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“Dance of the Fireflies”

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

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

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

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

A breeze blowing through the grove:

Add a sprinkling of pixie dust:

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

Photo of fireflies courtesy of Daniel Kordan

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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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Viva Vivaldi!

Have a joyful and musical New Year. We celebrate the universal spirit of music by sharing this exuberant rendition of Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons by a South African children’s marimba band. We love how these remarkable youths deliver this Western classic with virtuosity, musicality, and joy. They breathe new life into a piece that has been overplayed in formal concert halls and remind us of how much we all gain by sharing musical heritage across geographic, cultural, and generational lines. To more boundary breaking in 2023!

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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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Transforming lives through music

by June Kinoshita

At New Harmony Line we are dedicated to transforming lives through music. Whether you are young or old, tapping into your inner composer and expressing yourself through music is not only a lot of fun, but we believe it can enhance your life in many ways.

Last month, our co-founder, Tod Machover, had the opportunity to speak at the global Wellbeing Summit in Bilbao and present some of his current thinking about the role that creativity, arts, and technology play in promoting human health and well-being.

In this video of his talk, Machover cover some highlights in his Media Lab group’s work in music and health, and also in community building through collaborative music projects. The video ends with a glimpse of the newest City Symphony project on the theme of healthy communities that they are planning for Bilbao. You’ll see a snippet by a 10-year-old Hyperscore composer and hear how a couple of Machover’s Media Lab graduate students took his idea and fleshed it out. Hope you enjoy it.

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A Toronto documentary

We just discovered that the terrific documentary, “Urban Symphony,” which follows the development of A Toronto Symphony, is available to watch on YouTube. This was the very first of Tod Machover’s City Symphony projects and we get to see how the composer and his team at the M.I.T. Media Lab collected sounds of the city and collaborated with school children, varied communities in Toronto, and the musicians of the Toronto Symphony to create this kaleidoscopic sonic portrait of the city.

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A Hyperscore compendium

Hyperscore has been used by children around the world to compose original pieces. Their compositions have been performed by musicians, from rock bands to major orchestras. Check out this collection of some of our “greatest hits,” each one a wonderful expression of each child’s spirit. We can’t wait to release the new version of Hyperscore for the Web!

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Hyperscore in Action: Using motifs to build music

One of the core ideas in Hyperscore are “motifs” – small melodies and rhythm patterns – which form the basic building blocks from which to construct musical compositions. In this video, Tod Machover coaches a groups of children in Armenia and the U.S. as they work together to create a new piece to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the United States Embassy in Armenia. Humming tunes and drawing in Hyperscore, the kids created a variety of motifs. Here we see them start to construct a composition which eventually will be performed by the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra at the gala celebration. (For more information, read From the U.S. to Armenia, Kids Build a Musical Bridge.)

Empower kids to tell their stories through music.

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