When the baby is in the mother’s womb the baby can hear the mother’s heartbeat and other rhythmic sounds from within her body. During the final stage of pregnancy the baby can hear sounds associated with his mother’s voice and the surrounding environment. (Goddard, 2004: 71) This creates the baby’s first musical experiences and provides a musical bridge of familiarity and communication for the new born baby. After his birth the baby is soothed by the familiar rhythmic sound of his mother’s heartbeat and the musical tones and intonation of her voice.
During the early months the baby will need to develop voluntary control of movement. At this time musical toys and melodious intimate vocal interactions create a bridge of musical motivation that encourages the child to develop chosen movements.
As the child learns to think, walk and talk, associated experiences of dance and vocalised singing inspire a musical bridge of personal expression, whereby the child’s inner feelings are expressed outwardly into his world through personalised movement and vocal expression.
Later the child learns to discern structure, parts that build together to create something more elaborate, musical activities become an exploration of tone, rhythm, pitch and melody. Singing nowbecomes a musical bridge that uses the patterns of musical structure to support verballanguage development and associated social and emotional communication.
At around the second birthday young children appear to have a special love of action songs, singing and dancing activities, with a strong social and/or cultural foundation.
Learning to sing is considered to be very supportive to the development of language and subsequent literacy skills. Goddard discusses possible reasons such as the way singing or chanting slows down the sounds of speech and gives tonal and time value to each syllable within the words. (Goddard, 2004: 81) Nursery rhymes also focus on a structured and rhythmic presentation of rhyming words and often incorporate accompanying actions. Singing also creates a focus on the details of sound that make each word and thereby, provides plenty of opportunity for ‘sounding out’. Thus, the young child can enjoy listening to the sounds produced by his/her own voice. Through repetition, exploration and experimentation a child develops his/her singing voice together with a more detailed understanding and use of language.
The Music One to One Project reported that most of the mothers intuitively choose musical activities as part of their everyday communication with their young children and this was enhanced by their participation in the music programme provided by the project. (Young, 2003)
The project failed to find any conclusive research evidence to support concerns presented by ‘the changing patterns of family life, out of home employment for mothers and increased media use in the home.’ (Young, 2003: 257) Issues of concern such as noise pollution and the growing industry of home Media Entertainment remain uncharted.
Noise pollution
Noise pollution is seen in our world as those sounds that are produced by machines as opposed to unique and genuine forms of human spoken and musical creativity. ‘……..has filled our environment with an ‘acoustic geography’ of incessantly repeated and ever growing sounds from ‘machines and technological devices.’ The quality of the sound produced by machines is entirely different from that which derives from natural sources (the sounds of nature, the voice, musical instruments)…….What we are losing is the consciousness of listening’ (Ceppi. 1998: 90)
Just as the different frequencies of light create the colours we see, so the different vibrations caused by physical movement create the sound waves that we hear. Speech and singing are created by vibrations of the vocal cords and music by the vibration of certain parts of the musical instrument. Music and language has a quality of rhythm and sequencing, a flow of patterns and pauses that can be very pleasing to those listening. Digital recordings use a computerised representation of the music which is rather like speeded up Morse code. The music is represented by the digital coding so accurately that the brain can use its’ live musical experiences to interpret the digital recording presented by the computer through speakers. How children will develop in the future with very little exposure to live music is a question that future generations may need to address.
The author considers that digitally created and presented musical experience could passively occupy the auditory receptivity in the young child’s brain and thereby disrupt his potential development of musical intelligence.
Young children themselves illustrate the high quality of auditory experience gained through live musical productions by their spontaneous enthusiasm, participation, and heightened quality of musical interaction, creativity and dance.
Furthermore, if our developing electronic lifestyle is responsible for the fading of adult musical skills in the general population of parents, teachers and child carers, is this thereby depleting young children’s musical experiences and subsequent learning potential? What musical intelligence will future generations have and how might it affect other areas of their learning ?!
‘Every child is musical but not every child has a chance of discovering it……Music is simply pattern making with sound. Part of the skill of problem solving and learning is the ability to notice and make coherent patterns out of given elements. (Fisher, 1990:237)
‘by the age of three this spontaneous exploration of song is usually on the wane. However the child’s intuitive feel for music is a musical intelligence that remains part of his mental make up for the rest of his life.’(Fisher, 1990: 22)
Some specialists have developed musical activities thought to support child development and learning. These programmes are designed to foster and facilitate relevant and appropriate musical activities for young children within their day to day environment.
The European Early Childhood Education Research Journal published an article on the ‘Music One to One Project’ in which they stated:-
‘We were concerned to view the project as an enrichment, which would build on and enhance what mothers were already doing……… We designed an approach to fostering musical activities which we hoped would be both developmentally beneficial and likely to be perceived by carers as relevant and appropriate.’ (Young, 2007:257-8)
Sally Goddard has written extensively on the study of infant reflexes. She has pioneered a therapeutic system of exercises that neutralises primitive reflexes that have remained dominant beyond the appropriate age and development of the child. She has also developed a 10 minute daily regime of physical exercises for schools. These exercises are based on movements that children normally make in the first year of life. The results of this programme have been very successful in helping children to improve attention, balance, coordination, speech, language and literacy. Together with Michael Lazarev, a Russian paediatrician and musician, she has now produced a new CD of nursery rhymes designed to accompany the daily movement programme presented by the Institute for Neuro-Physiological Psychology (INPP) in Chester
The extensive range of frequencies presented in classical music, together with the enriched range of musical composition and orchestral instruments, has founded the promotion of the ‘Mozart Effect’. It is presented that listening to certain classical recordings will help children’s intellectual and creative development. (www.childrensgroup.com) S. Norman cited the work of Dr. Alfred Tomatis researching the relationship between listening and learning. Tomatis found that Mozart’s music helped to stimulate speech and improve children’s movement. (Norman, www.susan@seal.org.uk)
The Suzuki Music programme also promotes the idea that playing specified pieces of classical music stimulates children’s musical intelligence. In this programme the children are exposed daily during the first year to recordings of great performances. Listening to classical music is also considered valuable to young children because it incorporates a very wide spectrum of sounds. They are thereby encouraged to engage in complex integration and organisation of the auditory information received within the brain. The Suzuki methods suggest that this will help children attain exceptional standards of musical performance when learning to play the violin during their preschool years. (Doman,1974, 271) (Gardner, 1993: 373)
‘The Suzuki method is supported by the young child’s ‘heightened sensitivity’ and ability to discern and accurately imitate sensory information during their early years of life.’ (Gardner, 1993:376)
Rudolf Steiner describes the young infant as ‘essentially an imitative being’ wholly directed by their senses, noticing consciously and/or unconsciously everything within their range of perception in great detail. (Childs, 1996.119) Howard Gardner describes Piaget’s theory of the ‘sensory motor stage of imitation’ as ‘children never simply imitated others; they were always seeking to make sense of the world, through trying out schemes, combining them in various ways.’ The Suzuki programme also focuses on aspects of early child development. ‘Their initial schemes of sucking, listening, and looking, and the fundamental processes of assimilation and accommodation, were the building blocks on which children had constructed their knowledge.’
Gardner suggests that the success of the Suzuki programme is presumably due to the child’s extensive acoustic experience when creating and copying musical notes on an appropriately sized genuine violin. The extent of this experience and practice is highly dependent upon the mother’s commitment to ‘slavish and uncritical imitation’ of the music from memory, note for note. The mother does this through maintaining a very high level of intimacy and specialized daily support for the level of repetition and practice required for the young child’s mastery of the violin, which starts at the age of two. (Gardner1993: 373-377)
Gardner goes on to suggest that the Suzuki programme could possibly be altered to embrace a less ridged ‘highly mimetic form of learning’ by encouraging children’s creativity through informal music making and musical composition, in order to create a more holistic approach to the development of musical intelligence. (Gardner, 1993:378)
Musical intelligence is described as the skills of performance, composition and appreciation of musical patterns which Gardner. He considers musical intelligence is almost parallel structurally to linguistic intelligence, thus illustrating that musical abilities are somewhat more than a ‘talent’. (Gardner, 1999: 42) As an illustration of the ‘plasticity’ (Gardner, 1993:378) (Spotlight92, 2005:2) (Healy, 1987: 7) of the young child’s mind and possible considerations of how best to facilitate the young child’s musical potential.
Gardner cites the Anang people in Nigeria.
‘Infants scarcely a week old are introduced to music and dancing by their mothers. Fathers fashion small drums for their children. When they reached the age of two, children join groups where they learn many basic cultural skills, including singing, dancing and playing of an instrument by the age of five, the young Anang can sing hundreds of songs, play several percussion instruments, and perform dozens of intricate dance movements‘. (Gardner, 1993:109)