There were well more than 100 entries in this remix competition—and picking the winner was a tough-tough decision. It’s clear that the challenge of making music based on the sound of Hitachi hard drives failing was as much a reason to take part as winning the Tokyoflash Equalizer watch. So before announcing the winner, let’s review the highlights:

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/announcements/hard-drive-dying-dance-track-winner-151666.php

Love, respect, and appreciation for music are easy to share with our children and build life skills at the same time. During the first years of our child’s life, musical skills build self-esteem and enhance expression. Musical rhythms spur motor development. Learning melodies and words stimulates listening capacity and help children develop receptive language. Specific areas of child development and learning are positively affected by exposure to and training in music. Preschoolers given piano and voice lessons, for example, have been found to improve dramatically in their ability to put together picture puzzles of animals. Playing the piano at the preschool age influences development of the cortex, the part of the brain used for thinking, talking, seeing, hearing, and creating. Music training contributes to the ability to learn or enhance mathematics skills.

Music clearly is a resource for living, growing, and learning and can be an integral part of our children’s growing experiences.

Music is controlled movement of sound, in time.

Music is three basic components: Sound + Rhythm + Melody = Music

To help children understand music, it is helpful to look at each component separately. First there is sound, one that we make or one from another source. A few examples of sound are a bird chirping, a teakettle whistling, and a child banging on a pot with a spoon. If music were compared to a painting, sound would be the background color. In our bodies, sound corresponds with our central nervous system. A pleasant sound opens and expands us. It can energize or calm us. A shrieking sound puts our nerves on edge. Like the background in a painting, sound is the first step in creating music.

Here are some ways to explore sound with our children.

- Have your children listen to the sounds around them. How many different sounds can they find in the kitchen or backyard?

- Encourage children to be creative making sounds. Have them use their voices or household objects to make sound. Allow them to make pretty, irritating, or silly sounds. They are all music if they reflect creative exploration or honest feelings.

The purpose for creating sound is not necessarily to make “beautiful music” but to foster self-expression and open up our children’s ears to the world around them.

The second component of music is rhythm. Rhythm defines and organizes the sound through a beat. For example, is the whistling of the teakettle long and steady or short and choppy? Is the child’s banging on the pot fast and upbeat or smooth and slow? In a painting, the rhythm would be the overall movement or flow of the composition. When you first look at the painting, where do your eyes go? Is the painting easy to look at or is it busy and annoying? This is its rhythm.

In our bodies, rhythm corresponds to our own internal body rhythm-our pulse and breath. If the musical beat is quick and steady, our heartbeat and body movements will mirror it. If we are tired, listening to African drumming can kick our body back into gear. On the other hand, if a two-year-old is running around out of control, slow rhythmic music like Bach or Vivaldi restores inner calm and slows most children down. Explore and add rhythm to the sounds that children make.

- Have your children play with different beats: fast, slow, steady, and erratic.

- Have them practice listening to the different rhythms around them, like the water dripping from the faucet or the ticking of a clock.

- Ask them if they can feel the vibration of a musical beat in their bodies, and if so, where? How do the different rhythms feel in their body? How do their feet want to move with the different beats?

- Try hand clapping to the rhythm of a poem and foot tapping to a favorite piece of music. These activities are every child’s favorite, free entertainment.

Finally there is melody. Melody corresponds to our emotions. It gives sound and rhythm its feeling and sensual quality. It is the part of music that expresses the hills and valleys of an individual’s experience. It goes straight to our heart and feeling center. Melody can uplift our spirit, calm us during times of stress, or move us to tears. Returning to the painting metaphor, melody would be the overall feeling that the painting evokes as we look at it. Does the painting draw us in and create a feeling of peace, excitement, distress, or discomfort? Introducing melody to the earlier sounds and rhythms will help children learn self-expression.

- Have them hum a tune or create a melody, adding emotion to sound.

- Experiment expressing sounds that are emotional: happy, sad, funny, etc.

Melody turns a sound into a personal and unique statement. By playing with sound, rhythm and melody our children discover a new vocabulary and tool to use for expression when words are hard to find.

We can use creativity and imagination to choose different styles of music by which our children can express their feelings, relax, stimulate their minds or allow their creative juices to flow. A variety of selections, rhythms, tones, and melodies allows children to develop their own musical tastes and sparks their natural curiosity to explore the world of music on their own.

And this……. http://donnaidh-sidhe.livejournal.com/594077.html ……my friends is why the modern feminist movement [feminazis] have/has traveled beyond the realm of sanity.

For simply presenting the facts, without even technically giving ‘the other side’ its just due, I am shot down by those raging, incoherent feminazi hormones…=…banned from commenting. No debate, no discussion, no rationality, just heated nonsense turned to shit.

tekanji is what they call the common cretin/dimwitted foot soldier of the modern movement, not seeing the forest for the trees, all the while screaming at the top of her lungs for none but herself to hear….(CHECK HERE TO WITNESS THE ASININE ‘BETE NOIRE’ YOURSELF = http://blog.shrub.com/) ….and though I did happen to respect donnaidh_sidhe‘s wit, that respect was lost along with the childish ban she put in place for me simply debating the true text of the original story and the brass tacks beyond (say for instance, the utter crap here ==> http://www.pleasureactivism.org/sex_pos_fem.html). please continue to silence those who disagree with your distorted POV and instinctively re-invent the straw man, just as the supposed ‘perpetrator’ leaves the building, if it suits your fantasies girls. Tis O.K., for whilst you jest and inadvertently poke fun at your own dull impotency, i’ll be safely navigating through your secret stash of Cheet-o crumbs in a successful attempt at escaping the cat-fit of your absurd premise.

THIS, MY FRIENDS, IS JUST ONE OF THE REASONS [along with the aggregating contradictions, amassing hypocritical dung and the eternal antagonistic victim role they embody] WHY I DETEST MOST MODERN [deluded] FEMINISTS.

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IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT THE ORIGINAL POST HAS BEEN PROTECTED (not deleted or private), WHICH, FROM MY UNDERSTANDING, CAN ONLY BE DONE BY AN ‘EMPLOYEE’ (so that noone can bear witness to the sheer nonsense), AND THAT THE ORIGINAL ENTRY IS NOT CACHED, BC HAS SOMEHOW IMPLEMENTED A ROBOT.TXT FILE THAT DOESN’T ALLOW ARCHIVING [unless LJ allows that somewherez?], which is a smart move i guess for her.

Error
You are not authorized to view this protected entry.

furthermore, tekanji has attempted to file a frivolous claim, through LJ’s abuse team, for me simply providing a link to her PUBLIC website where she PUBLICLY DISPLAYS HER PICTURES and HER REAL NAME.

Just another case of the feminist camp’s attempt at censorship?

Read on and you decide:
http://www.gabnet.com/lit/deich3e.htm

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for the record, my so-called biased statistics actually came from the same governmental statistics these same deluded feminists attempt to use as a weapon to humiliate the male species as a whole, much like i’ve witnessed for 10+ years now. if they actually took the time to examine those links, they would have found this out, but of course they refused to take the time out of their day to actually reside outside of their protective box.

besides, the fact of the matter is, is that this duplicitous, flame baiting, and somewhat sexist comment is why I posted in the first place ==> “…..I’m a little bit obsessed these days with the ways in which people routinely treat women as objects….”which we can freely conclude is a subtle way of taking a stab at men in general.

Here are yet two other examples of how I’ve end up a target of the feminist hordes:
http://spins.us/FORUM/viewtopic.php?t=37498 – My Opposition to the VAWA as it is written

http://spins.us/FORUM/viewtopic.php?t=39937 – PBS criminal complicity to feminist distortions and lies about Single Fathers who want JOINT CUSTODY OF THEIR CHILDREN.