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Connecting STEM with the Arts is as simple as opening Hyperscore, New Harmony Line’s web-based music composition tool. Anyone of any age or ability can compose in Hyperscore. Due to our generous donors, the Hyperscore classroom is available at no cost and includes our team’s educational services. As an educator, you do not need specialized music training, nor do your students, in order to incorporate music into your teaching of other subjects. Music becomes another medium, just like writing, visual arts, and model-building, for students to explore and express their understanding of a topic.

With Hyperscore, students create their own melodic and rhythmic patterns and assemble them into full musical compositions. It’s easy, intuitive and fun. Students can fine-tune their creative ideas by adding dynamics, form, different instruments and adding harmony such as chords. Finally, adding a title to the piece connects the listener to the composition’s themes.

Read on for specific ideas on how to use Hyperscore in STEAM education!

Connecting STEM with the Arts in Composition Workshops

With Hyperscore, teachers can link composition to various STEM concepts in group workshops. For example, through the Second Sunday Composition Workshop series, the New Harmony Line team has experimented with composing songs in Hyperscore inspired by mathematics, visual art, scientific concepts, technological achievements, and more. The open-ended intuitive structure of Hyperscore allows for students to take a wide variety of such inspirations. With guidance from a workshop facilitator, students’ creativity can bloom.

This images shows the columns of numbers and letters that are part of the first type of computing, a difference engine. — Replica of the Babbage Difference Engine

Replica of the Babbage Difference Engine

The following are some examples of compositions made in New Harmony Line’s Second Sundays workshops. “The Melt” was inspired by the sounds of a melting glacier. “A Song for a Forest Fairy” is a theme song for Haleigh Overseth’s fantasy character Daisy Rae whereas “Mr. Hank! and the Bucket” is a musical re-telling of the picture book There’s a Hole in the Bucket. “The Hero In You” contains a theme for each of the inner voices that challenge children to form their best identity, featuring the author of “Harmony Hare and Her Three Voices“, Tammy Vallieres.

“The Countess of Lovelace” is a piece inspired by the Babbage Difference Engine whereas “Algorithms and Music Composition in Hyperscore” takes its inspiration from programming, functions, and modular music composition. “Canon Fodder” is a reimagining of Bach’s “Canon in D” while “Dance of the Fireflies” was sparked by someone sharing a photograph by Daniel Kordan. Using a team member’s fun bebop theme brought about “Lazy Bop“, while “Aire Currents” provided an opportunity to realize new music for a dance video from YouTube. We created “My Grandfather’s Clock” when a workshop attendee was fondly reminiscing about a folk song that he sang as a child. Thankfully this list will continue with our monthly workshop, but we’ll close this section with “Fraction Attraction” an idea that came from a team member’s unit on division of the musical beat and its connection to the study of fractions in math class.

Schools, Museums, Festivals and Camps

New Harmony Line shared Hyperscore in the Boston Museum’s “Created By” Festival, the Cambridge Science Festival and Iowa City Artsfest and Jazz fest. These events allow children, their parents and community members to create music using our technology. As expected, these festivals celebrate STEAM programs that promote ingenuity, creativity and innovation. Click the play button on the sketch window to activate the linked innovation video, created by a 4 year old. What great spaces to share Hyperscore!

a child and parent are composing music using Hyperscore at a science festival in Cambridge

This brightly colored icon represents the sunny beginning of summer as Iowa City celebrates the Summer of the Arts.

Students Pre K through 12th grade have written simple harmonies to incredibly complex pieces with our technology tools. 2nd grader LS completed her assignment to create whole, half, quarter and eighth notes in a percussion window. This achievement earned her independent creativity time. WOW! Step away and look what can happen. She discovered how to set the melody window to 32nd notes on her own. Indeed, her video on our YouTube channel has 120 views, more than any other student piece and rightly so.

In 2022, the F2F (Faith to Form) Foundation hosted a Hyperscore segment in their summer camp founded by composer Vel Lewis. For 2 years we had the opportunity to work with inner city youth in Houston attending his summer camp. In addition, CS4Youth hosted a Hyperscore project in 2024 for the last day of BotBall Robotics Camp held in Massachusetts. Campers created a theme song for the debut of their robot as it moved through its obstacles. What a delightful way to use technology in TWO ways!

Both the United States and international countries have enjoyed access to Hyperscore. Music Teacher Odysseas Sagredos, Greece, loved Hyperscore so much. He taught his elementary and secondary students to use the technology with incredible results. The Projectory in Seoul, South Korea hosted an interactive Hyperscore session in 2023 with students creating their work in teams. Teacher Frederico Ferohna shared Hyperscore with his music students. His classes chose two pieces to share live from Portugal on a Zoom with us to our delight.

The Hyperscore Challenge

The Hyperscore Challenge is an idea that has became hugely successful due to the embedded YouTube video prompts into the Hyperscore workspace. Anyone who participated from March to May could submit their composition(s) for our website. We published our galleries, 2024 and 2025, on International Make Music Day.

As one can imagine, the addition of video prompts added multiple STEAM opportunities:

What does outer space (age 8) sound like? Which instruments (ages 2 and 4) best portray chickens hatching and baby birds being fed by Mama bird? How does one musically describe a little girl mimicking the dance moves of a robot (age 58)? What instruments portray each character (age 3) seen in an under-the-sea vignette?

Incidentally, we discovered that the video prompts were very effective with Pre-K students as they easily chose a composition focus. With an adult utilizing a mouse, young children are able to make story line musical choices by guiding the adult’s hand and clicking the left button.

Where will Hyperscore take STEAM next? Where will STEAM take Hyperscore?

The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts defines arts integration and STEAM as “an approach to teaching in which students construct and demonstrate understanding through an art form. Students engage in a creative process which connects an art form and another subject and meets evolving objectives in both.” The internet and social media abound with praise for initiatives such as Arts Integration and STEAM.

New Harmony Line has had amazing experiences in the last few years with STEAM through Hyperscore. Currently, a connection with the Institute for Arts Integration and STEAM led to exhibiting at the Creativity Rising Conference in July of 2025. Over 40 music teachers, arts integration specialists, classroom teachers and arts integration administrators registered for the Hyperscore Classroom. We are already planning the trip for next year!

Would you or your team like to attend a series of workshops? Professional development is at your fingertips with our workshop offerings. New Harmony Line is in the planning stages with the Arts Integration and STEAM team at BYU in Utah. We will also be presenting and exhibiting at their Arts Express Conference in 2026.

The Dallas Symphony will be debuting a wall-sized interactive Hyperscore exhibit in the Jeanne R. Johnson Music Innovation Lab in the coming month. In addition, our team is also excited about an opportunity to work with Emily and Bryan at the Lexington Public Library in Kentucky. Emily was at Creativity Rising and has some wonderful plans to use Hyperscore in their STEAM room at the library!

Your turn! Where can Hyperscore take YOUR program?

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.

Polina challenged us to draw the sketch window first THEN create the melodies and rhythms to match the colors.

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!

Watch this video on YouTube