10 tips for more music in everyday life
When the Meili family get out of the car, it's not unusual for all four of them to have a big grin on their faces. The reason: the Meili family raps together in the car. Neither pedagogical nor musical ambition drives them to their spoken word concerts in the car. It simply does them good. The children, aged 8 and 10, have fun, and so do the adults.
Singing together is also a tradition for the Ryser family from Zurich. In the evening, everyone can choose a song to sing together. Her children wouldn't sleep without it, says mum Esther with a laugh. With four songs every evening, the repertoire has grown over the years. The parents are convinced that singing together is good for the children in many ways. They feel their bodies, and it also strengthens their sense of togetherness and self-confidence, they say. At the beginning, the father was downright inhibited during the audition.
Singing is embarrassing for many
Many adults have musical inhibitions. Many people associate expressing themselves musically with fear and embarrassment. The musician Mani Matter so aptly describes in the first sentence of his song «Hemmige» that there are people who «nei bhüetis nei» would never sing a song in front of others.
I recently saw a good number of frozen faces on our son's first day at school when all the first-graders and their parents were asked to sing a song together and dance «nei bhüetis nei!» to it.
The teachers literally brought those present to their knees. And when we had to turn round ourselves, we were able to check the activity of the others. The song was immediately sung in canon. It didn't sound bad and the movements became a little looser with each round.
As the shy first-graders sat down, pure joy was evident on their faces - but the adults were relieved that the relaxed part of the event was over.
Children are not afraid of making mistakes
When we make music and dance, we are vulnerable because we turn our inner selves outwards. If this is followed by patronising words, smirks or a bad review, the person concerned will often describe themselves as unmusical for the rest of their life and perhaps also fear embarrassment in other areas.
It is therefore important to be cautious when making judgements about children's musical activities. Rather, children are an opportunity for us adults to set out on our own path once again, to recognise what has already been concealed and to try out new things. After all, children have extraordinary creative abilities and are not afraid of making mistakes.
Researcher and author Ken Robinson is convinced that our education system is training away children's innate creativity by negatively valuing mistakes. «If you're not prepared to make mistakes, you'll never create anything truly original,» he said in a speech that has been listened to over 40 million times online.
Robinson, who was himself a university professor and is counted among the world's intellectual elite, argues in favour of art in education. Lots of art. Dancing is the same as reading and writing. This is one of his approaches to preparing children and young people for the challenges of the future. Robinson also advocates promoting perception and creativity instead of focussing too much on the intellect.
A drum is not a source of noise
Because intelligence is multifaceted. Our brain understands the world as we perceive it: in sounds, visually, abstractly, in touch and movement. And the more versatile we learn to understand something, the more versatile the ideas we generate.
Music can do a lot here. We are therefore not doing our children any favours if we slow them down when experimenting. We actually benefit if we join in. Instruments are a valuable help here. A drum, for example. Dismissing it as a source of noise is a mistake. A drum is sensual and changeable. It can be used to set the flight of the butterfly from the picture book to music (including the bear march, of course!) or to dance to.
Making music teaches you to organise your strength and trains hand and eye coordination.
A djembe is recommended for everyday use at home. This drum is best «woken up» before playing by stroking the stretched goatskin. This is both skin care and a sensory shower for your hands and ears. By simply trying it out, you can elicit different sounds from the drum and, with practice, really draw them out. If you lay the drum on the floor, you can sit on it and play.
Movement and music
Making music means expressing yourself physically and feeling your movements. It teaches you to organise your strength and trains hand and eye coordination. Music also promotes the imagination of patterns and shapes and the experience of space and time.
Music is communication
Music is also always communication. This can be observed when a child drums, sings or dances all by itself. It is a form of expression.
The crowning glory is, of course, making music together. The secret of success for both amateurs and professionals is listening to each other and having a common pulse. How well everyone masters their instrument is of secondary importance. When our son and his nursery school buddies once experimented with the ukulele and a Schwyzerörgeli, it became too noisy for them. They told us later that they almost gave up. But then they co-ordinated and came up with a kind of verse and chorus together. They were so enthusiastic about the result that they threw plastic money from the children's coffers into the organ case as a reward for their achievement.
Whether we rap uninhibitedly in the car or let the singing sound of a singing bowl lead us into silence - it's all part of our wealth of skills. Cultivate them - it's worth it.
How to bring music into your everyday life: 10 tips
- Provide a selection of instruments that the children have access to, such as rattles, a sound stick, an African djembe, a triangle, a harmonica, tonewoods and hand drums. Let the children experience them. Do not judge them. If you play the instruments yourself, the child can learn the technique if they are interested.
- Build an instrument with your child - plucked boxes or rattles with the little ones, while the older ones can carve tonewoods out of a branch of privet. There are also instrument kits, for example for the cajon. You can find instructions on the Internet or in the library.
- Use the instruments in a story. For example, let the teddy bear run over the drum at the end.
- Create a soundscape using instruments and household utensils: a thunderstorm, a jungle, a glacier, outer space.
- Make up a song on a hike. Start with the chorus, maybe you can find a rhyme together. The melody can be invented or adopted. For a very spontaneous bedtime song, the son picks three things from a picture. For example, Australia, a train and a moose from the colourful world map. Without thinking twice, build a little story out of it and sing it freely.
- Sounds in everyday life offer many creative possibilities: The crumpling of paper or the crackling of a bag of sand combines feeling with hearing. Or you can adopt a sound, for example that of an electric toothbrush: use the three minutes to improvise together with your child every day.
- Joint courses provide input for even more music at home. There are great and varied weekend or holiday courses. Parent-child singing (Elki for short), which many music schools offer, is suitable for the little ones.
- Tell your child what you have to say about a piece. Does it make you sad, does it make you want to dance? Perhaps you can hear an instrument, e.g. the guitar solo.
- Dance around the flat with your child. Cheerful or dreamy, just as you feel at the moment.
- Research the origins of the instrument together. Stock up on materials in the library. Perhaps cook a speciality of the home country or watch a dance on the internet. Find a song that you can sing in the original language.
