Have you ever thought about analysing the songs you teach your children?

A song can be analysed in terms of its rhythm content, pitch content and range, among other things.

I love analysing songs – it’s great fun to take a song apart and see what it really contains – then you can work out if a song is a good one for your children –

Take ‘hot cross buns’ for example.  The pitch content is Do Re and Mi. The rhythm content is Ta, Te-te- and ‘sh’.

In traditional language the pitch content would be C, D, E or G, A, B for instance and the rhythm content would by crotchets, quavers and rests.

Have you ever sung the song ‘Cauliflowers fluffy’?  This has a HUGE range, many chromatics, syncopated rhythms and complex melodic leaps – and yet it has been deemed as ideal for 4 year-olds in many schools.

In maths, would you teach algebra to a 4 year old or would you start with numbers to 5?

In English would you teach the complexities of grammar to a 4 year old or would you start with recognising letters?

So in music, let’s look closely at what we are really teaching and give our children the best chance to learn by starting them at the beginning – 2 notes to sing in tune, rather than10?

If you start at the beginning, you get the best results and children start to really understand music and how it works!  Brilliant!