by June Kinoshita, New Harmony Line
We were recently invited to participate in a STEM festival at the UP Academy, a public charter school in Dorchester, Massachusetts. We were honored and excited to participate, but not without a frisson of trepidation. The school strongly emphasizes STEM subjects and has an excellent reputation for teacher quality and engagement by the community of predominantly African American and Hispanic families. The program directors were excited to have us introduce music composition with Hyperscore technology. Every student had a Chromebook, wifi, and email.
So why our trepidation? These were middle school students. Thirty of them, a mix of boys and girls. In some ways, they are our ideal audience. They are ready for the music concepts and technology we’d be introducing. But this is also the peak age for self-consciousness and peer judgement. Would they be willing to set aside any discomfort to explore their musical imaginations? Would they be able to carry on independently and in small groups for the 75 minutes of the workshop without things devolving into chaos?
To our relief, the students got right down to work. Fingers tapped away at the touchscreens, shaping melodies and percussion patterns. Faces erupted in smiles (or frowns) as the budding composers reacted to the sounds they were making. We soon discovered that many had missed the point of the Sketch Window so we coached them individually, explaining how it worked. Note to ourselves: When teaching Hyperscore, it would be better to introduce each type of window separately, have students practice with percussion, then with melody, before introducing how to combine these musical building blocks in a Sketch Window. It is conceptually so different from how the Melody and Rhythm Windows work and is too much to get across in a single “overview” talk.
Finally, we tried to coax the students to share their work. That was a bridge too far! Their self-consciousness took over. Some of the kids didn’t mind letting us listen over headphones, and that was enough. We wrapped up the day feeling we had given the students a tantalizing glimpse of what Hyperscore could enable them to do. It was a solid beginning, and we hope to build on this relationship.
