Innovative Animated Scores for Opera Education – Royal Opera House Case Study

In 2021 I was approached by the Royal Opera House to create video assets for their Create & Sing programme. The programme encouraged primary-aged children to become interested in the opera. Primary schools would be sent learning resources from ROH, then attend live online events where they could perform the operas along with professionals.

There were 2 video jobs for me. They wanted me to use the live broadcast assets to create a higher quality archive video than the broadcast software would allow – it was more cost effective to hire me than upgrade the broadcast license to provide a 1080p render. That way the archived video of the performance could become a high-quality education resource in itself. Easy.

Before that, the schools would need some resources in order to learn the songs.

The view from the main stage Orchestra Pit at the Royal Opera House
© ROH/Sim Canetty-Clarke, 2014

– The Process –

The programme director and I devised a format based on our shared backgrounds in music education, and my background in media. We took inspiration from karaoke videos, where an icon would follow lyrics across the screen; and from music education apps and games like Guitar Hero.

ROH provided original recordings for these songs, and the scores on PDFs. My job was to animate coloured blocks over the top of the score, letting us see which word was coming next and what pitch it should be sung at (like an animated highlighter pen)

The score PDFs had to be exported as super high-resolution PNGs in order to retain their quality when zoomed-in. An A4 file can roughly be viewed in 3 chunks of 1080p video.

Fun fact – when music is written down, the various note values indicate the amount of time spent on individual notes. However, the amount of space these notes take up on page entirely depends on how many notes their are. Depending on the notes, it’s entirely possible that one line of musical stave could last 5 seconds or 50.

This is why I was a great fit for the job, (tooting my own horn here: *toot-tott*). I understood visual communication; I had 8 years of education support under my belt; and, crucially, I understood the importance of correctly displaying time to performers.

– Results –

Because I was also edited the Share & Celebrate videos, where students performed the operas alongside professionals, I saw the impact of my animated scores. The students were super engaged, enthusiastic and (most importantly), knew the words to the songs!

If you’re interested in commissioning video learning resources, please do get in touch, or see further examples below.

Music History was a series from Stabbed Panda Music. I created this series because I was interested in music history and it was a great way to lean. Over time we realized that schools were using our videos as classroom resources, so we ended up creating new versions aimed specifically at school-age children.

Music Tech tutorials are my bread and butter. I’ve made so many of these over the years, that’s how I got good at editing and visual communication. This video is one of my most watched tutorials, briefly explaining time signatures in Cubase.

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