How To Harness Your Child's Musical Interests

 Music is beautiful, simply put. Music has a way of getting people to express their emotions in a beautiful way; it’s ideal for conveying and getting others to feel that exact feeling. Without any words whatsoever, you can still convey the exact feeling you want. Whether it’s love, sorrow, melancholy, or beyond, music has a way of bringing out this feeling. 

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But music goes further than this; it’s a beautiful form of art. It gets the body moving, it sets the atmosphere in the space, and it’s a great hobby that brings so much fulfillment. As you can see, the influence of music plays a massive role in everyone. So how can you get your little one to fall in love with this interest? 

Start With Exposing Them To Music

One of the best ways to foster a love for music in your child is to expose them to music of all kinds. This can be as simple as playing the radio in your car or playing music from other cultures at home. When kids are exposed to different rhythms, meters, and tonalities from around the world, it expands their musical vocabulary. Even infants recognize the melody of songs long before they understand the words. Singing to them or playing quiet background music at nap and bedtime can connect your little ones to their musical heritage.

As children get older, they will learn from the music they listen to and their parents' tastes. Exposing them to a variety of music can help them shape their opinions on what music should sound like and where their interests will lie. Then, they can find a way to incorporate music into their lives throughout adulthood. This can include anything from watching a concert to dancing to singing along to their favorite song.

Make Music With Them

From fond memories to having fun, why not make some noise with them? These can even include playing some ukulele songs for them or getting them to learn together. Playing simple songs, like "Wheels on the Bus" or "Twinkle, Twinkle," with your child is a great way to introduce children to music. The repetition of lyrics and melody helps children learn and memorize words, and simple tunes have a happy feeling that can easily complement any theme. When they get older, just play some music for them, or let them just explore. Overall, exposure and these positive nudges will help a lot.

Take Them To Music Events

Whether they play the drums, guitar, piano, or violin, kids who are exposed to live music have an easier time sustaining their interest. It's a big part of what makes them feel like they're not alone in their passion and that someone else believes in them, too. Taking them to see their favorite musicians in concert is a powerful way of showing that you support their musical pursuits. Often, they'll be even more motivated to play at home after having experienced the live performance firsthand. There are plenty of music events from orchestras, rock music, or even small-scale music festivals for the community. 

How To Stay Motivated To Learn A New Musical Instrument

 When it comes to interests and hobbies, learning an instrument seems to be one of the most popular options available. Having a musical hobby opens up a lot of unique opportunities and experiences. Whether you just play it at home in your spare time as a relaxing activity, or if you’re interested in joining a band or an orchestra, it can actually be difficult to stick to an instrument for a long time. So in this post, we’ll be looking at some practical tips to help you stay motivated when learning an instrument.

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Ask yourself why you want to learn an instrument

First, ask yourself why you want to learn an instrument. Is it because you find it cool? Is it because you’ve always wanted to play it? Is it because your favorite song has the instrument playing in it? There are lots of reasons why you might want to start learning an instrument and it doesn’t need to be for serious reasons either. It could just be because you wanted a productive hobby!

Don’t buy an expensive instrument to force yourself to play it

One of the more questionable things that people do is buy an expensive instrument to try and force themselves to play it. If they don’t play it, then they can feel like it’s a waste of money. That’s the sort of mentality that they’re aiming for. It helps to push them to play the instrument so they don’t waste their money. Unfortunately, this is a bad way to encourage yourself to play an instrument and should be avoided.

Try to learn simple songs at first

Don’t get too ahead of yourself! Look for simple and easy songs and use them to practice. You can practice reading tabs or sheet music, or you could look up tutorial guides on how to play specific songs. This will help encourage you to play since it’s a song that is familiar to you.

Learn songs that you want to

Once you’ve made it past the simple songs, you can then start moving to more advanced or complicated pieces. You can make this easier by getting a hold of the sheet music or books with the scores. You could even purchase the pieces individually. For instance, you can find items like the Clair de Lune sheet music online for a fraction of the price of a book. It’s a fantastic way to motivate yourself and it can also be used to track your progress at learning a song.

Get started with whatever you have to try and learn more about your instrument of choice

There are lots of different musical instrument apps that you can play around with on your phone, tablet or even your PC. These are excellent for trying out different instruments to see what they sound like. It also gives you an idea on how to learn the instrument, especially if it’s something like a keyboard or piano.

With these simple tips, you should be playing in no time! Do you have any tips to add?

Behind Every Great Musician, There's A Great Team

When it comes to our favorite musicians, we’re often blinded by the person in front of the camera. After all, personality is often as important as voice. Blame shows like X Factor, which have shown us that a great character can make up for a multitude of sins. On top of which, the general public now knows that talent isn’t everything. You could even go as far as to say that musicians nowadays are brands. 

But, as with any enterprise, the musicians are the face of a larger operation. You may only see Taylor Swift up on that stage. But, a whole load of other people have gone into the making of her. Which begs the question of just who is behind our favorite musicians?

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Music teachers

If you want to go right back to basics, we should start with music teachers. Often, our teachers are the people who spark the interests we pursue in life. After all, they’re the first people who actually lead us in the direction they think we should go. And, music teachers often play a huge part in making a musician. Whether they spent years at university, or honed their craft with online courses like those offered by Kent State, you could argue that teachers are the most important people in the music industry today. After all, we wouldn’t have musicians without them. And, much to our satisfaction, many stars still credit their high school music teachers. Pop babe Ella Henderson even went as far as to say ‘I guess Mr Smith always has credit for why I’m here now.’. Well done Mr Smith!

Vocal coaches

Let us not forget that any singer also likely has a voice coach to thank for their well-oiled pipes. While you do need raw talent, most stars only reach the vocal heights they do through the help of coaches. In fact, those killer notes and varied tones wouldn’t be possible without this. Stars like Christina Aguilera have so much to thank their coach for that they’ve taken the mantel themselves. In fact, it’s only thanks to masters like Ron Anderson that we can still enjoy the dulcet tones of Adele. She's suffered severe voice injuries through her career. She got through it though. All because of her vocal coach!

The band

Debates have always been rife in music about whether the band deserve more credit. Whatever your stance, though, our musicians wouldn’t be the same without them. Florence would just be Florence if she didn’t have her machine behind her. And, the same stands for near enough any ‘solo’ singer you see. Just because they have good voices doesn’t mean your favorite musicians can play instruments. While many can (think Ed Sheeran with his killer guitar), this is by no means a given. And, no matter how good their voices might be, no artist could kill it without a little something to back them. So, you might want to search out the band before giving away all the credit.

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