Sound Beginnings Articles

If you're a Sound Beginnings Parent, we've collected some blog posts that will be most helpful to you:

Sun, Moon, and Stars: Why we teach patterns in Sound Beginnings class. Learn the reasons AND get ideas for playing with patterns in your daily life here.

Jack be Nimble, Jack be Quick! Here are 3 more fun ways to enjoy this nursery rhyme and extend learning at home. Read more here. 

If you love to sing The Itsy Bitsy Spider, be sure to check out these extension activities and crafts for more fun at home. Read more here.

Solfege is a powerful tool for ear training and singing skills. Find out why it works, why we use it in class, and how you can learn solfege quickly in this series:

Part One Here
Part Two Here
Part Three Here

Let's Sing! In PART ONE, learn why singing is a fundamental musicianship skill and essential for ear training. Read it here.

In PART TWO, help your child sing on pitch and match pitch with some exercises and activities. Read it here.

Ready for a fun exercise? Turn your favorite story books into song! Story time just reached a new level of greatness! Read our post and enjoy some easy to sing books- or create your own.

• What Makes Sound Beginnings Different from other programs?? 
• The Seven Foundational Elements of the Sound Beginnings program

Discover the Pentatonic Scale in this post here. This simple five-note scale is a basic learning tool for musicians and children all around the world. Bobby McFerrin gives a demonstration showing how humans naturally internalize the pentatonic scale.

Why do youngsters need so much repetition in learning? Find out in this post and learn how to apply layered repetition to your own learning and teaching- you'll be able to remember every song you know!

Understand instrument families with this post: how we categorize the instruments of the orchestra and how we help students hear the different timbres they make. Sound Beginnings instrument day is a "petting zoo of instruments" for your child!

Understand the heart maps in your workbook, and learn more about helping your child develop the ability to find and keep a steady beat with some games and tips in this post.






You might also enjoy these topics from our FIRST YEAR STUDENT articles:
Big Ideas that Shape Let's Play Music:

• Educating the Whole Musician: What does that mean? 
• Parent Involvement is Key: How does it lead to success?
• Let's Sing (part I): Sing first: Why Singing is Fundamental
• Let's Sing (part 2): Help me sing on pitch
• Perfect Pitch: What is it? Will my child develop it in LPM? 
• Group Lessons: Why group lessons are best for your child right now
• SOLFEG Part 1: When You Know the Notes to Sing
• SOLFEG Part 2: 7 Reasons We Use It to Teach, How It Helps Us Succeed.
• SOLFEG Part 3: Learn the Handshapes
• Learning to Read Music the LPM Way
• What exactly IS ear training? 
• Start with Piano: How Piano training prepares you for any instrument 
• Orff: His Influence on Let's Play Music, why we love our tone bells.  

Have a request for a post? Leave a comment below! Fresh posts come every month to help you get more from class by playing at home.

Nursery Rhymes Teach Reading and Math

You read about how nursery rhymes are powerful tools for helping children develop speech and vocabulary in PART 1. Here in PART 2 I want to show how nursery rhymes teach reading and math skills!

Reading and Phonics

One great part about nursery rhymes is the rhymes. Children practice hearing rhyming words and sensing how vowels and consonants combine to make different words and word families. 

Memorizing nursery rhymes is an important way to build a repertoire of rhyming words!

Recognition of word patterns helps young readers make sense of phonics and bolster their reading skills. Hat, bat, cat, fat...they all sound the same at the end and voila! They have the same letters at the end!

A favorite game I like to play with toddlers is Find a Rhyme.  This usually happens in the car, when everyone's strapped in and needs something interesting to think about.  

Hey! I've got a word: BEE. 

Bee, Bee, what rhymes with bee? 

Bee, Bee, how about...."  

(child shouts)  TREE! 

Bee, tree, bee and tree. 

I like to rhyme bee and tree.

Repeat with new words until you reach grandma's house.  To make this game a little easier, prep your child with a few words that rhyme, or let older kids give hints to your toddler, or let older kids play a few rounds to show preschoolers how it's played. Be sure that everyone cheers when a rhyme is found.

Reading and Reason

Nursery rhymes also often incorporate very short stories with beginnings, middles, and ends. Jack went up the hill, then he fell down, then Jill fell down. These short tales give practice in sequencing events and understanding the flow of stories: more early literacy skills!

At home, make pictures to go with your favorite rhymes (we give them to you in Sound Beginnings class for some rhymes).  As your child recites the rhyme, have her put the pictures in the correct order, like my little daughter does here:

Finally, your rhymes will offer lots of alliteration (Goosey, Goosey, Gander) and onomatopoeia (Baaa, baaa, black sheep), again giving tots lots and lots of experience with words and how they work with phonics.  Words that start with the same letter have the same starting sound. Amazing!

The more words and rhymes your child learns, the bigger her repertoire to draw from while making these connections and internalizing how phonics works.

Math Skills

Nursery rhymes have patterns of syllables and rhymes. It's one of the traits that makes them so enjoyable and musical! You know what I mean...

Doo dum tweedle Doo

Doo dum tweedle Doo

Doo dum diddle dum diddle dum.

Doo dum tweedle Doo

Doo dum tweedle Doo

Doo dum diddle dum diddle dum!

Internalizing how patterns flow strengthens mathematical thinking and helps in memorization. 

Many rhymes also sneak in conceptual math words (none, many, few, plenty) as well as counting numbers, which means even more early math skills to internalize.  

One, Two, Three, Four, Five

Once I caught a fish alive

Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten

Then I let it go again.

One, Two, Buckle my shoe.

Three, Four, shut the door.

Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard
to get her poor dog a bone
but when she go there the cupboard was bare
and so her poor dog had none.

If you missed it, check out our post on PART 1: Rhymes teach Speech and Vocabulary: 

Or continue on to PART 3: Rhymes teach Coordination, Social Skills, and Music!.

Don't miss the bonus gift for you 
if you make it through part 3!

-Gina Weibel, M.S.

Let's Play Music teacher

Nursery Rhymes Teach Speech and Vocabulary

You've noticed that in Sound Beginnings we do many things beyond singing. 

One thing we include in every class is a chance to practice our nursery rhymes.  But why?

Nursery rhymes are POWER-PACKED with educational awesomeness.  In this three-part blog series, I'll walk you through the skills and tell you how you can have more fun at home!

Speech

When children hear nursery rhymes, they practice pitch, volume, voice inflection, and the rhythm of speaking.  

If you consider your own speaking voice, it sounds different when you ask a question or make a statement. You have a different rhythm and inflection when you tell a story than when you place a sub sandwich order. Your child needs to learn how to use all of these to sound like a native speaker. 

Young speakers also must work the muscles of their mouth, lips, and tongue to create all the new sounds and articulate tricky words.

Nursery rhymes give an opportunity to practice these skills in a silly, fun, playful way...which is to say, in the native language of children!

Speech Practice at Home

Does your child have a little trouble articulating some sounds? It's a learning process for all toddlers!

Step one: Pay attention to your child- which letters seem most tricky? Plan to do a little practice for those.
Step two: Be very aware of how YOUR mouth and tongue move to create the sounds.
Step three: SHOW your mouth/face/lips to your child as you speak. Point out what is going on. Ask her to copy you.
Step four: Learn some nursery rhymes together and practice saying all these wonderful words together!

Here's a video for teaching 'G' and 'K', from a speech pathologist and here is a podcast for teaching /r/.

Here's a video for practicing T, D, N and L:


HERE is another video for practicing letters 'F' and 'V'. 
And HERE is a video for practicing 'P' 'B' and 'M'.

Vocabulary

Nursery rhymes introduce interesting vocabulary to help expand a youngster's repertoire: Jack and Jill went up a hill to fetch a pail of water.  Mary, Mary, quite contrary. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick.

Research has show that in 1945, the average elementary school student had a vocabulary of 10,000 words. Today, children have a vocabulary of only 2,500 words.  Parents are not reading to their children as often, and vocabulary is suffering. The decrease also stems from children not memorizing rhymes, the bread-and-butter of traditional early children's literature.

Memorize nursery rhymes with your child!

Capitalize on the opportunity to have a "word of the week" and use the new words from Sound Beginnings class all week long: "Can you please fetch your sock and shoes? If your sister is feeling contrary, maybe some tickles will cheer her up. Hop nimbly up into your car seat! Be quick!"

Traditional rhymes are repetitious and allow children to memorize basic structures and patterns in the English language, then they'll want to try it out on their own with longer, more complex sentences.  

I remember the red-letter day when my then 2 year-old son said, "I saw the cat go down the stairs into the basement." It was his longest sentence ever! We were delighted.  

Be on the lookout for your child's construction of similar wonders, and repeat them back. "You saw the cat go down the stairs into the basement? How exciting!"

 It's important that young children learn to memorize through verse!

Fun at Home: Role Play

Get more practice with emphasis, accent, inflection, and vocabulary through role-play games at home.  It's time to bring out your inner thespian! 

Role-play can also help children prepare for and process situations they encounter in daily life. And, of course, your children LOVE when you are silly and vulnerable enough to play this way with them.  Here are a couple of ideas to get you started, and be sure to take turns in different roles.

RESTAURANT: Kids love to pretend they own a restaurant. Act out what you'll say when you go to a restaurant! Here's one family's version of this type of experience (you get the idea):



DENTIST or DOCTOR: When you're the patient, it's hilarious to invent crazy symptoms. "I have purple spots in my armpits. What could be causing that?" Kids will practice speaking in a confident, authoritative way as they answer you.

BUS DRIVER: Set up chairs to set the 'bus' stage, then tell the young driver where you'd like to go. Talk about what you see out the windows. "Driver! Can you please pull over? I see some chickens selling eggs and I'd like to get out and buy some!"

NURSERY RHYMES: Create a storied experience from your favorite rhymes. Have Humpty Dumpty fall onto the sofa, Jack and Jill climb up the stairs, and Teddy Bear run 'round and 'round the kitchen table.  "Hello Mister Dumpty, are you sure you should be sitting up there on the sofa back? I am afraid you are very fragile."  "Jack, will you please bring that pail and climb this hill with me? I need to fetch some water. It's a very big hill."


Want to see the rest of the seven amazing ways nursery rhymes are teaching your child to be fantastic?

We've got a bonus prize for you 

if you make it all the way through part 3!

Keep reading for PART 2, How rhymes teach Reading and Math! 

or jump ahead to PART 3: How rhymes help with coordination, social skills, and MUSIC!

-Gina Weibel, M.S.
Let's Play Music Teacher

Discover The Pentatonic Scale

You probably have the basic gist of what a scale is.  We sing some notes and they go up, up, up. 

But when I start talking about pentatonic and diatonic and chromatic scales in class, people start wondering, "what the heck are those and why do we care?"

In this post, everyone (especially Sound Beginnings parents) can get excited about the pentatonic scale and improve their melody skills.  

A Scale With Every Note

You may hear mention of the chromatic scale.  (Chromatic means colorful.) This is a good one to start with because it means we play 12 semitone intervals, so 13 notes.  Play every single piano key, black and white, and that's the chromatic scale.  Voila!

C  C# D  D# E  F  F# G  G# A  A# B  C

On a piano, the 12 steps are evenly spaced, meaning the wavelength of the note changes by a consistent amount between each step.  You've played an octave when you play a note that has a wavelength twice the length from the note you began on, a 2:1 ratio. 

The chromatic scale is the fundamental set of notes from which scales can be built. It's not really musical, because it doesn't have a tonic, a home note.  

We love finding "Do is Home" in Let's Play Music, and being able to identify the home, or key note, in music we listen to. Music naturally pulls back to Do, so let's look at some scales that have a tonic note and work for writing melodies.

Scales Around the World

Thousands of years ago, peoples in different parts of the world discovered frequency ratios and pitch relationships.  By selecting 5-8 tones with relationships they liked, scales were created and used to make melodies.  Different cultures settled on varying scales, giving the music characteristic sounds.  

Note: Any of the following scales could be played in any key by creating the same pattern of skipping tones (with whole steps and half steps) to create the scale. 

The Diatonic Scale is our beloved Major Scale Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti-Do! Read more about it here. Western music since the Middle Ages on has been based on this scale. We spend most of our time in class learning about this scale. The steps go: whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. Remember that trick and you can build a major scale on any note.

C  C# D  D# E  F  F# G  G# A  A# B  C

Here are the notes/intervals that make an Indian whole-tone scale, just one of the many scales that could be used in Indian music. Notice how evenly spaced the tones are...all whole steps, all the time. Here is some piano music using a whole tone scale. Sounds dreamy!

C  C# D  D# E  F  F# G  G# A  A# B  C

And a Hungarian Gypsy scale. Listen to it here...sounds like you would expect.

C  C# D  D# E  F  F# G  G# A  A# B  C

And an Arabic scale.... well, sort of. Arabic tone scales actually define wavelength intervals smaller than what we use (or have names for or piano keys for). When you're tuning your guitar and your note is a little too flat to be C but a little too sharp to be B, you're playing one of those Arabic notes that we usually pass over. Want to see how a guitar can make the microtones by adding extra frets? Pretty cool, and if you like getting sciencey with microtones, check out some computerized 53-microtone music.

C  C# D  D# E  F  F# G  G# A  A# B  C

The Blues Scale comes in super handy during our 3rd year of Let's Play Music when we get to play some piano blues! Write a new melody for your blues using these notes. Get some help learning Blues Scales here.

C  C# D  D# E  F  F# G  G# A  A# B  C

Pentatonic Scale Everywhere

The pentatonic scale, created by the  mathematician, Pythagoras, is rather special.   He started with a home/tonic note and added a perfect 5th. The 5th is an interval between two notes whose wavelength have a ratio 3:2. 

Take the notes you have, repeat the process again and get 2 more notes, or 5 all together: the pentatonic scale. These notes have nice clean ratio-relationships, so they harmonize nicely together.

By the way, repeat the process to get 2 more notes and create the diatonic scale. If you want to get a little nerdy, let Donald Duck take you on a tour of Pythagorean society in this classic educational cartoon about math.

The result is a five-note scale with the intervals most commonly used for music worldwide. You can find this scale in every musical culture.  There are loads of country, folk, jazz, and rock songs that contain just these 5 notes in the melody, but they are especially prevalent in children's songs.  

C  C# D  D# E  F  F# G  G# A  A# B  C

Do       Re      Mi         Sol     La          Do

Why so popular for children??  Because hearing and singing this small set of easily defined musical intervals is age-appropriate and prerequisite for more advanced melodies.  Pentatonic hearing and singing is foundational for children.  You'll notice in class we start by hearing, echoing, and singing the minor 3rd (sol-mi). 

Once children are hearing and reproducing it, Echo Ed sings patterns that contain la.  Then we add in do  and re as ear-training progresses to more complex tunes.  (Very last we add echoes with fa and ti...notes from the major scale)

Bobby McFerrin demonstrates how his audience has already internalized the pentatonic scale. Wherever he goes in the world, the audience 'gets' the pentatonic scale. The pentatonic scale is part of every musical culture!

  
Sing the Pentatonic

Here's a collection of songs built on the pentatonic scale. Many more of your favorite children's tunes fit into this category, too. 

Notice that the pentatonic scale avoids half step intervals. It seems easier to train your vocal chords to jump to the intervals without having to consider the half steps that occur in the major scale.

Pentatonic songs are great to teach to your child or any beginning singer. You'll recognize many from our Sound Beginnings classes (click links to hear these songs). There are thousands of pentatonic songs you would recognize, but here are a few:

• Amazing Grace 
• Camptown Races
• The Crawdad Song
• Mister Rabbit
• Old Dan Tucker
• Ten in the Bed
• Mary Wore Her Red Dress
• Alabama Gal
• Bow Wow Wow
• Old MacDonald Had a Farm (and other songs)
• Bought Me A Cat
• Old Brass Wagon
• Rocky Mountain
• Button You Must Wander

Have fun singing with the pentatonic scale, and if you're interested, check out our blog series on Singing in Tune.

- Gina Weibel, M.S.

Let's Play Music teacher

Instrument Families: Brass, Woodwind, Percussion, Strings

Last week was the last Sound Beginnings class of the semester, which meant I had the joy of hosting a very special Instrument Petting Zoo day.  Even ambitious parents who want to take their 2-4 year old to the orchestra know that toddlers aren't likely to sit through an orchestral concert. So, unless the child has someone playing an instrument at home, this class is a special chance to hear the sounds of real instruments up close and personal.

And, for the first time ever, all four of my own children happened to be home on a school break, which meant they played piano, ukulele, violin, trombone, saxophone, french horn and trumpet samples for my class. Although the variety of instruments around the world is huge, there are four categories/families of instruments found in the orchestra. Each family creates sound in a similar way. This interactive online orchestra lets you hear each family play its sound- just click on the section you'd like to sample.

Brass Instruments

It's pretty clear to see why the brass instruments naturally go together: they're all made of metal.

Trombone, tuba, sousaphone, trumpet, and french horn are a few brass instruments. 

But that's not the main reason these instruments are a family. I like to point out to my students that these instruments all make sound in a similar way. Yes, you put air into the instruments (aerophones), but not just by huffing and blowing. Brass instruments require the player to buzz the lips.  The embouchure (the way in which a player applies the mouth) is a mouth with tight corners and loose lips in the center, creating a buzz that can be adjusted higher or lower in pitch. I invite all my students to experiment with buzzing, like with this short video to get the feel.

Adjusting the buzz/embouchure creates an overtone series.  A bugle, the simplest brass instrument, has no valves or slides.  So, different notes are produced by adjusting the embouchure and the notes are limited to the overtone series.

Other brass instruments have a few valves or a slide added, allowing the musician to play all notes of the chromatic scale. And what about the saxophone? It's made of brass for sure, but I never put it in the brass family because it is not a 'buzzed' instrument. Nowadays there are even brass instruments made of plastic. A pBone or pTrumpet is lightweight, durable, and kid-friendly (that means it doesn't get dents) but it is STILL a brass instrument with no brass to be found.

Because the embouchure is adjustable, much like the vocal cords, students need to have a good ear to know if they are hitting the correct pitch. Complete musicianship programs like Let's Play Music help develop the ear and prepare a student for success with brass.  Here's a fabulous trumpet solo with some close-ups of the finger action to inspire youngsters who love brass:


 
Woodwinds

The woodwinds are clearly also aerophones (require air to play), but they present a lot of variety in look and sound. Bassoon, saxophone, piccolo, oboe, flute, and clarinet are a few woodwinds.

The name of this family leads everyone to wonder, "Are all of the woodwinds actually made of wood?"

The answer is that, yes, long ago all of these instruments were actually made of wood.  Over time, some of these instruments have been replaced with metal or plastic. And then, around 1840, the saxophone was invented and considered part of this family because (as you now know) it just didn't belong in the brass family. 

All sounds are created from vibrations.  While brass instruments rely on the player's lip buzz to create the vibration, woodwinds generate vibration when air travels across a thin piece of wood, the reed, which vibrates. The clarinet and saxophone have one reed, the oboe and bassoon have two reeds, and the flute and recorder have no reeds (the air vibrates along the length of the tube).

This 7-minute video by House of Sound explains to kids how sound waves are set up in various woodwinds. You might enjoy watching their other videos, too.
 

Strings

Strings are chordophones (make sound by vibrating strings).  Violin, viola, cello, bass, harp, and guitar are a few instruments from this family. The strings are made of nylon, steel, or gut, and the bodies of the instruments are hollow inside to allow the vibrations to resonate. 

Strings are played most often by drawing a bow across the strings. The bow handle is made of wood and the strings are horsehair! Musicians can also pluck the strings with their fingers or tap the strings with the wooden side of the bow.

The Piano Guys love finding ways to get interesting sounds from a cello in unconventional ways. In this video, the deep bass drum sound is a bump on the body of the cello with a little help from some effects. The shaker sound was created by Steve rubbing rosin on his bow. The record scratch is Steve scratching a quarter on the strings. Check out all of Piano Guys videos and our Piano Guys interview, too.
 

Percussion

Percussion instruments are idiophones (makes sound when hit), or membranophones (makes a sound through the vibration of a stretched skin). Others make sounds when shaken or scraped. The worldwide list of percussion instruments is huge, but includes bongos, bass drum, snare drum, xylophone, cymbals, tambourine, maracas, gong, chimes, celesta, and piano.

Did you catch that I added piano to the percussion family? It's true that the piano has vibrating strings inside, so could possibly be considered a string instrument. This amazing brief animation shows the hammer action of the piano keys. When you press each key, a hammer taps the string and sets it to vibrating. When you release the key, a soft pad comes into place to stop the vibration. Because the instrument is played primarily by striking with varying levels of force, I think it fits best into the percussion family.

Piano falls into a sub-group of pitched (tuned) percussion instruments. Other instruments that can be tuned to play notes include ones with lots of notes like glockenspiel, marimba and bells, or ones with only a few notes, like timpani.

There are thousands of percussion instruments, and you have some with you right now! Hand-clapping and finger-snapping are percussion instruments, too. A child's percussive body is the best first instrument to master, so we encourage lots of patting, tapping, and dancing as a foundational skill for learning to play all of the other instruments you've read about in this post. I took my kids to see STOMP LIVE and we loved how they made percussive music from found everyday objects. Check out this video that takes hand-clapping and foot-stomping to an amazing level:
  

Timbre

So there it is. Now you know about the four families of music, grouped together based on how they make sounds. Now, if you had four families of people from different places, each family would speak with its own accent. 

In music, we have timbre (pronounced tamber). Timbre is the character or quality of musical sound. If you play the same tune on a banjo and on a guitar (like in the tune dueling banjos) you'd easily be able to tell the instruments apart because each has a different timbre.

Timbre is often referred to as tone color, an analogy that makes good sense. If each instrument has its own color, and instruments from the same family have similar colors, the composer can paint even more colors/sounds by layering and blending the colors. Or he can paint two contrasting colors/sounds right next to each other, to make them boldly stand out. To make a trumpet melody really stand out, the strings (not other brass) could be chosen to play the harmony.

Tone color/ timbre plays a very important role when the music is written to evoke specific feelings or represent specific ideas or events, so composers carefully select instruments to paint you that picture. 

A fun finale for today's post is to listen to the story Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev and notice how carefully each instrument was chosen to represent the characters in the story. The cat is a clarinet, grandpa is a bassoon, the duck is an oboe, the bird is a flute, and the wolf is a french horn. Have fun!

 

-Gina Weibel, M.S.
Let's Play Music Teacher