The Singing Child (Reflection on Ch. 4)

p. 67 (sidebar) "Recall your earliest singing experiences. What did you sing? With whom and for whom? What did you sound like?"

I was thinking about this question the entire time that I was reading this chapter, specifically because I clearly remember some of my early singing experiences. My favorite movie was "Mary Poppins," and my first exposure to singing was singing along with Julie Andrews. I think that her sound had a great deal to do with my own vocal development - for years, that was the sound I used as a "model" (and, believe me, I count myself incredibly lucky to have ended up with such a wonderful and tremendously talented person to have modeled my singing after). My mom tells stories of me singing myself to sleep as a preschooler and kindergartner... singing all sorts of songs, but often songs from Mary Poppins.

p. 83 "Unless children have physiological conditions (such as damaged vocal cords or severe hearing deficits) or the rare condition known as amusia, they can learn to sing accurately."

According to Wikipedia, amusia is "a musical disorder that appears mainly as a defect in processing pitch, but it also encompasses musical memory and recognition. Two main classifications of amusia exist: acquired amusia, which occurs as a result of brain damage, and congenital amusia, which results from a music processing anomaly at birth." I've always been curious about the idea of "tone-deafness," because I strongly believe that all people are musical - that idea is most often challenged when confronted with someone who is apparently "tone-deaf," such as my very intelligent, but seemingly non-musical, sister. Oliver Sacks devotes an entire chapter to this phenomenon (and other related issues) in his book "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain," which I keep meaning to read... the issue of tone-deafness with my sister (interestingly) arose when she did not wish to be a member of the church choir with my other sister and myself. I'm reasonably sure she intentionally sang "out-of-tune" at the time as an excuse to get out of choir, but I'm curious now as to what effect that had on her musical development (she was probably about 8 at the time). Since we know that a definite change occurs in the brain of children around age 9 with regard to musical aptitude, I wonder if her maneuver to get out of choir had anything to do with that. She did go on to play percussion in middle and high school, but never returned to singing or other instruments which require a more accurate sense of pitch.

p. 97 "When children show signs of distraction or inattention, a physical exercise or rhythmic pattern can be introduced to restore focus and energy."

This particular section reminded me of some of my own experiences in a church choir... the director often struggled with classroom management-type issues, to the detriment of the choir's performance and morale (as well as his own). The director was (and is) an extremely talented musician, but the issues arose from a lack of knowledge in how to most effectively instruct young children in singing. The church choir tradition often suffers from this problem, I would imagine, where children are expected to sit quietly and patiently until they are called upon to sing, at which point they are expected to sing in tune and follow careful instruction given by the director - a format which most educators will recognize is destined for difficulty (if not flat-out failure).