on-screen action. This week, our prompt comes from Dziga Vertov’s innovative 1929 film, Man with a Movie Camera. Imagine the mechanical music and mood it sets in your Hyperscore piece.
Week 11 – May 19, 2025
A solar eclipse is an exciting event and can confound the senses. Here’s our version of a solar eclipse that needs your soundtrack. Does it calmly flow and ebb or build to a climactic hit as darkness suddenly descends? We can’t wait to hear.
Week 12 – May 26, 2025
As summer is upon us, baseball season is in full swing (pun intended)! The sights and sounds of the game have familiar tunes, distinctive rhythms, from the electric crack of the bat to the roar of the crowd. Can you capture the thrill of the sport in your own Hyperscore soundtrack?
While baseball is seasonal, there’s another pastime that we enjoy year-round with rhythms all its own. A conversation can have a story, tension, resolution, changes in mood, dynamics, and more. This week’s Hyperscore Challenge prompt is an excerpt from the classic screwball comedy His Girl Friday (1940) in which stars Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant have a rapid-fire exchange that is the signature of this film. Without hearing the dialog, from their movements and expressions, can you imagine the musical version of this conversation?
Week 13 – June 2, 2025
We’ve already explored beneath the ocean’s surface. However, the rhythm of waves crashing on the shore, the call of seagulls, the warm sun, and the feeling of sand squishing between your toes all elicit that particular feeling of being on the beach. Create the sounds of a stroll along the strand or the feeling of wonder gazing out on an endless horizon in your Hyperscore piece.
While we can explore beach sands barefoot on Earth, the sometimes-sandy landscapes of other worlds require a different approach. Recent NASA rovers Curiosity and Perseverance (and the flying scout Ingenuity) have continued our quest to gather information about our planetary neighbor Mars. The rovers are equipped with a variety of tools and scientific instruments to take photographs, samples, and run analyses. These data are then sent back to Earth. When we see what these able robots find on the Martian surface, we can’t help but imagine that moment when humanity steps foot on another world. But first, let’s imagine what it would sound like? Can you make a soundscape impression of another planet? Or maybe the triumphant theme of these rovers’ arrival and exploration?
Week 14 – June 9, 2025
Music can change our perception of time, letting us dwell in a moment or making us feel like we’re flying through a journey. Photography also has the ability to manipulate time, letting us see things we can’t perceive with our eyes alone. This week, we watch the magical growth of plants, leaves, flowers, and fruit. Time-lapse photography lets us see just how productive and amazing plants are and in the space of time that can be accompanied by music. What do you think a growing plant sounds like? Can you capture the metamorphosis in your Hyperscore piece?
And there we have it! Those are the prompts for the Hyperscore Challenge 2025. We hope that you enjoyed composing with them.
Each year, we prepare a showcase of Hyperscore Challenge compositions with their videos. If you would like to be featured, be sure to submit your Hyperscore piece through the online form by 16 June 2025. We can’t wait to hear them and share your submissions on 21 June for Make Music Day!
Our prompts are chosen to appeal to widely varied interests and tastes. We hope they will surprise and challenge you to take your music to new places.
If you haven’t yet joined the Hyperscore Challenge, be sure to sign up as an individual or a team and get free access to the full set of Hyperscore features to create your Challenge scores.
The Hyperscore Challenge Gallery, both visually stunning and musically delightful, premiered on International Make Music Day, June 21, 2024. Fifty-two U.S. and international composers submitted an original composition and/or a soundtrack for a video short prompt that we provided. Participants ranged in age from 6 years old to adults. June Kinoshita, New Harmony Line’s Executive Director, is the visionary behind the many ways we share Hyperscore with the world. Our team could never have imagined the response to June’s 2023-2024 challenge! Enjoy their pieces while you consider participating in HYPERSCORE CHALLENGE 2!
Nine examples from the Hyperscore Challenge 2023-2024 Gallery posted on International Make Music Day, June 20, 2024.
Hyperscore Challenge 2023-2024
Our team had a lot of experience in the music room, and at festivals and workshops. It was clear to us that anyone of any age or ability could participate in exercising their musical imagination through the challenge. We posted the link on our website hoping to get a response from social media and word of mouth. 160 sign-ups later, the team was thrilled with the response to our challenge!
Student Hyperscore Challenge clubs–Secondary
We were able to have three school clubs. The first club met the last period of the day for students in a junior high special education program. One student participated independently while four others worked one-on-one with paraeducator support or Cece. In this club we made good use of the modified materials from our curriculum. This handbook worked especially well for our student who was non-verbal and made his choices from 2 variables only.
All five students were able to create a piece and title it. With great appreciation, the club ended the second to last week of school with an ice cream and “concert” slideshow or their pieces. Staff, the students and their peer buddies enjoyed their final compositions. Video copies were emailed home for Parents and Guardians to enjoy.
The second club was at the same school but met after the school day. A preview of Hyperscore was shared with students from the band, orchestra, choir and Music Tech classes. Fourteen composers chose to attend. Some of them were complete beginners. Other students had music in their head but not the notational skills to write it out. It was fascinating to have a student who was Suzuki trained. He wrote out parts for The Peer Gynt Suite then updated the piece using tone color and rhythmic/melodic variations.
The rival of any secondary after-school club is sports practice. Sadly, when track season started, 12 of our composers left us to excel in other ways. Two 8th grade students came every time and wrote multiple original pieces as beginners. One chose to have her piece included in the Hyperscore Challenge Gallery. We celebrated the end of our club with cookies and a “concert” as well. Video copies were sent to their Parents/Guardians and favorite teachers and friends.
L. R-S. Grade 8 Iowa
Student Hyperscore Challenge clubs–Elementary
Being the music teacher, or a long-term substitute, has its advantages when trying to engage youngsters in a club. During the 2021-2022 school year, Cece taught K-5 music in an elementary while their teacher took maternity leave. Every student got the chance to compose with the brand new demo version of Hyperscore 5. So, when the opportunity arose in 2022-2023 to do an after-school composition club, the response was wonderful!
17 students, ages 6 to 11 attended most, or all, of the sessions from September to May. Several of the students worked on the same piece, perfecting its sound. However, others wrote prodigiously with something new every week. All students made progress in the quality of their work.
M.S. Kindergarten Iowa
This club celebrated the end of the school year with a concert in the school library with Parents/Guardians, teachers and staff from the school, siblings and friends. Each piece was played to great applause. Because students had freedom to choose how to compose, we had a 5th grader choose to compose a piece that she wanted to play on the piano. Since Hyperscore can be readily transcribed into standard notation, Cece has been working with her to learn this duet. This club will meet again starting in March 2025 for Hyperscore Challenge 2!
How to participate in Hyperscore Challenge 2
Every group, team leader, teacher or individual who signs up for the Challenge will receive the Hyperscore Classroom at no cost through International Make Music Day, June 21, 2025. The Hyperscore Classroom will allow you to manage, and create accounts, for all of your students in the classroom, all your clients or employees at your place of work and the community and/or your friends and family. The Hyperscore Classroom includes ALL the bells and whistles (plus a taiko drum too!), unlimited scores and unlimited rhythm, melody and sketch windows. Participants under 13 are allowed to create an account with a Parent/Guardian consent form.
The website page for Hyperscore Challenge 2 went live on March 3, 2025. This page will include flyers for recruiting participants, video prompts and links to activities. If you want your imagination to soar, use the video prompts to “compose a soundtrack”–new video prompts are available each week. Also, the team does a monthly FUN Second Sunday Composition Workshop that everyone is invited to attend at 9 am ET. Sign up here.
We hope we have you convinced–let’s go Hyperscore Challenge 2!!
Thank you to all of our composers who shared their Hyperscore joys with Great NonProfits!
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.
For our Second Sundays workshop, we will often focus on a particular feature of Hyperscore to highlight, but perhaps our favorite way to take advantage of these composition workshops is to challenge ourselves to find different ways we could approach Hyperscore than we are used to. For our September 2024 Second Sundays, we had this in mind when we decided to narrow in on a single melody window, using the Sketch window to layer in the single motif on several harmonic levels. Our motif in mind was an iconic segment of Pachelbel’s Canon, a tune known for its round-like structure of interlocking and repeating melodies.
We started out by roughly transcribing a familiar melodic segment from the famous canon into a Melody window, experimenting and correcting it by ear when we noticed it didn’t sound quite right. Then we proceeded to draw lines in the Sketch window to represent that motif. Viewers will notice that unlike some sketch windows we’ve created, the lines in this one are all very uniform in length, direction, and color. We chose this to emphasize the potential of working with a single motif of the same duration to flesh out an entire composition. We placed these red lines at different vertical positions in the window, which causes the Sketch window to transpose the melody to start on different pitches. In this way we were able to create harmonic form and key changes in our piece. We intentionally did not follow the way that Pachelbel constructed the progression, but experimented to find other ways in which the melody could be juxtaposed against itself. Here’s what the piece looks like at the end of our workshop:
Now, take a listen to “Canon Fodder”:
Excitingly, due to the lack of a large number of complex motives, this piece came together very quickly but still felt very harmonically and melodically satisfying. This exercise serves as a starting point for encouraging Hyperscore users to start simple and experiment with all the different things you can do with just one or two motives. Delight and surprise yourself with your song-making skills
To see more tips and tricks for composing in Hyperscore, check out our other previous workshop recordings on our YouTube channel, and read more of our workshop highlights here on our website. What excites you about working in Hyperscore, and what would you like to see us highlight next? Let us know and join the conversation by signing up for the workshop series and composing with us!
Composing music from art was the challenge we received from our wonderful collaborator Polina Lulu. We met Polina in our group composition workshop at the 2023 Connected Learning Summit. She enchanted us, and the other participants, with her delightful compositional ideas about a polite Canadian squirrel. Not surprisingly, Polina is a Child Experience Researcher who studies learning, technology and play.
Polina loved Hyperscore so much that she agreed to be a guest on our Reimagining Music podcast in February of 2024. In the fall of 2024, she introduced her 2 young children to Hyperscore. She took note of what they were able to do instinctively with the program. In a meeting afterwards, she was able to share some really interesting ideas about how a young child might use Hyperscore.
Why not start with the art? Open the sketch window, using the colors to draw lines, squiggles and dots. Next, use the dynamics tool to make the shapes bigger or smaller. Finally, write the musical story behind the art using the melody and rhythm windows.
Start with the art
The New Harmony Line team accepted Polina’s challenge of composing music from art at our December 2024 Second Sunday Composition Workshop. The team began to use multiple colors, line shapes and dots to create a piece of art in the sketch window. Asking for lines to be copied then moved higher and lower produced interesting results. In addition, a group of squiggles and dots became a visual ‘section’. Copying and pasting these elements created an introduction, chorus and coda of color.
Polina challenged us to draw the sketch window first THEN create the melodies and rhythms to match the colors.
Composing music from art
Once everyone was satisfied with the artistry, there were musical decisions to be made. Should the blue and purple introduction be percussion or melody? Composing a cool kick pattern gave us our answer–percussion it is! Sneaking in a melody was easy when played below, then repeated above middle C.
The fiery red, yellow and orange section became our showpiece, especially with the repeat. Starting with a melody for orange, we quickly realized that a drum (red) and bass line (yellow) would make this section complete. Having art with lines that go up and lines that go down made the composing intimidating. What if they don’t sound good together?
Well, they didn’t. Fact. Keeping our challenge in mind, we decided not to change the art to fit the music. On the repeat of the chorus we doubled the orange and placed it below the original art. In contrast to our first chorus, we all agreed that doubling the melody. then differing the dynamic levels was a significant improvement! Due to these positive results, we changed the dynamics in every section.
Final review
With a one hour workshop spilling over into an additional half hour, we had to bring our work to a close. For the most part, the team agreed that drawing first then composing was really fun. It stretched our brains in imaginative ways. If we’d had time to work with the Harmony buttons we may have made a more consonant piece. However, it’s “a great stART” and a topic we can come back to any time in our fun Second Sunday Composition Workshops this year!
