Kid music I actually enjoyed

My 9 year old has been carpooling with this blogger's daughter a lot lately.  They go to the same art class.  And apparently they've been listening to Beethoven's Wig in the car.  This caused my daughter to beg me to find our own CD of it so we could listen.  It had gotten lost in depths of our CD drawer.  I pulled it out and we listened to it.  Haydn's Big Surprise has been playing in my brain ever since.  I had forgotten how much I enjoyed the silly and witty lyrics written to famous classical music tunes.  Beethoven's Wig is one of those kids Music CD's I actually enjoyed listening, unlike, say, Raffi who made me gag slightly whenever I had to listen to him, even though I knew he was politically correct.

Another children's CD I enjoyed along with my kids was G' me Elbow by Bonnie Rideout.  She is a Scottish fiddler.  This CD is really charming.  I think my favorite piece on it is a great sung version of a Robert Louis Stevenson's poem about a train.  There's other Stevenson poetry on it recited with a nice thick Scottish brogue.  Becky's favorite song is Oh Dear What Can the Matter Be?  (that might not be the actual title).  She'd walk around the house singing it to herself.




This next mention takes me back to when my now 20 year old was 4 or 5. Sob. We listened to Howjadoo a lot.  John McCutcheon has long been a favorite of mine.  I've seen him in concert!  He was incredible moving from dulcimer to guitar to whatever; a great multi-instrumentalist.  Here's to Cheshire was my favorite song.  And I used to sing Tender Shepherd as a lullaby to the kids.  It's a beautiful round.

Fairly recently, I discovered the Putumayo Kids series.  The first one I got was A Jewish Odyssey.  At the time Sean's very favorite piece of music was Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.  He'd listen to it every night as he fell asleep.  A Jewish Odyssey is a collection of Klezmer music from around the world.  You can hear bits and pieces of a Klezmer influence in Gershwin's work.  Sean loved that connection and he loved Klezmer.  We listened to that CD over and over again for months.  Last spring I got European Playground from Putumayo which is also very enjoyable.  They even have lesson plans to go with these CDs.

Just as a note:  I have found the Putumayo stuff uneven though in how much I like them.  I got a couple of other CDs and wasn't nearly as impressed with them.  I got the one on South African Music and was really disappointed.  I think I was hoping for something more akin to Ladysmith Black Mambazo.  But this is club music more than genuine folk music and it just sounded too canned and commercialized to me.  Ditto with the Arabic CD.

Mouth Noise Art

One rabbit trail my kids have gone on, especially, my 11 year old, as a result of their enjoyment of animated cartoons and videogames is an interest in voice actors.  They pay attention to the people who do the voices for the different characters.  They admire Mel Blanc and Frank Oz.  This has also extended to creating sound effects.  They learned about Fred Newman from watching Between the Lions.   My 11 yo frequents Fred Newman's site and had taught himself a lot of sound effects noises as a result.  Sometimes it can be a little annoying to live with, I'll admit.  But right now it is his passion.  He and his older brother also think  Dee Bradley Baker rocks.

A while ago we all got into Bobby Mcferrin.  My 11 year old took it one step further and is now very much into beatboxing a la Taylor McFerrin.  He works at it frequently, though we do keep requesting him not to beatbox at the dinner table!  He knows all these technical terms and he sounds like a speech therapist when he talks about vocalized or aspirated sounds and using your voice box, etc.  It actually takes a lot of thought, effort and practice to get those sounds and beat right!

All this creativity with mouth noises reminds me of my favorites:  Mel Torme and Ella Fitzgerald.  I loved scat when I was growing up.  I saw Mel Torme's son, Steve in concert at a nightclub a long time ago.  I also saw Ella once.  I had lawn tickets at an outdoor theater.  It was pouring rain the whole time and I totally ruined my clothes standing there but no one left because of the weather.  If you were a fan of Ella, a little rain wasn't going to stop you!

My kids enjoy scat as well.  Currently my 15 yo is into Scat Man John.

 So from watching such shows as Bugs Bunny, Phineas and Ferb, Between the Lions and getting into video games, my kids have explored all kinds of things:  animation, production, music, etc.

This listing here is just a small slice of all the interests, passions and learning that have unfolded from watching some TV shows; a little example of how TV has broadened and enriched our family life.

From the Top

We enjoy listening to this radio show and have watched some of the TV shows as well.  I just found out it has its own website!

Music Theory

My oldest son taught himself loads of music theory using this free website.  Enjoy!

Discovering Music

We are currently watching this DVD lecture series.  We are on Unit 9 (out of 17 units).  I am absolutely enthralled by it!  I'm watching it with my 18 and 11 year old sons.  My 11 year old claims he does not like history.  He does however love all things musical, so when I stumbled across a mention of this course at The Well Trained Mind board, I eagerly checked it out.  It's perfect!  Dr. Carol Reynolds is so cute and quirky, intelligent and enthusiastic.  I've studied lots of history in my day, but I'm learning a lot from this course.

If you have a music lover or a history lover, you may really enjoy this course.  I'm a little sad that we aren't using the workbook that comes with it.  I initially looked at it and saw all the fill in the blanks and thought ugh!  I knew the 11 yo would never consent happily to such things.  So we decided to just watch the lectures.  The lectures are so rich though, I feel the need for reinforcement.   I'm kind of thinking of just watching all the lectures all the way through this time, but later on, maybe when my 11 year old is high school age, going back and doing the whole course.  Now that I'm looking at the workbook more closely, I can see that it adds a lot to the course.

Anyway, we all give Dr. Reynolds an enthusiastic two thumbs up!

wikihow

My 11 year old continues in his fascination with various, funky wind instruments.  So far he's been teaching himself:  slide whistle, harmonica, ocarina and the jaw-harp (otherwise know as a jew-harp but he's uncomfortable saying that and really it doesn't make any sense any way!).  We have a very old penny or tin whistle that we got ten or more years ago from some Irish girls who came to stay with us.  He sometimes picks that up and fools around on it, trying to pipe out little tunes.  Last night though he went at it in a little more earnest.  He checked out wikihow and was teaching himself that way.  When I entered the study where he was on the computer doing all this, I was surprised to find that the teacher is an Irish Catholic priest!  Actually, I think he is a seminarian at Fordham University.

Anyway here's the link.http://www.wikihow.com/Play-the-Tin-Whistle