3 Specific Responses To Music

For the Awareness and Trust level, I would expect them to stop making noise when I am singing and to babble or make noise when I am not singing. I would also expect them to turn their head towards or away from the music to indicate whether or not they would like to join the experience. Lastly, I would expect them to shy away from dissonant music and react more positively towards consonant music.

For the Independence, Control, and Responsibility level, I would expect them to respond well to opportunities for autonomy, like where they get to choose an instrument. I would also expect them to be able to begin to have the ability to maintain a steady beat when playing instruments. Lastly, I would expect the kids to begin to be able to listen to their peers playing without also needing to play along.

Here are some musical responses that I may see in a music group for each development level:

Awareness & Trust
-A child may turn their gaze toward sound source
-turn away from music
-reach arms toward sound source
-match pitch for about half of the time

Independence, Control and Responsibility:
-play shaker along to music for longer duration
-imitate movement to music that has been learned
-take turns with peers

Trust-
At this level I would expect to see babies tuning and looking at my face, and often waving their hands and feet around when the music starts. Sometimes they cry if my music is too loud or fast, or there is too much noise in the room, or there are other factors causing them to regard music as too much stimulus that day. I can see a clear difference in their eye contact and awareness when I start my upbeat hello song ( most sleepy babies wake up. When I end class with a lullaby before my goodbye song there is a perceivable shift in the room as the babies all settle down, vocalize less, cry less and generally are content to be held/ rocked by a caregiver at this point. They will usually already begin to demonstrate preference by smiling at preferred songs when I begin to sing.Occasionally they will coo or ‘ sing’ back to be when I look at and sing to them.

Independence
This is when I begin refer to class as ‘ slightly organized chaos’. Babies are mobile and all over the place usually. Often when I start music they will stop and look at me, and then usually go back to exploring. This is when I expect to see them begin bouncing independently with some of my songs. I also notice that when I do songs where I stop the music they will either stop what they are doing and look at me, or look confused or begin to giggle.Often the baby will approach me and strum or bang my guitar. At this stage I notice a lot of response to drums so I do a Lot of drumming. During this stage I expect to see some babies beginning to imitate my actions and sounds, particularly high pitched expressive sounds ( like oh no!) animal sounds and vehicle sounds.

Control

This is when I begin to bring out stop and go songs because the children now have the ability to do things like jump and stop on cue. I also notice that they can handle more musical variety such as moving quickly and then slowing down to tiptoe. They can follow actions and also follow actions in a sequence (or choose not to!) they may start to try to sing or chant the end of a favourite song or use vocal approximations for words in songs.

Responsibility
Now I can see a child able to call a response with a call and response song, or even tap back a rhythm. They are are able to remember action and melodic sequences week to week. They respond to songs with changes to pitch and timbre such as singing in a high voice then a low voice or a laugh voice then a quiet voice. They can usually tap a steady beat on their lap or on the floor and are able to do so while chanting or singing. They have much larger motor skills and can complete action songs with a larger variety of actions and handle doing two actions at the same time .

For awareness and trust you may see the child turn towards the music or away depending on how they feel about it, reach for you or the instrument you are playing or try to put it in their mouth to get a better feel for what they are experiencing. For Independence, control, and responsibility, a child may choose to imitate you whether that be vocally or if you are doing any type of movement. Along with movement they may display rhythm of some sort either entrained to the music or where they have their own internal beat they are following. Lastly, they may also go about picking their own instrument to play in the musical experience.

Awareness:
– Changes in movements, facial expressions, vocalizations in response to melody, pitch, timbre, singing
– Settles in response to rhythmic repetition (ex. rocking) and pitch, timbre
– Altered movements and vocalizations in response to musical silences

Trust:
– Purposeful vocalizations in response to singing; evidence of some matching pitches, vocalizations related to the tonality of the song
– Movement, expressions, and body posture to indicate music style preferences
– Purposely shake simple shaker instruments in relationship to the presented music
– Vocalizations to indicate happiness or other emotions related to the music

Independence:
– Is able to bounce, rock and use whole body rhythmically in response to the music
– Babbles using melodic intonation
– Can clap, bang two objects together and imitate simple movements

Control:
– Sing two words in phrases using pitched intervals and can use different vocal timbres
– Explore novel instruments
– Anticipate the end of familiar songs

Responsibility:
– Sings melodic contour, pulse, and meter within familiar songs
– Repeats rhythm patterns and can group rhythm patterns into a sequence
– Controls dynamics of their play to match the music

And there’s so much more! 🙂