The Appreciation of Music

You may not realize but we all take appreciation for granite and the things we appreciate: everyday necessities, to family and friends, and even to our own personal lives. With appreciating we show how grateful or thankful we are, this is a virtue we all must understand. With this type of appreciation we would never want to lose these things and we would always want them near to us. I appreciate the talent of singing and many other people do not because they either think they cannot sing but they really can or they have not experienced the beauty of singing all together. I think the whole process starts with the appreciating what you hear out of the song. We hear singing around us all day from the radio, to live performances, to even people singing in Wal-Mart. When we hear the singing, some of us let the tune go in one ear and out the other and others let the music move them. They listen to the lyrics, the background music, the beat or rhythm, and then the whole thing overall, to really understand and appreciate what they are listening to. When you start to appreciate singing, you start to have a better outlook on life and have more of a positive attitude. So next time you hear a song come on, take time and really listen to the whole aspect and appreciate what you are listening to, just like Charlie Brown and his friends do when they sing.

The Do-Re-Mi of Singing is as Easy as 1-2-3

I am sitting on a mountain side in Austria where the Sound of Music was filmed, in exactly the same spot Maria was teaching the Von Trapp children to sing. But instead of Maria teaching the children to sing, I am. We start off with learning the solfedge of singing, do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do. The children's faces are glowing as they learn the melodic scale. I continue with more exercises of going up and down the scale and as the day goes on, they learn to harmonize using the musical scale. But I see that one child in the back is becoming frustrated with the syllables, so I then teach the children the hand movements with each note. He seems to understand the process a little better but is still very confused. And then I thought of course I will teach the song that Maria sings in the movie, "Do-Re-Mi." The children immediately catch on and stand up and start dancing. We are all dancing down the mountain side into Vienna, laughing and singing and having fun. The children decide to perform their own rendition of the song and put on a concert for the crowd in the middle of town. After they are done performing I sit them all down and we discuss what we have learned about singing and the musical scale and they told me that learning do-re-mi is as easy as one-two-three!