Press Coverage

“Tod Machover may have composed more ambitious music than “Toy Symphony,” but he will never engage in a more important project.” – The Boston Globe

NPR – Visionaries: Tod Machover – “Music is such a powerful personal experience…but it’s usually not a creative relationship…”

EdSurge News – How Music Technology Helped My Students Tap Into Their Creativity. Music teacher David Casali wondered how to reignite an interest in music among students who had decided they were not musical. He tried an experiment, asking them to compose music for a video game, using Hyperscore.

After the students were done with the game, I checked the results, and admittedly, I was shocked: Hyperscore had removed the barriers for students. Their creativity was no longer held back by their command of music notation or ability to perform on an instrument. They could explore musical ideas and make changes to the notes in real time. Students whose musical voices had been silent began to bloom, and having the chance to write music to fit a game thrilled them.

Musical Toronto – Toronto school children become engaged composers in Toronto Symphony experiment Music blogger John Terauds writes, “I have to admit that the ease with which the user becomes a creator worries me, because it feels too easy. Part of me considers this to be a form of pseudo creation, that only the careful application of pencil (and eraser) to notation paper is real creation.” But the results have convinced him otherwise:

These children, many of whom I’m sure haven’t had any lessons music theory, were truly and fully engaged with the act of creating music.

Isn’t that what we all dream of?

The fact that their work will eventually find itself performed on the stage of Roy Thomson Hall seems almost superfluous after this amazing accomplishment.

Interview with Tod Machover in Swedish design journal LOFT (pdf)

New York Times – ARTS ONLINE; From a Few Colored Lines Come the Sounds of Music “‘There seems to be a deeply embedded sense that you have to learn a lot before you can write music,” [Machover] said. So he set out to create software that would convert expressive gestures — lines, patterns, textures and colors — made on the screen into pleasing and variable sounds. The goal, he said, is to let children have ”the direct experience of translating their own thoughts and feelings into music.”
”Then music becomes a living, personal activity, and not a given which is handed down from experts or from history.”

Technology Review – Toy Symphony Maestro  “The group hopes to introduce children to complex and subtle aspects of playing music that usually take years to learn on traditional instruments. Machover is driven by the belief that music has become background noise in most people’s lives. Through the toys, Machover says, he’s “basically trying to say, Look, if you like music, it will be a much more powerful experience if you just get in there and experiment with it, take it apart, put it back together, make it yourself.’”

This Scientific American Frontiers episode hosted by actor Alan Alda features  composer Tod Machover and the MIT Media Lab working on the ambitious Toy Symphony project, which gave birth to Hyperscore. Renowned violinist Joshua Bell makes an appearance.

Complete list of press coverage of “Toy Symphony” project