improvisation

Make time for silence.

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Make Time

I know I’ve mentioned the importance of silence before, but now I’m going to dedicate a whole post to it!

If you are someone in a care-giving role to young children, you know just how precious (and rare!) silence is!

We know, because of researchers like Edwin Gordon, that the first six years of life are the most important in developing music aptitude, so that is why we should take the time to develop those skills in our children’s rapidly maturing minds. However, one of the most important aspects of developing musically is learning to audiate. You can think of audiation as the act of thinking in music:

Consider this analogy; in cable television, visual images are readily available for any channel; however, to see them you need a cable box to unscramble the images. During primary music development, children create a “box” or mental representation to unscramble the aural images of music. This multifaceted, complex mental representation is known is “audiation”. Audiation is paramount in importance because it is basic to all types of musical thinking. Without audiation, no musical growth can take place. – Music Together

So, just as children learn to speak and read by being read to, they learn to sing and read music by being sung to. Just as researchers say to raise your child in a language-rich environment, you need a music-rich environment.

Here is the caveat- that doesn’t mean bombarding your child with language or music constantly.

Yale researchers have found that young mice exposed to more than 10 hours of continuous noise a day (something as low as a television in the background) developed fewer blood vessels in their maturing brains. This is most crucial for babies younger than two.

Think about it- when there is a ton of noise and distraction and you can’t seem to concentrate, what do you say? – “I CAN’T HEAR MYSELF THINK!”

Your child needs silence in order for their brain to make the leap from hearing music to thinking music. The human brain is a marvelous machine, and it takes things that we have experienced, and then begins to experiment with them. Anyone who has watched young children knows how creative they are naturally. They use things in ways we could never imagine as adults.

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Photo by Paul, licensed under creative commons.

 

Deep silence is the mother of creativity. – Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

For them to be able to do this, they need silence. A time without direction, and without distraction. Some children will look quietly at books, some will build with the couch cushions and loudly re-enact their favorite story (with minor alterations!), and some will sing their favorite songs, changing the words to fit their game, or even make up their own tune to fill in the silence of undirected play. Unfortunately for us adults, especially those that covet calm and quiet, this rarely results in actual silence!

So shut off the radio, stop reading aloud books, Mom or Dad, and encourage quiet play. Shut down the distractions so that your child’s mind can grow and their creativity can flourish. You will all find some peace, but if your children are very young, probably very little quiet!

 

How to Guide Children’s Improvisation and Composition

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How old do you have to be to compose music? 18? 12? 5? Younger?

Mozart was only five years old when he wrote these first compositions.

My son isn’t yet five and he writes compositions, too… but he’s no musical prodigy. He is not as proficient in music playing or writing as Mozart was. He can’t yet articulate his musical thoughts on paper, but he can improvise musically with words, rhythm, and melody.

Everyone who has been around music and is allowed to experiment with music has the ability to do this. With proper encouragement, every child can improvise. So, how did we get to this point?

  • SING. All the time. Play instruments or just play rhythms by clapping or patting or beat-boxing. What you will find is that your child will start repeating the things you do at different times.
  • Let them experiment, even if it is annoying. Sometimes they will sing loudly or sing the same word over and over. Try to put up with it. You can try to redirect their efforts or ask them to try it more softly, but don’t tell them to stop!
  • Start by giving them ideas to riff on- start a silly song about what you are doing and give them a turn to improvise. They will probably start by changing the words to a tune they already know, which is ok.
  • Provide an accompaniment for them or have them provide an accompaniment for you. Beat-boxing is a fun way to do this. This shows them you can improvise something without words and is an easy way to practice ensemble singing/playing.
  • Make any time a good time to improvise! Do it in the car, in the bathtub, at dinner…
  • Let them play at conductor and tell you what the song or piece should sound like. Have them try to describe it to you as best as they can and try to make their composition come to life.
  • As they get older, start introducing technology to record themselves. They will spend so much time playing back their songs, and with programs like the iOS’s Garageband, they can add drums or other instruments to their recordings and have fun making it sound new and different.
  • As children progress in their musical learning, they can make composition maps- that can be anything from crayon drawings of what it sounds like, to prompts like “high, major, duple, du de du de, soft, fast.”
  • When your children learn music reading and writing, you can have them compose on free printable staff paper, like that found on this webpage: http://www.blanksheetmusic.net/

The most important thing is to find time to make music together and have music-making be fun and feel judgement-free. Perfecting a composition or figuring out how to express verbally or visually what you hear in your head can be frustrating. Make them feel safe and not on-the-spot when composing and improvising. Allow them to see you make mistakes and laugh it off. Music-making at home doesn’t need to be perfect to be enjoyable.

How do you improvise or compose with your family?

Musical Dialogue

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Girls Hand Clapping. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Girls Hand Clapping. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Yesterday I posted about how making music together was great for social learning. Music is inherently social, but there are ways to make the music itself social! So, here’s the challenge: have an exclusively musical dialogue with your little music-makers!

Just a warning: some children will rebel against this idea, so it may take many attempts to get them used to the idea of conversing with you musically. Find the way they are most comfortable expressing themselves musically. For one child that may be through movement and dance, another with instruments, another with chanting, and yet another with singing. Keep at it until you find what works. This is a great exercise in working around individual differences, a skill that is useful for all those early childhood battles, like potty training.

You can use this rhyme from the James T. Callow Folklore Archive, which has been modified for this purpose.

My mother, your mother
Lives across the way
Every night they have a chat
And this is what they say*

After the introduction rhythm, you can make up a chant, a rhyme, or melody and then the child can respond. Often, children will mimic exactly what you do, which is ok. Encourage them to make up something different. You’ll find as they grow older they have more musical ideas to choose from.

In my experience, sometimes children will refuse to respond “musically” -probably out of discomfort or embarrassment- but I have yet to see a child (or adult!) give a musical response that was inappropriate. For instance, in the audio examples above, I’ll chant the rhyme in its original duple (think “in two,” like a march) meter, then in triple (think “in three,” like a waltz). Once the meter is established, a child with enough musical experience in duple or triple will tend to stick with the meter provided. Their response may be longer or shorter than yours, and that’s ok, too.

You can be creative and change the words to suit musical movement instead of dialogue, with “every night they hang their clothes and this is what they do.” Instrumental improvisation, with “have a jam,” or even silly improvisation with “my doggy, your doggy…” You could go so far as to try to sing it in different tonalities, also. The possibilities are endless.

Let me know how your musical dialogue goes and how you found how your little ones were most comfortable improvising!

*I first came across this rhyme used to start improvisation at a workshop given by Wendy Valerio, so credit goes to her for the original idea! It’s just too good not to share!