Welcome to my 31 Days Series on Homemade Music. If this is your first time here, check out the About tabs and take a look around. To find more posts in this series, click here. Thanks for stopping by!
Music making. In our day and age, you only make music if you’re in school or if you’re a performer of some sort. The rest of us may sing along in the car or at church, or enjoy dancing at a wedding, but very few of us make music for ourselves as a personal discipline, much less as a family. Even professional musicians are guilty of abandoning the joy of commonplace music making, and spend time practicing only for their jobs rather than for the art’s sake itself.
I often have friends asking me how they can introduce classical music to their children, how they can help them develop good taste in singers, or if I can put together a preschool music class for them. The reality is that people shouldn’t need a music teacher by profession to make these simple introductions. Yes, as children age, they will eventually need a master to help teach them the advanced particulars of any given instrument or performance area. But the very basics are not quite so intimidating as most people think.
The problem is that the culture at large is so separated from actually producing music that we’ve lost sight of it as an art, a traditional skill, or even as a fun family activity. How many of you still sit round the piano in the evenings to sing songs together? How many of you practice the violin just for the sake of learning something new? How many of you sing while you work?
The time has come to introduce you to this area of our lives and to give you tools to make homemade music a regular and enjoyable part of your lives. And what better way to do it than by jumping on The Nester’s 31 Days Series? (If you’re not familiar with the 31 Days phenomenon sweeping the blogosphere, it’s basically a challenge to bloggers to write on one topic for an entire month, and to hopefully give your readers something of interest in the meantime.)
My goals this month are to make a case for the value of making music yourself, the value of giving deeper musical experiences to children, and the value of music for culture as a whole. I also want to give you some practical ways to make homegrown music in your own home- whether you’re a complete beginner or a seasoned pro.
Come back tomorrow to read our story and hear how music has permeated our lives. Looking forward to singing and playing with you!
What a great point you make ! You are right, it is a lost art. A precious one. I have been around a few families who do music making and I think it is a powerful influence on every component developmentally…What a gift music is. So often I wonder (as I am sure many others do) why less accomplishment musically. For lack of exposure as common place perhaps. You might just have a nice little book to share (sell) after you get through the 31 Days. Have a great month of Writing
Thank you, Dawn, for stopping by and reading! I think that the advent of recorded music (and TVs and radio too) tend to make us think that music is more for the performer and our entertainment than for our participation. It is my goal to help make participation something less intimidating for the common person this month! I’ll be popping over to your site too! 🙂