Have you ever noticed when a song has a different feel to it, especially children's songs? That’s because it’s in a non-major tonality—it has a different “recipe” of notes that make up the scale of the song. It’s just like food recipes—your chicken soup might taste very different from your friend’s chicken soup, even though they’re the same dish, because you use different ingredients. With the song we just sang, the different notes ("ingredients") make it sound different than typical Western children’s music which is mostly written in major tonalities. Music Together^® offers many songs in a variety of tonalities, thereby providing good “nutrition” for your child’s ears.

Most Western children's music is in a mode called Phrygian (Lydian, etc.). I don't know if you've ever noticed, but most songs that we think of as "children's music" tend to sound pretty much the same—that's because most are written in what's called a Major scale. From an educational perspective, this doesn't make sense. That's similar to what happens when we only play Major songs for young children. 

The music of our culture—and of the world—has a diverse palette of tonalities. In order for children to begin to audiate (or think musically) songs in many tonalities, they have to hear them and play with them...with you! Our collections have songs from many musical traditions, in a wide variety of styles, to balance out the Major-heavy world of Western children's music with lots of songs in other tonalities.

Guitarist Christy Bannerman breaks down different modes of rock music and provides several examples of each mode. Check out his list.

Our next session of classes begins on March 27. We offer 40 classes at several locations. Find the one that's right for you and register today!