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I love lots of different types of music. Some of my favorites are classical, Christian, old rock, lite jazz, Celtic… Music just soothes the soul sometimes don’t you think?
My daughter listens to Japanese music. She has learned to speak some Japanese doing this. She is a BIG anime fan, so she listens to their music. She also enjoys contemporary Christian music, too.
Music was sent down a telephone line for the first time in 1876, the year the phone was invented. Maybe that was the beginning of listening to music while your phone call is on hold! HA HA
Some kids benefit from listening to music while they study. I know that is true for my daughter. Music calms her and actually helps her focus better. I let her listen to music quietly while she works.
Does you child like...Read More at Quaint Scribbles.
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I had a fun time taking my son to go see Switchfoot. I was able to review the concert for an Examiner.com article...Of course, that meant FREE tickets and I was once again (for at least a couple hours) THE MOM to have!! Of course...with a 16 yr old son...I took advantage of that short window. lol
Check out my photo slideshow!
Here's my review..
Grammy Award-winning, multi-platinum rock band Switchfoot sold-out Boulder Theater Friday night as they continued their co-headlining tour with Anberlin. Fans of all ages (including myself) had been eagerly awaiting the concert. I heard one teen comment on the vast age differences of those filing into the Boulder Theater.
The band opened by singing ‘Mess of Me’ off their seventh album Hello Hurricane, (the album won Best Rock Gospel Album at the 53rd Grammy Awards) and continued to thrill their fans singing a mix of songs from their albums Hello Hurricane andThe Beautiful Letdown, as well as the songs ‘Restless’, ‘The War Inside’, ‘Selling The News’, ‘Thrive’ and ‘Dark Horses’ from Vice Verses.
Just two weeks after releasing their newest album Vice Verses, fans sang along to every song and that fact didn’t go unnoticed. Jon Foreman (lead vocals, guitar) thanked the crowd for helping to make Vice Verses such an instant success. (The album debuted at No.8 on the Billboard 20, at No.5 at iTunes Album chart and No.3 on iTunes Alternative chart.) Jon, an evangelical Christian, along with his brother Tim (bassist for the group) writes hard hitting meaningful lyrics that appeals to the masses, not just to Christian rock fans. Thus, the influence of Switchfoot's music has become vast.
Opening for Switchfoot and Anberlin was Atomic Tom, a rock band from Brooklyn, New York. I asked Luke White (lead vocals) what it was like touring with the bands…
“It’s a lot of fun," Luck replied. “It's a wonderful experience. We are getting to play for crowds that we normally don’t get to play for and we're having a great time. All the guys are great!"
Along the tour route, local chapters of StandUp for Kids (www.standupforkids.org), a national nonprofit volunteer outreach organization dedicated to making a difference in the lives of at-risk, homeless and street kids, will be collecting new and used backpacks at the concerts. The backpacks will be used to distribute food and essentials to kids served by the organization.
Future Vice Verses Tour dates:
10/10 San Francisco, CA @ The Warfield Theatre
10/11 Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern
10/13 Amarillo, TX @ Azteca Music Hall
10/14 Siloam Springs, AR @ John Brown University
10/15 Longview, TX @ Le Tourneau University
10/17 Dallas, TX @ House of Blues
10/18 Austin, TX @ Stubbs Waller Creek
10/20 Albuquerque, NM @ Kiva Auditorium
10/21 Phoenix, AZ @ Grand Canyon University Arena (SWITCHFOOT ONLY)
“The War Inside,”can be heard in the trailer for In Time, an upcoming 20th Century Fox film starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried. Switchfoot has contributed an exclusive new song, “Out of Control,” to the just-released Hawaii Five-0 soundtrack. The track was heard in this week’s episode of the hit CBS show.
Switchfoot waged a Game Day takeover of ABC, with Vice Verses tapped as the exclusive music for the Oklahoma vs. Florida State football game. ESPN hosted an exclusive stream of Vice Verses and partnered with the band to give away a trip for two to the 2012 Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA. Hurley selected Switchfootas the exclusive music for the Hurley Pro, held last month in Trestles, CA and the band performed at a recent San Diego Padres game.
Switchfoot will perform “Dark Horses,” their new Top 15 Modern Rock hit, on “Conan” on October 25th. The track was just added by Clear Channel Alternative Premium Choice, here in Denver on WTCL as well as WRFF (Philadelphia), KNDD (Seattle), WRXL (Richmond) and 98.7 (Los Angeles)
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Launching Oct 18th, The City Harmonic’s Kingsway release, I Have A Dream (It Feels Like Home), is one of the most anticipated full-length imports in decades. Co-produced by the band with Jared Fox, I Have A Dream (It Feels Like Home) is a journey of imagination, cinematic in composition, and, as is signature for the band, a definitive reflection of The City Harmonic’s organic, communal aesthetic. Intelligent, deeply spiritual and intrinsically ‘real life,’ it reveals the poetic art of The City Harmonic, a band bent on living today for the world to come. (Preorder today for only $7.99)
2011 Breakout Artist of the Year The City Harmonic barreled its way from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada onto the music scene with Introducing The City Harmonic, an EP featuring “Manifesto,” which soared to No. 5 on iTunes and captivated over a million viewers on YouTube. Top that with becoming the best selling new artist on Billboard’s Top Current Digital Sales Chart (over 90K downloads), and it’s enough, among life’s crazy distractions, to get your attention.
But this band—vocalist/songwriter and pianist Elias Dummer, bassist Eric Fusilier, guitarist Aaron Powell and drummer Josh Vanderlaan— isn’t content to feed the machine or build a fan base so much as to build upon a dream. And not a dream as in a fairy tale. But THE Dream.
These four guys grapple with the tension of this world, crafting it into anthems of longing, hope, and love—songs of light for ‘seeing through a glass darkly.’ The City Harmonic makes music that makes you reconsider what you really believe... about yourself, your world and your God.
Speaking about their newest project, I Have A Dream (It Feels Like Home) ...
“This project for us was like a journey through a lot of intertwining things,” Elias Dummer says of the band’s full-length debut. “At its heart is the overarching theme of brokenness and redemption, of light and dark, the unveiling of something bigger and better than ourselves.”
“… if we can somehow spark in people that dream, something they just can't shake, then I hope that will inspire them to sing like every word matters, to live like every day matters, and having tasted heaven, they’ll get on with helping this world feel more like home.”
The title track and first single, which was written even before the songs on the EP, has always been the lynchpin on which the full-length record would hinge.
“The dream, like Martin Luther King’s, is that there is another way,” Elias explains, “that it can be what we say it is, the eventual truth that we will awaken, just as Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz awakened from her dream, to find ourselves home at last.”
Like a roadmap with only one route, to sum up the journey of faith and mystery that isI Have A Dream (It Feels Like Home) would seemingly deprive the listener of the essence of the experience. But from the opening notes, a deliberate quest unfolds.
Setting the stage for the project as a whole, with ties to John 17, the piano-pounding “Yours” flies in the face of our consumer-driven society, an anthem of surrender that points toward the tension of living in this world as a Christian, while “Spark” introduces the theme of light, hinting at its transforming power: Could a spark of Your love light the whole Church on fire? When we care for our neighbour more than we care for style?
“Being a Christian now is more difficult than it was 200 years ago,” Elias says of the thematic trail. “We face tragedy at every turn because of the way our media and culture operates. The stories of this world have let us down. Politics have let us down. We try to cope with it by becoming apathetic or by hiding in the Christian bubble—some altered version of the American dream where living for Christ leads to personal comfort— even misguided Christian stories can let us down and this is the tension of the world we live in. Christianity isn’t a tool to escape suffering, it’s a lens by which we understand it and the means by which we live through it. Our culture is built on the notion that our spirituality can be compartmentalized but, simply put, the Christian story isn’t. We can go from mountaintop to valley in the span of a day, and in the midst of that valley Christ calls us to love our neighbors, our enemies, just as if we were with them on the mountaintop. Apathy may be a natural result of today’s brokn world, but the Christian story is that Christ is redeeming his creation and we have a role to play as the body of Christ.”
Inspired by the story of Transfiguration in Matthew 17 and by Martin Luther King’s iconic speech, “Mountaintop” asserts the notion that as ambassadors here, citizens of a Kingdom to come, we are meant to live and love among the ruins.
“Jesus talks about countercultural ways of living among the least of these,” Elias continues. “It’s not glamorous. It’s hard work. If we boil it all down to what exists in church, ultimately, we make being a churchgoer a poor substitute for being Jesus in our communities or even engaging our communities at all.”
“Some of the most powerful moments where I recognize God’s presence in a real way have been completely outside the church worship context,” adds Eric. “We’ve had to grow up out of the default cultural Christian mindset of worship, instead responding to wherever you sense God, which truthfully is everywhere.”
I Have A Dream builds from “Mountaintop” with “Fell Apart,” “Be Still O My Soul” and “Wake Me Up,” pointing to the reality of God in our dark nights of the soul; the light of his presence when we ache for ‘something real in a world of fake.’
Layer by layer, I Have A Dream (It Feels Like Home) builds toward the title track, a soaring, melodic anthem that sings the hope of heaven imprinted on our hearts before the foundation of the world. From the romantic interlude “Le Reve,” meaning ‘the dream,’ each song intertwines with another, painting an irresistible picture of grace at work through us. The City Harmonic’s interpretation of I Corinthians 13, “Love” forms a bridge into “Holy (Wedding Day),” a beautiful ballad about the ultimate redemption, the glorious day to come when faith becomes sight. All that remains, besides the bonus version of “Manifesto,” is the heartfelt “Benediction,” which just might be the perfect farewell for any communal act of worship.
Live like you mean it
Sing like you’re living for God
Whether in full-on pop explosion or in ethereal ballad, the songs of The City Harmonic connect to that missing piece in all of us and give us cause and permission to sing out. Which frankly is part of the band’s DNA. That much will never change for The City Harmonic, the curiously captivating sing-along nature of the music they make. It was, and is always, birthed with community expression in mind.
“Music engages us emotionally and intellectually,” says Elias. “There are universal signs of God’s presence in every part of it. ... it’s like a glimpse of something bigger than ourselves, some pervasive and yet otherworldly dream. And if we can somehow spark in people that dream, something they just can't shake, then I hope that will inspire them to sing like every word matters, to live like every day matters, and having tasted heaven, they’ll get on with helping this world feel more like home.”
Preorder today for only $7.99 I Have A Dream (It Feels Like Home)
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Music instruction has really changed! Did you know you can easily teach a child a musical instrument without paying for a weekly tutor? The use of CDs and computers can enhance instruction to provide a better musical education than years with most music teachers. And it’s all done by you and in your own home!
Why should your child have some kind of musical instruction? Here is a list of reasons adapted from Piano-Mentor.com.
1. Music is a science. It is exact, specific; and it demands exact acoustics. A conductor’s full score is a chart, a graph which indicates frequencies, intensities, volume changes, melody and harmony all at once and with the most exact control of time.
2. Music is mathematical. It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time into fractions which must be done instantaneously, not worked out on paper.
3. Music is a foreign language. Most of the terms are in Italian, German, or French; and the notation is certainly not English – but a highly developed kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas. The semantics of music is the most complete and universal language.
4. Music is history. Music usually reflects the environment and times of its creation often even the country and/or racial feeling.
5. Music is physical education. It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lip, cheek, and facial muscles in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragm, back, stomach, and chest muscles, which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets.
6. Music is art. It allows a human being to take these dry, technically boring (but difficult) techniques and use them to create emotion. (Adapted from Piano-Mentor.com)
What are some options available to homeschool parents? What kind of music and instrumental instruction can be given at home? Here are some links and other resources.
Music Theory
1. HappyNote.com – This website has four wonderful games that you can download and use to teach your child music theory. These games teach your children to read treble and bass clef notes, musical symbols and more. One of them also covers “playing by ear”. Best of all, these four programs are FREE!
2. eMusicTheory.com – This site provides online tools for teachers and students of basic music theory, everywhere. It has some great interactive learning games that cover Note Reading, Piano Note Reading, Paced Note Reading, C-Clef Reading, Key Signatures, Interval Drills, Scale Building, and Chord Drills.
Piano Instruction
Years ago, one of the best products for teaching piano at home was Piano Discovery by Jump Music. The Piano Discovery System turned your personal computer into the piano teacher of your dreams. The system had a midi keyboard and CD-Roms with over 900 lessons, 70 voice demonstrations and 60 songs. Each student’s progress was tracked by a evaluation method that took into account the student’s skill level. Lessons could be modified to improve each student’s weakest skills. Parents or teachers could check progress at any time and print out certificates of achievement at the end of each section.
Unfortunately for homeschoolers, Jump Music has gone out of business. But sometimes, you can still find the Piano Discovery System on eBay.com. I was fortunate enough to find one and purchased it for my own children. If you can find it, BUY IT!
Another piano option with keyboard is The Piano Suite Deluxe Bundle by Adventus.com. In my research on this product, it appears to be very similar to the Piano Discovery System mentioned above. Piano Suite is a real teaching tool, developed by music educators.
With Piano Suite you can also record your own music, display and print out the musical notation. Compositions can also be exported to the popular MIDI format and even made available to a global audience via the Internet. Biographies of over 150 composers and performers are included. Challenging interactive games sharpen your piano playing skills and develop theory comprehension. This product looks very promising!
Guitar Instruction
You Can Teach Yourself Guitar (Book & CD) by William Bay. This is a very popular guitar method. Its success lies in the fact that is extremely easy to understand and very flexible. It moves at a slow, steady pace and enables you to play chord accompaniments in 7 primary guitar keys! In addition, you will learn to strum blues chords and you will also begin to play fingerstyle backgrounds. This book is supplemented by a play-along CD. You can purchase this online at Amazon.com.
Violin Instruction
Ebaru Publishing at Ebaru.com has a wonderful home program for teaching your child the violin. This program was developed by Eden Vaning-Rosen. At the Southeast Homeschool Expo, I met David Rosen of Ebaru Publishing. You could tell by the way he demonstrated their system that he loves teaching children the violin. Within 2 minutes, my younger children knew all the parts of a violin and bow. What a wonderful way to teach the violin!
The Violin Book Series contains seven books which take the children from beginning to advanced violin playing. The first book covers the basic violin hold, parts of the instrument, stage manners, and learning to play with a beautiful, rich, squeakless tone. And as your child advances, they will play pieces by Mozart, Bach, Corelli, Brahms, Beethoven, as well as Spanish and German and more International Favorites. They will also learn the beginning elements of musicality are introduced, such as breathing, relaxed bow control, and in-depth mechanics on the mechanism of producing sound with stringed instruments.
What is great about this program is that it can be used for more than one child. And they sell/rent the violins too! Each one is a complete setup according to the Music Educators National Conference/American String Teachers Association standards, and includes a violin tuning pitch pipe.
The different instruction methods that I covered above is only the tip of the iceberg! And that’s so exciting! Do you realize that many of these programs/courses were developed because parents like you wanted to teach their children at home? So why not take advantage of them?
Conclusion
Now, how do you go about implementing any of the above programs into your homeschooling? Can you get your children to do this without going to an instructor every week? The answer is YES!
As with any subject that you teach your children at home, you have to get them to do it. Make it mandatory, not optional. Schedule the music time, just like you would if you were taking your child to an instructor. If necessary, make your child sit down with their music and give them a time limit, or tell them they have to master one lesson before they are done. You will be surprised at what your children will be able to accomplish!
“I wish to see all arts, principally music, in the service of Him who gave and created them. I would not for the world forego my humble share of music. Singers are never sorrowful, but are merry and they smile through their troubles in song. Music makes people kinder, gentler, more staid and reasonable. I am persuaded that after theology, there is no art that can be placed on a level with music – for beside theology, music is the only art capable of affording peace and joy of heart… The devil flees before the sound of music almost as much as before the Word of God. MUSIC IS A FAIR AND GLORIOUS GIFT OF GOD!” – Martin Luther
Kelly Ling is a work-at-home, homeschooling mother of five. She has mentored many homeschooling and work-at-home moms over the past eighteen years. Kelly also owes a home-based web design business. When not doing web design, she is constantly updating some of her homeschooling/work-at-home websites – Homeschool Top Sites, ChristianWAHM.com, WAHM Contests, and others.Article
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