what every parent dreams of
Mar. 26th, 2018 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aryanhwyThey're teaching Gwen how to sing.
Not just the words of songs, rhythms, melodies, but how music works. Today on the way home, Gwen sang me a song that she had written. It was a melody involving "Do", "Mi", and "So", complete with hand motions indicating each tone (hands are placed at various heights either in fists or in flat palms upright or angled). Then she invited me to compose a song in the same way (and seemed quite pleased with my "So - Mi - So - Mi - So - Mi - Do - So - Mi" tune).
What I know about music could fill a tea cup. I know the lyrics of many songs and enjoy singing very much, but I've always known that not only can I not sing in tune, I can't hear that I'm not singing in tune. The only way I could play piano or record was by numbering my fingers and then numbering the notes on the page. I can look at a piece of music and get relative ups and downs and longs and shorts from it, but nothing absolute.
What every parent dreams of is being able to give their child what they never had themselves or what they cannot give themselves. I don't really feel my lack of musical acumen. My parents gave me ample musical education opportunities and I'd much rather that they let me quit piano than that they forced me to continue.
When we signed Gwen up for Choristers, it was knowing that (a) she enjoyed singing and (b) it wasn't just the proper Choristers who got a good musical education. When she discovered that people actually wrote the songs that she loved singing so much -- sometimes they were even written by the people who were singing them in the videos! -- she was fascinated by the concept. There's no way I could ever teach her any musical theory or composition or all the stuff about writing songs and making music which seems to me to be entirely ineffable but which is actually teachable. Days like this reinforce my belief that we made the right choice w.r.t. her schooling.
Not just the words of songs, rhythms, melodies, but how music works. Today on the way home, Gwen sang me a song that she had written. It was a melody involving "Do", "Mi", and "So", complete with hand motions indicating each tone (hands are placed at various heights either in fists or in flat palms upright or angled). Then she invited me to compose a song in the same way (and seemed quite pleased with my "So - Mi - So - Mi - So - Mi - Do - So - Mi" tune).
What I know about music could fill a tea cup. I know the lyrics of many songs and enjoy singing very much, but I've always known that not only can I not sing in tune, I can't hear that I'm not singing in tune. The only way I could play piano or record was by numbering my fingers and then numbering the notes on the page. I can look at a piece of music and get relative ups and downs and longs and shorts from it, but nothing absolute.
What every parent dreams of is being able to give their child what they never had themselves or what they cannot give themselves. I don't really feel my lack of musical acumen. My parents gave me ample musical education opportunities and I'd much rather that they let me quit piano than that they forced me to continue.
When we signed Gwen up for Choristers, it was knowing that (a) she enjoyed singing and (b) it wasn't just the proper Choristers who got a good musical education. When she discovered that people actually wrote the songs that she loved singing so much -- sometimes they were even written by the people who were singing them in the videos! -- she was fascinated by the concept. There's no way I could ever teach her any musical theory or composition or all the stuff about writing songs and making music which seems to me to be entirely ineffable but which is actually teachable. Days like this reinforce my belief that we made the right choice w.r.t. her schooling.
