Kids Play with Toys, A Symphony Happens
MIT scientist Tod Machover was looking for music training for his daughters. He ended up inventing Beat Bugs and Shapers, developing the Hyperscore software, collaborating with violin superstar Joshua Bell, and composing The Toy Symphony.

Machover, a composer and scientist at MIT's Media Lab, develops musical toys to introduce young children to music and its pleasures -- before they have been exposed to formal training. In a May 20, 2003 article in the New York Times, Machover points out that "preschoolers are not compelled to take drawing lessons before they start to use crayons and cut up paper. So why shouldn't children get immediately involved with playing and composing music without having to go through the drudgery of practicing scales and learning their lines and spaces?"

What Machover and his Media Lab team have come up with in this quest include:

• Beat Bugs, which resemble a large computer mouse with lady-bug-like feelers. Children can hold the Beat Bug in their hands, tap rhythmic patterns on a control knob, and hear cyclic repetition of their beat played back automatically. Tweaking the antennae changes the pitch, tone, pattern and tempo of the pattern, and even permits overdubbing additional rhythms.
• Music Shapers, which look like fabric covered grapefruit. Squeezing and stroking the Shaper creates a riot of different clicking, whooshing, and whistling sounds.
• HyperScore, a software program for musical composition. Children use colors, shapes and textures to create "scores" for music, which they can play back immediately as they add, alter and reshape their visual representation of the music. The program automatically translates their diagram into themes, counterpoints, and harmonic movement.

Machover does not see his inventions as replacements for traditional instruments, nor does he consider the kind of boundless exploration they permit a replacement for a music teacher. The point is rather to instill an early excitement about -- and love for -- music and creativity, before the later rigors of instrumental training stamp it out. In a May 21, 2003 article in the Wall Street Journal, Machover states "I value creativity over technicality. I would like to find a was to develop a discipline that trains the imagination."

Recently, Machover took his three-year, $3million project, the "Toy Symphony," to New York for a few weeks of workshops and concerts as a finale of its international tour. Children were given a chance to play with the musical toys for "practice," but later found themselves on stage with a Hyperviolin, a children’s chorus, and a symphony orchestra.

Reviews for the concert series were generally bemused and thoughtful. Most reviewers were captivated by the concept and supported the program as an educational breakthrough for younger children, although they found the overall results not ready for concert hall prime time as such. Even Machover's daughters, the inspiration for Machover's original quest, are now taking regular instrumental lessons now, too.

Learn more about Tod Machover and the MIT Media Lab, and read the extensive press about the Toy Symphony

Listen to the May 17, 2003 "All Things Considered" story from National Public Radio

Watch the April 8, 2003 episode of "Scientific American Frontiers" from the Public Broadcasting Service, which visits Machover's studio, experiments with his instruments, and shows superstar violinist Joshua Bell (best known, perhaps, for his playing on the "Red Violin" film soundtrack) trying out a HyperViolin.

Download the free Hyperscore software (Windows XP; or, for earlier versions of Windows, also download DirectX, also available free)

Hear hyperviolin, Beat Bugs & Shapers at ToySymphony.net

Read Anthony Tommasini's May 20, 2003 New York Times review of the "Toy Symphony"

Read James Gorman's June 3, 2003 New York Times essay about the "Toy Symphony" [fee required]