Our first feature this week is written by Kirk Wheeler of eioapps, creator of Mixeroo. Kirk writes about the qualities of music, the impact music has on our lives, and his inspiration behind building an app that supports music education for our young ones. Given the rapid pace we all live, reading a post like this is a fine excuse to follow music’s example and “call time into question”. What a breath of fresh air.
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A bird does not sing because it has an answer.
It sings because it has a song.
-Chinese Proverb
I think that music education is important. It is that simple. As much as I would love to point to one study or another about what kind of academic improvement students who study music will demonstrate, or how many points on this test or how much better children who are exposed to music at a young age will be at math or science or life or really anything at all, the truth is I can’t. I don’t know if it will help them not. Everyone learns in different ways and there are myriad influencers from environment to parents. For every study that shows how important arts education is for a developing mind, there will be another study to show that it makes no difference at all. As for myself, I believe in it. As a musician and a father of two children, I have seen how music can lift spirits, bring people together, or stop the tears of a child in pain.
A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.
-Henry Giles
Growing up music was always a part of my life. Whether it was the sound of my grandfather playing piano, the cassette tapes of Peter, Paul and Mary on long car trips, the church choir, marching band rehearsal, my first real rock concert, practicing scales, a mix-tape for a girl, or any one of the thousand ways that music has shaped my days, music has always been there. Music has a way of embedding itself in our consciousness and taking root and blooming at just the right time and in the most amazing ways. How many songs have you known the words to years later, or how many melodies do you hum out of the blue? Music is sticky like that. Music is honey for the soul.
Music is by far the most powerful way human beings have discovered to endow time with structure.
– Stephen Koch
I love this quote. The first time I read it I stopped and reread it over a few times. Nearly everything we do is an attempt to endow time with structure. We plan our days down to the minute, trying to squeeze as much as we can into the short time we are given, but what a gift we have in music. For music has a way of calling time itself into question. We get lost in the feeling as it wraps itself around us and takes hold and doesn’t let go until the music stops, and even then it lives on. In a time when music has saturated our society to point of nearly becoming background noise, we still turn to music when we are broken or when we need to dance.
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.
Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.
-Ludwig van Beethoven
Now for the app. I have a two year old daughter, and when I first saw the iPad in her hands I knew that it would change everything. Like many of you I spend my days around technology, but this was the first time I saw a computer become so tactile. The iPhone was the beginning, but this was a different thing altogether: being able to reach out and touch and interact with it was quite simply, amazing. So I went to the app store and looked around and did not see what I was looking for, and that’s when I had the moment that I am sure many of you have had – to create it myself. With no previous coding experience, I bought a few books and downloaded some classes from iTunes U and stayed up way too late for way too many nights. In the end Mixeroo was born, and now it is available for everyone to play with.
Music is an essential part of everything we do. Like puppetry, music has an abstract quality which speaks to a worldwide audience in a wonderful way that nourishes the soul.
– Jim Henson
Like Kermit, music is an essential part of everything I do. It has shaped me in ways that I can not begin to explain, and my hope is that Mixeroo and the music inside of it can bring that abstract quality to some of the children in your lives.
Way to go! I grew up with music, “singing for my supper,” with my mom in the kitchen. My two girls listen to The Andrew Sisters, Neil Diamond, a wide variety. I totally agree – music soothes, inspires, and connects. Love this app.
This was a great post!!!
Speaking as one whose first fave group was the Mills Brothers (“The Whole Town’s Talkin’ About the Jones Boy”), I can attest to the “sticky” aspect of music. Little song snippets pop into our heads from out of nowhere, apparently unprompted by anything, and it has been so forever.
I visualize music as the sound of math…i.e. a music score relies on known harmonics, so the composer can use them to create harmonious works or, if needed, an obviously unpleasant sound.
Music should be taught in schools, no matter that is not subject to achievement testing.
My sister is a piano teacher and she told me about Sounds of the Orchestra iPhone app. I posted on it at http://www.pragmaticmom.com/?p=11450
I thought it was another nice music app.
Great post, couldn’t agree more. My mother is a composer and music professor so I grew up around music my entire life. Just bought your app for my 2 year old daughter, thanks & good luck!