PREPARATORY AUDIATION WITH YOUR CHILD

ACCULTURATION STAGE

Children learn music in much the same way they learn a language. After listening to the sounds of her native language for some months, a child goes through a stage of language babble, in which she experiments with speech sounds that do not make sense to adult listeners. Children also go through stages of music babble, in which they make sounds that typically do not make musical sense to adults. In tonal babble the child sings in a speaking voice quality. In rhythm babble she moves erratically, without consistent tempo or discernible meter. Children must be exposed to a rich variety of music during these years in order to develop the necessary readiness for formal music learning when they are older.

IMITATION STAGE

When a child “breaks the code” of her language, she is able to first imitate words, and then use them meaningfully in phrases and sentences of her own. Similarly, your child is now beginning to use the building blocks of music and may imitate tonal and rhythm patterns with some accuracy. After hearing a tonal pattern or rhythm pattern, the child will usually imitate incorrectly, with her own pattern. At this point the parent or teacher imitates the child’s pattern. In time the child learns to discriminate the differences between the pattern she heard and her own performance of it. The confusion that the child experiences as she engages in stage five of preparatory audiation is good confusion. That the child is attempting to perform the pattern is an indication that she is learning. Eventually, incorrect responses are followed by correct responses.

ASSIMILATION STAGE

At this stage, your child will begin to use and comprehend musical phrases. She learns to perform patterns with some precision as she coordinates and assimilates the imitation of those patterns with the movement of her body and muscles. She is able to learn to audiate as she listens to, performs, reads, writes, creates, and improvises music. At this point, your child may be ready to move beyond Music Play and explore instrument instruction.