Here are a few pointers for getting the right gift for the right person.

• Know the Person – As with all gift giving, think about the person you want to give the gift to.
  • Has the person expressed an interest in playing an instrument?
  • Are they desiring a specific instrument?
  • What is the person’s musical experience?
  • What style of music do they love?
  • What are their reasons for wanting to play?

Choosing a quality instrument

If you are not familiar with musical instruments, this will take some effort, but don’t let that discourage you.

• Know Your Limitations and Get Help-
  Ask lots of questions of knowledgeable musicians who play the instrument you are considering. Be sure to ask them about facts to look for and brands they recommend.
• Online Reviews-
  Do an online search for reviews. Include the word review along with things like the type of instrument, brand, and/or model. Amazon and are a great resource for personal reviews from people who have owned the product.
• Return Policy-
  Make sure there is a good return policy just in case the instrument is not a good fit.
• Use Gift Cards-
  An instrument can be a very personal decision. A gift card allows the recepient to choose what is best for them.
• Avoid buying used or from online auctions-
  If you are not familiar with an instrument, you may want to avoid buying a used instrument or buying from online auctions. Stick with a reputable company with a good return policy.  Even the new items on the online auctions can be suspect. Many are poor quality instruments imported cheaply from overseas.

Instrument Ideas
Here are a few instrument ideas and resources for finding them.

• Simple to Learn Instruments-ukelele, dulcimer, recorder, harmonica, kazoo and many percussion instruments
• Instrument Families
  • Brass – trumpet, trombone, French horn, tuba…
  • Woodwind – flute, clarinet, oboe, sax…
  • Classical Strings – violin, viola, cello and bass
  • Other Strings – guitar, bass guitar, mandolin, banjo, dulcimers…
  • Percussion – Snare drum, drum set (standard or electronic), xylophone, glockenspiel, world percussion, handheld percussion…
  • Keyboard – piano, digital piano, keyboard

An additional tip, if you can afford it, add music lessons as part of the gift. If you can’t afford to add lessons, do some research and give them the name of one or more teachers to contact. Instruction books and videos can be helpful, too.

Hoping you have musical holidays,

Deborah

I bought this one at Cracker Barrel for 6 bucks. It’s a
Hohner and it’s really great quality. Great sound and it holds up well to the explorations of a young child. It’s really important to get good quality instruments for your child and for yourself.

Quality instruments don’t need to be expensive to have a good sound. The problem is that a lot of what’s marketed out there as instruments are really just noisemakers. Even a non musician can hear the difference. Try to listen and ask “Does it thud or does the sound carry through the air? Does it squeak or does it sing?”

Even if you don’t have a lot of musical experience, you can learn to listen for the difference by comparing the sounds different things make. One thing you can start with is to tap on things around the house and compare the differences and similarities. Try tapping in different places and with different items to see how the sound changes.

It doesn’t take much to start developing your ability to listen and to begin to understand music better. Having that understanding opens the door to having richer experiences with music. We’ve got plenty of noise in this culture. Wouldn’t it be great to replace some of it with music.

Deborah

SERVICES: This year I am altering my brother-in-law’s pants and helping my sister get set up to sell stuff on eBay.

REPURPOSING: I do this two ways. I give quality gifts from things I already own and I take things I own and remake them into something unique.

This year I took half-zip pullovers my son has outgrown and made backpacks for the kids.

I also add decorative elements to items to personalize them and make them more interesting. Last year I used pieces of roof flashing to create a unique decorative front on a simple blank journal.

MEMORIES:  I  have my grandmother’s old everyday dishes and want to decoupage her picture and other collage items on it and give it as way to remember her.

I also want to create a scrapbook with the recipes my grandmother cooked most often.

Another idea on my list is to use decorative family tree charts I purchased on Ebay and fill them in with all of the names we’ve found so far from our genealogy research.

GROW IT: We have a small city garden and I enjoy canning. I like to think of things to make that would make good gifts like salsa or jelly. I have also done this by buying produce at the farmer’s market when it’s in season and cheap and canning that into something good.

Fresh herbs are easy and cheap to grow, but expensive to purchase. Put together a small herb garden in a planter and give away the whole thing. You can also grow them yourself in larger quantities and make a small swag or wreath of different herbs to make a nice fresh gift and can be hung in the kitchen and used for cooking even as the herbs dry.

It’s best to buy the seeds and planters during gardening season for the best availability and price.

DOWNLOADS:  If a someone has an interest in a particular subject, you can download free articles, ebooks, podcasts, videos, etc. on that subject and give them as a gift in print or CD/DVD format.

The printed items could be bound in an inexpensive binder or report cover or a coil binding from an office supply store. My library lets me copy 200 pages a month for free and I hear a lot of libraries have a similar service.

I am doing this for someone who is interested in starting a business as a life coach.

Have a Merry Christmas,

Deborah

Deborah

PS: You can still receive “Getting Personal with Your Christmas Music” for free. It’s my chapter from the ebook Saving Christmas. Go to www.ourmusicalhome.com/savingchristmas.

What’s the difference?

Well, noisemakers make noise. They thud and clink, but the sound doesn’t really go anywhere.  Musical instruments, on the other hand, produce a sound that resonates. That means the vibrations move and carry through the air. They don’t just stop like the clinking of a rusty pipe laying on the ground.

The sound is also heard upwards through something called harmonics or overtones. I’ll try not to get too technical about it, but basically a good musical note will activate other notes in its harmonic/overtone pattern and create a tower of sound. It’s usually only heard by those with a trained ear, and only then if the person is listening for it.

Just because you can’t consciously hear it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. It matter’s greatly. It separates a poor quality sound from a high quality sound. A high quality instrument will be crafted in such a way that the sound will be at it’s best through the harmonic/overtone series and lots of others factors which boil down to rules of physics and acoustics.

Please don’t get sucked into some non-musical marketing scheme that tries to sell you a pile of noisemakers being passed off as instruments. The best way to know is to listen to them. If the monster of modern day packaging is preventing that, make sure you get a referral or be sure to buy from a trusted name like Remo for drums or Hohner for harmonicas.

When looking at reviews on Amazon and other places, don’t assume that 4 or 5 stars is necessarily good. A lot of people don’t know the difference. Read the reviews from people who say they are musicians. Also, look for descriptions of their sound quality.

The instrument set I told you about before actually has 4 stars on Amazon, but if you read the reviews carefully, those that praised the set never mentioned the sound quality and it was apparent that their kids were using it as a noisemaker. I’d like to encourage you to strive for higher goals in your instrument selection.

There are good choices even in student quality and other less expensive instruments. I’ve found some noisemakers at music stores and some good sounding instruments at Wal-Mart, Cracker Barrel, and Hobby Lobby. Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed. Take it slow. Consider it an exercise in learning how to hear music.

For the most part, we just make music a casual part of how we live. He has had the benefit of playing with his toys while string quartets rehearse in our living room and he goes to Kindermusik class every week. Even with all of that, most of his musical education at home is very casual at this age.

We sing the Barney clean up song when picking up around the house. We also have lots of musical instruments (real ones and quality toys) all around for him to experiment on. 

Today, a friend came over and the boys had a sword fight with our boomwhackers. These are plastic tubes that are tuned to different pitches. They didn’t realize they were playing an interval of a major 2nd when they hit them together, but I believe these small experiences have helped my son grow musically. 

One thing I do is tap the rhythm on his back when we hear music, even from TV.  Sometimes I will tap the rhythm of the song and sometimes I’ll tap the underlying beat.  It really internalizes the beat for him and will hopefully develop a more natural sense of timing. I struggled with keeping time in my younger years, so I want to make sure he has a solid foundation.

Most of the music making is impromtu, but we do have one regular routine at bed time. We will all pile into bed for family devotion time. We start singing Gloria Patri followed by a Bible story. After that we say our prayers and end with the doxology. He almost always falls asleep after the Doxology.  It’s a great routine for us and it teaches him music of the church. At some point we will add other music from the liturgy. 

If you don’t have kids, you can still incorporate things for yourself.  Try to tap out the beat and the rhythm while you are listening to music.

Keep your instruments in plain sight. You are more likely to sit down and do something with them if they are easily accessible.

If there is a song at your place of worship that you are stuggling with, bring it home and learn it a little at a time. Sing it as you do things around the house. Maybe even memorize it.

There are lots of things you can do to make music part of your daily life. Just remember it is about growth and experience. Little things do mean a lot when it comes to music.

Deborah

He just said “Happy, Sad”.  He’s been talking a lot about happy and sad lately. He’s at a stage where he’s putting words to his emotions and starting to grasp opposites about abstract ideas.

I just started singing the words happy and sad for him making the music sound happy on the word happy and sad on the word sad.  He then said his tummy was happy, his mouth was happy, then his tummy was sad.

I just made up words about how his tummy and mouth were happy because his food was good and then it got sad because he ate too much.

I sang it 3 or 4 times and the melody ended up being different every time. We were having fun being silly and had a little music lesson to boot.  .The best lessons are the ones that don’t feel like lessons.

Deborah

Boy have things changed.  Now kids play ball with purchased uniforms and coaches, do their crafts in classes, and play with video games. Of course there’s some free play out there, but when I talk to parents they tell me about this activity and that activity. I got overwhelmed just looking at the summer events from the St. Louis County Library.

Don’t get me wrong. I think these opportunities are wonderful. I do a lot for myself and my son. My fear is that people have developed a mindset where this is the only way.

It’s the same with music. When a parent thinks about giving their kids some musical experience, they sign-up for lessons and rent/buy an instrument or they sign them up for a kids choir. Maybe they go to some kids concerts. This is very important to do, but don’t get caught in the trap that this is all music is about.

Simple Steps
Keep music activities part of you schedule, but keep some out too. You and your family can grow musically by making music a fluid part of life.  Here are some ideas…

• Start tapping. When you are listening to music tap out the rhythm or the beat. This is something I do often on my son’s back or belly. It helps develop an internal sense of rhythm and makes us both more aware of what is going on in the music. Try it on yourself using different parts of your body to tap with and tap on.
• Move from listening to singing. You hear songs every day. When you find something that interests you take the steps to learn to sing it.  Move from humming to learning the words. You can do this with any song even commercial jingles and songs from Sesame Street. Don’t worry about how you sound, just have fun learning.
• Make up new words to songs. This is great to do in the car and can end up in some wonderful silliness.
• Buy some rhythm instruments. Use them alone or to play along while singing or listening to music.
• Make some instruments. Take household items and make instruments. There is a lot that can be learned by stretching a rubber band around a shoe box and observing how the pitch and tone changes. There are lots of books and websites with ideas on homemade instruments for every skill level.
• Make up new music. This doesn’t have to be difficult. Just pick some words and start singing about them. They will probably be simple and repeatitive at first. That’s alright. If you keep doing it you will start to notice improvement.

Resist the temptation to critque yourself to the point of giving up. Don’t hold yourself to the same standards as a professional musician. Have some fun and look for how you are improving. Once you build a little confidence you can stretch yourself more.

Deborah