#82

Well, since everyone seems to have a slightly different approach, I think the final format shouldn’t be too fixed. Could be recorded music, visual (drawing or video).

I’m making this up as I write, so bear with me.

Let’s say we have a monthly family challenge about a theme

January: Birds
This months challenge revolves around birds and everything associated with birds. Birdsong, flight, dinosaurs (rawr), eggs… whatever comes to your mind.

Participants could share whatever activities they decide to do with their kids/family in a dedicated thread, basically sharing experiences, things that worked, things that didn’t work out as planned, happy accidents, conversations, etc.

Let’s see what happens from that point onwards.

I’m super open to any suggestions. As I said, I’m just making this up as I write. :wink:

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#83

I really like Moog’s Animoog on an iOS tablet for this - it responds well to touch, there’s visualizations that correspond to what you’re doing, and it’s very hard to sound “bad” with it even if you’re a toddler just touching and swiping around at random. I’m cautious around giving him anything “game-like” with a screen so I’ve only showed it to him a few times, but he’s gotten a kick out of it. Older kids (5+?) would probably get a lot of mileage out of it. Bonus: you can hook up a Sensel Morph, Lumi, etc. to it for MPE, and then it really gets expressive.

#84

The last thing I’m going to put in my kid’s hands is a table of any kind. Really. It’s unavoidable on the long run of coruse, but If I can delay it as much as possible, I’ll do it.
It’s incredible how quickly they get completely hooked, I’ve seen that with many of our friend’s kids.
So yes, I’m also super cautios.
For some time I had a digital piano in the living room, and he really liked randomly banding on those keys. Unfortunately it wasn’t mine.

I really like where this is heading. It can really be something quite open, at least at the beginning.

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#85

Yeah, definitely a good point about tablets.

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#86

5?!? Oh, wow, time flies so fast!!

#87

Yeah, tell me about it… :slight_smile:

#88

Since we’re talking about physical/gestural music making, one instrument I can recommend is a tongue drum. I got a Meinl tongue drum as a birthday present and we use it quite a bit. It comes with sticks and can also be played with hands. Both are easy to do for little ones. It comes tuned to a key, so you can jam along with it on other instruments. It comes with a padded bag. So we take it with us if we go to a picnic, to the beach or on holiday. The sound is very relaxing and spreads a great mood if we play. Our favorite place to play it is in our garden. So much looking forward to Spring as I type this.

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#89

Somehow, my kiddo came with varibrite fingertips.

In all seriousness, I’m glad to have found this thread.

Themes of smaller chunks of dedicated time definitely ring true in my experience. And I’ve found them to be very productive in my creative process.

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#90

I’m interested in the “family music challenge” concept and more generally would love to hear about people’s approaches to creating structures for introducing and involving children in music.
I love music, have always noodled on musical instruments from a young age but it wasn’t an interest I learned from my family (or really in school) and I don’t have a lot of models for how to do it/stoke interest beyond the obvious: play lots of music in the house, have musical instruments around, play them and let kids explore them. Those things are great but I’d love ideas or tips for more structured music engagement, books? activities? chance-based visual scores?
I missed out on taking my very young kids to music classes back when that was possible so beyond putting on an Ella Jenkins record, I’m at a loss sometimes.

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#91

I mostly hate musical toys designed for children. I recently started reading a book about Bach, and it describes how Bach and his siblings became musicians quite naturally just by being surrounded by the real thing at all times. I had a Roland SE-02 that I didn’t use much in the studio that I let my child use over a year ago. At that point, he understood enough language to understand simple rules - the only one that I established was “clean hands only”. A year later at 2 years & 9 months he knows how to turn it on / off, adjust the volume, change the preset, run the sequencer, and randomly change knobs to explore the sounds. He can find his favorite sequences since he knows his numbers well. The synth is in the same condition as it when he started playing it.

He doesn’t really have the fine motors skills to get serious on the SE-02 keyboard, but he does love gaining information. So I picked up this book https://www.alfred.com/music-theory-for-young-children-book-1-second-edition/p/99-9671250408/. After a month we’re more than half way through, and he picked up a surprising amount of information, identifying the structure of the keyboard, that the C scale starts with C and repeats after G, the bass clef, treble clef, whole note, half note, quarter note and their time values, and piano fingering conventions (the thumbs are 1, etc).

We review a lot, he’s not bothered by this and enjoys it.

There’s an accompanying piano book in the series and my idea was to gradually transition to that and use the SE-02 keyboard until there’s a need to move beyond it.

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#92

The biggest problem that I have with musical toys is that the ones that I checked in various shops were completely out of tune. And I don’t even mean like A != 440Hz but various intervals were way off. On the other hand my kid is right now 13 months old so he still is rather rough with instruments. He learned to strum the strings instead of trying to rip them off so there is a progress but my teletype keyboard did not survived more than several encounters with him :smiley:
That is why I was thinking of something like Marimba first (but I must admit that meinl tongue drum also looks cool) and then a little later a piano which is much harder to break (I am not even worrying so much about a guitar as it is just an item but I worry that my son will hurt himself).
And thanks for the book link will check if there is something similar in my native language, because it did not even occur to me that there might be musical theory books for one year olds :smiley: Right now I was just saying the names of the chords will playing them back for him.

#93

I have a six going on seven year old and feel very similarly to many here. currently, with covid and remote learning, I am also tasked with Music Class twice a week and have been working my way through what that looks like. she loves to sing and perform, but she shies away from the real work of instruments, so instead of forcing her, I am just trying to make it such a part of daily life that it’s natural for her to seek to express herself that way. we had her in piano class a year or so ago but she didn’t have the focus for it and both my wife and I were wary of making it too compulsory and killing the joy.

Music Class has taken many forms, sometimes we just listen to music. we had a “listen to all the styles of music in Trolls 2” day and an Ella and Louis day. I bought an Orff book for kids but found it was mostly for groups of kids and now am a little rudderless for the formal music learning aspect. But really just getting her to do anything, clapping, shakers, any kind of noise maker or synth sound that keeps her interested and having fun for 30 mins feels like a great day. the Bach example is one I think of often, surrounding the child with music and normalizing it on all levels so it becomes their language, their culture. we cannot hope to replicate the Bach household here, but she does like making up silly and increasingly not so silly songs, so I’ve had some impact.

this year, with the help of my older step kids, we completed the holiday record I’d been threatening. it’s pretty hard/cutesy listening even for parents, I’m not going to lie, but track 6, “Rise,” is something she just sat down and played and as a parent who is into spacey keyboard music with fantasy lyrics, it’s one of my proudest moments. I accompany tentatively on cs60.

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#94

Just stoppng back to say that I picked up this workbook and my 4-year old finds it incredibly compelling. The exercises are kind of rote-learning-adjacent but I’m amazed at how motivated she is to memorize terms like crochet and semi-breve and she does seem to kind of connect with the actual musicality of it in a sideways-way. So thankyou for this recommendation!

I do still yearn for exercises that are more sensory and listening/making based - something like Corita Kent’s Learning by Heart but for music would be incredible. (Maybe there’s some texts from Pauline Oliveros for kids or something? maybe lines people could/would group-write something like this?)

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#95

hey also wanted to say I picked up that book as well and my daughter is probably a little old for it honestly but she is just cruising through it and it’s easy and has a bunch of pointless stickers so it feels good to her. glad to have a soft opening for her into that world. thanks for that rec, you wouldn’t find it in the usual places.

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#96

I don’t know if I posted this already here (please forgive me if I did), but this is a little top motion film I’ve made with my – then 4-year old – during the first lockdown:

For the music I just gave him some instrument and recorded loops on Ableton with whatever he would play, Then put them all together without much editing.
He also did many of the voices and sound fx.

This is really so cute and actually works quite well as a track, in a lo-fi spacey kind of way!

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#97

We have instituted a weekly karaoke night in our house. I hooked up a mixer to a wedge monitor, and 4 old beaten up dynamic mic’s. And a touch of delay sent through a guitar pedal.

My kids are 8, 7 and 3. The little guy can surprisingly fall asleep on the couch while this ruckus is going on. (Bedtime gets pushed on karaoke night, so long as there are no bar fights.)

It started with an old karaoke machine my wife brought back from the Philippines a decade ago. Very cheesy midi instrumentation, and a song book I recognize maybe 10% of.

We have ditched the machine and upgraded to YouTube.

Mostly we are singing Taylor Swift and Frozen 2, but my wife and I are always pushing classic rock or old favourites of ours.

It’s reading practice for my daughter who is still struggling to stream written words AND it’s a chance to learn mic technique and etiquette. Among other musical development.

It’s been a highlight of the past few weeks.

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#98

that’s so great, we too have a karaoke setup, my seven year old loves it. some of the fruits of our holiday session you’ll find on the album I posted above. I thought it would be funny to sign up for a Lines community stream slot and only sing karaoke but I didn’t know how far I could push you people. :stuck_out_tongue:

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#99

This is a fantastic idea. Thanks for that, sounds like great fun… I’m going to set something up (haven’t broached this with my wife yet mind…).

… Although if I hear Frozen or The Greatest Showman soundtracks one more time I swear I’m going to put my head through a wall :joy:

#100

ha, yea, I hear a lot of Frozen 2.

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#101

I like to imagine my kids are going to take a culturally enriching interest in the latest neo-classical or ambient vinyl release I buy…

Reality is Amazon Alexa in the kitchen or living room with the above (or Taylor Swift, or Carly Rae Jepsen) blasting out, usually one song on repeat, ad nauseam :grinning:

I like to imagine when I let my kids play with my synths/guitars/music equipment they will take a considered and studied approach, noticing the changes in timbre and texture…

Reality is they frenziedly rag the knobs and controls around (‘hey daddies letting us play with his toys… lets go for it!!!’), end up fighting over one box/guitar/synth, and then when they have created a cacophonous mess say ‘that sounds scary’ :smile:

This is the reality of lockdown Music+Family for me at the moment (one 2 year old and one 4 year old) :joy:

Still can’t help but love the little terrors though :heart:

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