The New Harmony Line team was discussing our Office Hours events this past week. We came to the conclusion that what we are sharing with the world through Office Hours is actually a PODCAST that highlights the fabulous people we are meeting as we grow and engage with the world. As a result, please see our wonderful new podcast logo and description above. We are thankful that we’ve met and worked with so many insightful people who reimagine music as we do!
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Lisa and Peter
Lisa Pierce-Goldstein attended our first teacher training in the fall of 2021. As a speech pathologist and musician, she created yearly operas with her students with autism. She saw great potential in the graphic interface of Hyperscore for composing with students with special needs. Additionally, Lisa was a great contributor to our early Second Saturday composition workshops. Also in 2021, University of Iowa Music Therapy undergrad Peter Esarey designed and completed the data analysis of our first informal study with 3rd graders using Hyperscore. This was also our first opportunity to use Hyperscore with students with varied learning styles. We had such positive results on student’s rating of their happiness level before and after using the program. It will be exciting to see where Patrick’s graduate work leads him going forward. Maybe another study in his future?!
Jonathan and Vel
The 2022 Texas Music Educators Association Conference brought us two excellent connections. The first was father of 5, and the world’s happiest music teacher and church deacon, Jonathan Ochoa. We also met singer, producer, composer, arranger and world-renowned Hammond Organ specialist, Vel Lewis. Their work with underserved children is inspirational! Vel invited us to do Zoom workshops with Vel’s summer music camp in 2022 and 2023. We’re planning F2F Summer Music Camp 2024! Vel will be our podcast guest in May 2024. Both Jonathan and Vel believe, and live the idea, that every child should experience the joy of music in their lives!
Odysseas and Frederico
We found our first international connections, Odysseas Sagredos and Frederico Ferronha in 2022. Odysseas ran across Hyperscore on the internet and used it to teach his elementary students to lay a bass line, add chords, percussion and melody to create remixes and original pieces. He continues to be so excited that he has met with the Ministry of Education about making Hyperscore part of the Greek curriculum! Frederico also found us on the internet and decided to hold a composition contest, with his students choosing the winners. We were able to send gift cards for the awards ceremony and Zoom in to meet the winners, their friends, Frederico and his colleagues. Truly an example of the universal language of music!
David and Sam
In winter of 2022 we met David Casali and Sam Reti at the National Association for Music Education conference. As part of his PhD in music education at Amherst, he had been working on having students write music for Scratch video games. David’s insights inspired us to come up with our Hyperscore Challenge. He has shared his interest in Hyperscore at presentations on his work. He wrote an article for EdSurge about helping students to find their creativity through composition tools like Hyperscore. Sam has a website he created to provide music lessons for students during COVID. His site has continued to be a successful way for students to access music learning from anywhere. We hope to have Hyperscore be the composition component of their learning!
Casey
This past year, we met Casey Byrd who was starting his 24th year as a music teacher for students who have physical disabilities and communication challenges. He had been teaching with Hyperscore for 23 YEARS! He shared so many ideas on how to break down all barriers that keep students from creating music. In collaboration with the art teacher, classroom teacher and specialists, Casey’s team has created a highly innovative way to write music with Hyperscore. This music is the culmination to a colorful mural they created in art class. Every teacher who works with students who face challenges fully expressing themselves in the music room would benefit from the ideas in his Office Hours recording!
Ben
We met Ben Mirin in 2023 when someone asked us if we had an instrument set featuring bird calls. We were referred to Ben after we found the Bird Song Hero game from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Ben is known as the “Wildlife DJ”. He travels the world recording animal sounds and sampling their voices to create music that inspires conservation. We talked with Ben about how he incorporates recordings of animal voices into music to connect young people to their natural world, endangered species, and habitat conservation. He recently had the opportunity to speak about his work at the United Nations. We hope to someday incorporate birdsong and other animal sounds into Hyperscore compositions!
Maude and Kevin
Teachers Maude Hickey and Kevin Coyne were wonderful to talk to because of their experience in the music classroom. Kevin was a Hyperscore pioneer who used the software in the mid-2000’s with his middle school students in Waltham, Massachusetts. Learn how he turned their work into pieces that were performed at the school’s year-end concert. Maude Hickey PhD, is the author of “Music Outside the Lines: Ideas for Composing in K-12 Music Classrooms.” She recently retired from Northwestern University, in Evanston, IL, where she worked in the area of music education. Her research (and passion) focuses on creative thinking for children. She has developed curricula and worked with teachers and students of all grade levels to advocate for more composition and improvisation in schools. Listen to her enthusiastic video, such a great motivation to try out her wonderful ideas!
Polina, Terrence, James, Vel, Bobby…YOU?
We have a wonderful schedule of musical guests to come whom we’ve met in our adventures this past year. Stay tuned for blog posts and office hour recordings, or should I say PODCAST recordings, to come!