Your child deserves songs that both challenge and keep pace with musical growth and development, throughout early childhood and beyond. There are many elements that contribute to the difficulty of a song. Factors that increase the rhythm challenge include meter, rhythm patterns within the meter, the order and combination of patterns, and tempo. Factors that increase the tonal challenge include tonality, tonal patterns, steps and skips, vocal range, contour of melody—and rhythm, since tonal is a layer on top of rhythm. Adding words on top of tonal makes a song more difficult, and there are various factors that increase the difficulty of text—sophistication of words, imagery and meaning, the combination of words, ease of pronunciation, and repetition. The interaction between text, rhythm and tonal is a major contributor to song difficulty, and the artistry in the musical setting of the text is yet another factor. The cumulative challenges of all of these elements determine the overall difficulty of a song.
The songs of Come Children, Sing! continue to increase in difficulty throughout the CCS curriculum. CCS Play Songs are intended for sheer joy and delightful interaction between parent and child. CCS Art Songs bring the beauty of the art of song to your child at this tender age, taking your little one’s musical imagination on one journey after another. Gem Songs also send your little one’s musical imagination soaring, propelling your little one from the joy of musical play to the joy of the musical content itself. To your child’s developing musical mind, the interaction between rhythm, tonal, and text become as playful as a Play Song—with the play being in the art itself. Each little song is like an aural stage play, with the intertwining of text, rhythm and melody serving as the staging, scenery, and costumes for the dramatic delivery of the text. The more your child grows into the musical sophistication of Gem Songs and Art Songs, the less you will find a need for props and toys for “Playing Music,” as your little musician will become lost in playing with the music itself.
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