Tag: music composition

Cecilia Roudabush, Director of Education

Boomwhackers

Have you ever had a chance to play the rainbow? Rainbow-colored instruments have been around for years, none more popular these past few years than Boomwhackers. If you didn’t already know, Iowa native Craig Ramsell, a classical guitarist with a B.S. and M.S. in Management from M.I.T., created the plastic tubes that have become legendary in music rooms across the world. When I was a long-term general music substitute teacher this past May, 2022, we couldn’t keep ourselves from “talking about Bruno” and playing along with the fabulous video from Swick’s Classroom on YouTube!

Traditional or block note head

Whether you are using 8-note diatonic handbells, an outdoor Cavatina or Boomwhackers, New Harmony Line wanted you to have the opportunity to guide students to compose using the colors of the rainbow. With this in mind, CTO Peter created a super-fun Setting that features rainbow-colored lines. You can use the traditional note head or the block note head, which I prefer visually for the colored lines. Try out both settings with your students and let us know your favorite!

Chording accompaniments

When you compose with the rainbow setting, you can easily create melodies. However, don’t forget one of the best features of rainbow-colored instruments which is chording! This video features the chordal accompaniment for the chorus of “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from the movie “Encanto” using the block note head:

We hope you will enjoy this new feature. We’d love to hear from you if you, or your class, writes a “play the rainbow” song!

Cecilia Roudabush, Director of Education

Virtual Summer Conference 2022

Music Technology was the topic of choice for our submission to the New Jersey Music Educators Association (NJMEA). The sessions were held Wednesday, July 27th and Thursday, July 28th in conjunction with MusicFirst. New Harmony Line submitted a pre-recorded session, “Hyperscore: A New Way to Teach Music Composition Using Technology”. Attendees received handouts with all of the resources linked and a free MusicFirst trial version of Hyperscore to go in the Swag Bag.

Presenting inverted pedagogy (compose first then teach the concept) was the newest challenge in the half hour presentation. I will keep practicing that wonderful pedalogical idea, but I think it went well and teachers will definitely want to try out the methodology. “Kings and Queens” took another starring run as the student example of what a 2nd grader can accomplish with time in the music room to be creative. Hopefully, conference participants were inspired to start or rejuvenate their composition unit!

Happy new school year!

What an excellent way to get teachers across America excited to get back into the music room and provide music technology outlets for student creativity in the coming school year! Thank you NJMEA and MusicFirst. May it be the first of many opportunities to share Hyperscore with music teachers guiding their students to compose this year and beyond!

Cecilia Roudabush, Director of Education

Meet Dr. Roque Diaz, Ms. Daria Adams and GSHARP

While researching a topic last week, I followed a link to an inspiring article from Dr. Roque Diaz, the Senior Director of (DEI) Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Arts and Culture Consultant at the MacPhail Center for Music in Minneapolis. The center cultivates “an inclusive community where all people and music styles are welcome.” Classic fM Digital Radio’s article features the comments of Dr. Diaz, Daria Adams, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra violinist, and Grammy Award-winning musician GSHARP as they discuss the changes in how/where/whose music is being performed in the Twin Cities as a result of discussions triggered by the murder of George Floyd. 

GSHARP said “…making music has always been about using your emotion to talk about something that’s bigger than…” just being entertained. Why not lower the ticket price so anyone can attend the concerts?  Why not feature under-represented Black, Hispanic, LGBTQ+ and female composers?  Why not have the orchestra play in restaurants and churches in the community? What exciting ideas for anyone and everyone! The article is billed as a 9-minute read, but Dr. Diaz, Ms. Adams and GSHARP’s words will have long-lasting impact on, and support our, continuing mission regarding who enjoys and makes music:

Links to inspire

If reading this article inspires you, it’s important to take the time to click this link from the article 9 Black composers who changed the course of classical music history and watch the YouTube video below featuring violinist Randall Goosby sharing information on four Black composers everyone should know. I was thrilled to see that I knew some of them yet dismayed that, even after a 32-year career teaching music, I did not know them all. Like the interviewees in the article suggest, we can all do more.  Toward that ideal, New Harmony Line is hosting our first camp presentation July 20th with Vel Lewis’ F2F (Faith 2 Form) Foundation for at-risk youth in the Houston area. We are lowering the barriers for the camp attendees by making composition accessible for children with a free subscription to Hyperscore and training on how to compose.  May it be the first of many such empowering opportunities!

To utilize Hyperscore’s full potential, Dr. Kevin Jennings of Dublin, Ireland, urges music educators to “invert the pedagogy” when it comes to introducing children to composition. Watch:

Inverting the pedagogy means allowing student composers to create purposefully first, then discussing the musical rudiments present in their creative work afterwards. Dr. Jennings, part of the original Hyperscore team at the MIT Media Lab, encourages teachers to start by asking a student to place that first note in the Melody Window. Ask the student to process: Do I like the pitch? Do I like the length? Do I like the instrument choice? If I change it, do I like it better? Why or why not? With experimentation and reacting as the key, students would learn to build a composition. Moving forward purposefully with each successive note allows the student to become a creative composer!

Hyperscore as an alternative to traditional notation

Most interestingly, Dr. Jennings believes that the visual representation of music in Hyperscore bypasses the need for understanding standard notation first in order to be able to compose. In Hyperscore, student composers can visually see the difference between a quarter note and a half note. They can see, and hear, that a note is higher or lower than another, composing intuitively as they manipulate their musical choices. Should instruction move on to include the music staff, the visual mode lends itself to greater understanding of the complexity of standard notation. As students react to, and discuss what they are hearing in their compositions, the teacher can introduce musical concepts and terminology (“that’s called a major third”).

Sage on the stage or guide on the side? Inverting the pedagogy helps to connect with students

In this inverted pedagogy, Dr. Jennings states that the teacher becomes a “guide, mentor, partner, co-creator/co-conspirator” in the student’s process. As a teacher myself, I find that there is no greater joy than to hear students talking to each other about their composition process or sitting at a computer with a student and pointing out rising sequences that they instinctively placed into their piece because they liked the pattern and wanted to hear it again, but in a different way.

Do you want to gift your students with the opportunity to create music purposefully? Dr. Jennings encourages you to follow the advice of Canadian Professor of Music Theory Charles Morrison and “be a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage”–Hyperscore empowers you, the teacher, to be that guide.

See More:

• Resources for Educators
• Learn about Hyperscore

Music teachers can try Hyperscore for free through our partner, MusicFirst, the leading learning management platform for K-12 music education. Wile away a hot afternoon with some cool composing fun and dream up exciting teaching possibilities that Hyperscore will open up for you this coming school year.

With your free Hyperscore trial for teachers, you will receive emails from us with tip videos to help you get up to speed quickly. We’ll show you how to navigate Hyperscore’s simple, graphical interface. We’ll walk you through how to build melodic motifs and percussion patterns. You’ll learn how to use these building blocks to create complex and interesting compositions. You’ll also have access to our teaching modules that you can copy and personalize for your classroom.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I have used Hyperscore in the classroom for 17 years and it has transformed me as a teacher, and continues to do so as I learn more about the full capabilities of this wonderful tool. I look forward to answering your questions or helping you to prepare your students to become original composers in 2022-2023! Contact me at: cecilia.roudabush@newharmonyline.org

Our YouTube channel is poppin’!! I have successfully uploaded 26 of the 32 student compositions from my K-6 substitute music teaching gig last month. I’m in contact with a handful of students who may be getting their permission forms in yet, and then I’m going to tie the bow and call it a win! Thank you to my colleague for choosing me to substitute teach her precious students and to ask for Hyperscore to be their task! It was a wonderful challenge after 15 years of using Hyperscore with only 7th graders.

If you’d like the opportunity to let the K-4 students know that you appreciate their willingness to try something new, and their creative endeavors, hop on over to our YouTube Channel and put a “like” on their videos. From the alternating steady beat kindergarten pieces to the complex harmonies of the 4th grade creative pieces, there is a lot to gather about the ability of a novice composer to make music without the theory getting in the way!

Click here to ENJOY! (and like!)