Cecilia Roudabush, Director of Education
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.
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!
