Video: Graphic scores by grade schoolers

VIDEO:: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZjuEaYGglc
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This fall, ODDMUSIC-UC was invited to a University of Illinois Saturday Art
School class as guest artist. We taught a workshop called “The Sound Visual
Connection”, which brought together several ways of doing music and visual
art non-separately.

We played the students music they hadn’t heard before, and they drew
sketches they hadn’t drawn before. We listened to the marching band warming
up outside the window, and performed Andrew’s *Miniatures for Two Otonalists
* in a bout of oddmusical evangelism. Then, a visit to the computer lab for
making graphic computer-music scores with HighC. Finally, udderbot making!
And circle games.

I want to put in a plug for HighC <http://highc.org/history.html>. It’s a
beautifully designed, light-weight, elegant program which enables one to
make graphic scores. Time is on the horizontal axis, and pitch on the
vertical axis. Different timbres appear as different colors; amplitudes are
represented by line thickness. Pitch is by default on a continuum
(microtonal in the broadest sense). The whole thing costs 30 Euros (we used
the demo for our class, but if you’re looking for an Xmas present for
Oddmusic…)

Following a brief introduction to the program, students were given only *10
minutes* to make a score lasting between 12 and 30 seconds. I arranged the
results into this slideshow, which gives a peek into the variety attainable
with this program, as well as the variety of each student.
http://oddmusicuc.wordpress.com/2010/12/19/making-graphic-scores-is-easier-than-ever/