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Music Composition for Kids

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

TED is an association that brings amazing people from all areas of education, technology, science, development, business, philanthropy, doers, and thinkers, together to talk about amazing things going on in the world today and ideas for the future. We download the various videos to our Apple TV and watch them during our numerous babyG feedings. But, this isn’t about TED, it is about music for kids.

Over the weekend, we watched MIT researcher Ted Machover give a presentation on the benefits of music in our children. During his discussion, Ted talked about several really cool ideas and products he and his team have instituted for children. Hyperscore is one of those products.

Apparently, Hyperscore is an $80 computer application (Windows only right now - they claim they hope to make a Mac version soon) that allows children to compose music without knowing music notation (you know, I guess that is what you call the various symbols for music on a sheet of paper :) The best I can tell, this is done on a timeline using colored lines, dots, and positions so it isn’t completely different from writing music, but it is sufficiently different that children easily pick it up (think video game). The software also allows the user to output traditional sheet music so they can archive and share their creations.

BM and I are big proponents of allowing children the opportunity to learn things besides Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic (I never will know why, collectively, those are called the Three R’s). Arts, language, science, philosophy, history, physical education, etc. are all important to a child’s development. Hyperscore seems to be a very cool way to interactively introduce a child to the wonderful world of music.

If you are interested, you can watch Ted’s presentation to TED by clicking here.

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