100 day (or 2 year) practice challenge update

What started out as a 100 day practice challenge has been going on for two years now.  The kids have practiced every day for 2 years.  To me, its an awe inspiring accomplishment.  To them, its just what they do.

 We've relaxed a bit.  You don't practice when your sick, that just encourages martyrdom.  If the violins don't fit in the car with the skis for a ski trip, they get left at home.  Reasonable exceptions like that.  

That said, the practice challenge died a long time ago.  It stopped being a challenge and became a way of life.  They just practice every day.  

Does that make it easy? Nope.  

Does it translate to other instruments, math or Spanish?  Nope. 

 Are all the practices cheerful and fun?  Hell no. 

What?  They aren't cheerful and fun?  Isn't it supposed to be easy by now?  

The standard Suzuki advice to any challenge is that you need to "build the relationship first."  Yup, build that relationship and it will all be easy-peasy.  As if building a relationship is like building a stone wall that once built will last forever and will over time be covered by pretty flowers.  As if once that relationship is built, the kid will never stomp off furious about the bizarre rhythms in Two Grenadiers, and the other one won't be in tears over the slurs in the Vivaldi Concerto that just don't make sense even though they did 6 months ago, and I won't ever get tired.

The wall may be built and covered with pretty flowers, but there are definitely  thorns and they stick us every day.  We'll keep on going, because the flowers are worth it. 

Three Kitties Concert Review, December 28, 2012

Concert Review



As the full moon glistened on the snow at the foot of Lingle Gap, the Three Kitties rocked the Gykis Glam Party.   The Three Kitties, a band of three friends with stage names Kitty Queen, Whimper and Goldenpelt, entertained party goers with holiday classics ranging from Kitty Queen's lovely Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies to Goldenpelt's raw electric Run Run Rudolph.
  
It was a high energy show, Kitty Queen played keyboards and sang beautifully, Whimper kept the beat on his new Christmas-red drum set, and Goldenpelt played electric guitar, belting out songs Mountain Minstrel style.

The Three Kitties played without a set list, calling out songs on the fly.   

An enraptured fan danced on the bass drum during Swimming Hole, a Three Kitties original that evoked summer fun at the swimming hole on a cold winter night.


The show was followed with a blues jam!  What a party!





Set List:

Run Run Rudolph

Jingle Bells
White Christmas
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies
Stray Cat Strut

Swimming Hole

Haunted Hollow

Getting Started

The boys played in a show at a House Concert last night.  I had never been to a house concert and didn't know what to expect.  It was wonderful!  There were kids there!  There were families!  There were people asking about playing music with kids, as families!  About how to get started...



I'm going to write a couple blog posts about getting started.  I'm going to start with the youngest audience, babies and toddlers.  

Here's what worked for us:

• Play lots of music at home, all different kinds of music, all the time.  Play your favorite music for your kids.  It will become their favorite music!  Dance, sing, and act silly.  Play music in the car.  Sing songs while you walk, work, and play.

•  Sign up for a Music Together class.  We loved these!  They're so much fun.  The music is good and generally based on folk songs.  There are songs in Spanish.  Best of all, it teaches (completely through play) really sound basic music concepts like pitch and rhythm.  There are other early childhood classes and they are probably good too, but this is the one we have experience with.

•  Go see live music.  Bring the kids.  Get them up front so they can watch the musicians.  Let their early experiences with music show them that music is something that real people make, not just something that comes out of a box.  Better yet, take them to see kids playing real music.  Kids get really inspired by other kids!

• Take the batteries out of all the plastic toys that play "music".  Don't listen to bad kid music.  You deserve better and so do your kids.  There's a lot of awesome kid music out there.  Check out Dan Zanes and Elizabeth Mitchell.  Throw away the Baby Einstein CDs that you got at your baby shower.  There have been studies done that showed that kids that listen to these are less musical than kids who don't.

•  Keep the TV off.  If you need screen time to take a shower, buy a Dan Zanes concert DVD, or a concert DVD of your favorite band.  Gus's favorites were the Dixie Chicks and Bruce Springsteen's Seeger Sessions.  I can definitely still see the influences.

• Fill the toy box with instruments.  Let your kids play them until they break, then replace them with better ones.

• Learn how to play an instrument yourself.  

• Go to music festivals

 

• Stay unplugged.  If they don't have video games they won't play them.  Maybe, if you're lucky, they'll pick up those instruments that you have strewn about the house instead.  

I hope you find this helpful.  It was certainly fun pulling out all these old pictures!

Still At It - Wordless Wednesday

Mountain Minstrelsy at FarmFest, August 3, 2012

Thank you to our friend Tim Yarrington for these wonderful shots of the show.

The Three Kitties

 The Three Kitties

  

We had a houseful of meowing music today!  Gus gave his friend Nettie her second fiddle lesson, and she returned the favor by giving Gus his first piano lesson.  The lessons were totally cat-to-cat.  No grown-ups allowed.  At the end of each lesson, the "kitties" invited us to hear their concert.  Here's what they came up with.

Have I mentioned that we totally underestimate kids?  We TOTALLY underestimate kids.  Its easy to assume that they need adults to tell them how to play music, to assure them that they're doing it right, to tell them when they're doing it wrong.  And sure, sometimes they do, but sometimes they don't.  The awesome thing about trusting their instincts is that they don't forget how to trust their own instincts.  The awesome thing about letting them play music their own way is that we learn something new.  Kids are musicians too.  Awesome, huh?

 

Smoked Country Jam 2012 - Festival Days

5 days of music, 5 days of camping, hanging out by the campfire, talking to friends.  The 9th annual Smoked Country Jam took place last weekend at the Quiet Oaks Campground in Cross Forks, PA.  We've been to 6 of them, starting when Gus was 2 and Huck was an infant.  This is where Gus saw his first fiddle and learned his first fiddle tune.  As soon as we arrived, Theresa handed us a copy of this newspaper.  Wow!  That's a lot of newspaper article!  I thought they just needed some quotes for an article about Smoked Country Jam.  I wasn't sure what to make of it at first.  In fact, I didn't get brave enough to read it until almost a day later.  I still feel a little bit sheepish about it, but I think some really good things came of it.  The article highlighted our family's 100 day, turned 450 day and still rolling, practice challenge.  I think there is a whole blog post lurking about that topic, so I'll save it for later. 

In the meantime here are some pictures of our favorite things about Smoked Country Jam 2012:

  learning a new fiddle tune,

relaxing and watching the music,

 cooking hot dogs on the campfire,

 warming up by the big fire,

 sharing our favorite festival with Grammy and Papa Fred,

 being disappointed to not win the Chinese auction, and then getting a gift from one of the Chinese auction winners,

 watching the music with a new buddy,

and staying up way too late every night.

This year Gus was honored to play on stage with Mama Corn, the Poe Valley Troubadours, and the Hillbilly Gypsies.  I'll post some audio files and video as soon as I get unpacked and find the video camera.