A Case Study of a Child’s Musical Experiences: Tim Age 4

Task One A Case Study of a Child’s Musical Experiences Informed by Theoretical Perspectives Introduced in Taught Sessions Aim The purpose of this case study is to look in depth at the musical world of a four year old and unearth the theories behind his spontaneous music making. I will begin by presenting the reader with a brief background on the child, his family and why he was considered suitable for the role. Next I will describe my research method and discuss its possible advantages and disadvantages. The main core of my case study will be detailed descriptions and analysis of four observations of the child: Footage of the child in the home playing an online game on the laptop on his own Footage of the child and I in the home playing the piano Field notes of the child and his older sister in the home chanting at the kitchen table A recording of the child playing with a leaf on a car journey Finally I will aim to draw conclusions on my interpretations of the child’s musical experiences and reflect on how these might impact on my future practice as an Early Years music educator. Introduction The child who is the focus of this research is my son Tim. I have changed his name and all the names of those who consented to participate in this research. This is a case study of Tim’s everyday musical experiences. Tim, age 4, is the youngest child of Peter and myself. He has an older brother Jim, age 11 and sister Gywn, age 8. Peter and I share the care of Tim as we both work part time and study. Tim attends nursery five mornings a week and spends his weekly afternoons with one parent. He attends a weekly music session led by an experienced Early Years music educator. Research Method I entered in to this research as a parent researcher which posed the advantage of being able to observe and record Tim’s spontaneous musical moments in the home as well as out and about with his family, peers, teacher and media. I was a non participant and participant observer over a period of a few weeks commencing the day after Tim turned 4. I made field notes in my journal of Tim’s spontaneous music-making and also captured moments on the following devices: a hand held digital camera, a video recording on my phone, a digital voice recorder and a mobile phone voice recorder. Like Dean (2011) I also found the digital voice recorder quicker to operate than the camera as it had less of an impact on Tim’s behaviour. On a number of occasions Tim changed his behaviour because he was aware he was being studied. This is possibly due to the Hawthorne Effect as Tim modified his behaviour whenever I filmed him. The films analysed in this case study were captured without Tim perhaps being aware that the camera or digital voice recorder were switched on. Carpenter (1997) suggests there are several advantages to researching one’s own child, primarily the unique knowledge that a parent researcher provides to the understanding of the child. Vries (2011) highlighted that spending so much time on a daily basis with his son allowed him access to his musical life that could not have possibly been achieved by an outside researcher. Young suggests that parents ‘have the edge’ when it comes to capturing their child’s music making as they are acutely tuned in to their own child (2003, p. 12). In researching my own child I was also aware of the disadvantage of my bias as a mother. To try and counteract this I shared the video footage with Tim, Tim’s father and my colleagues to try and interpret alternative ways of reading my observations. Tim’s father was able to offer alternative explanations on what he saw on his intimate knowledge of Tim’s daily life. Vries (2011) writes that this is important to do in order to establish a trustworthiness of the research. Buller reflects ‘I am so close that it is impossible to not have preconceived notions about my own family members . . . [but] I try to be as neutral as possible and refrain from judgement’ (2007, p. 14). In addition I questioned my role as the parent researcher and the possibilities if I intervened in Tim’s musical play. Young (2003) advises us on the role of the adult as they listen and tune in to young children’s music. Blacking (1979) reminds us that music is made music by active listening and that as listeners we take a part share in its creation. I was aware that my role did change from one of observer and listener to responding non- verbally, imitative play partnering to contributory play-partnering. This therefore affected my stance as a researcher and created challenges as my position continuously alternated from participant to non-participant throughout the research. Video 1: Singing at the laptop Tim is sat on his own at the kitchen table in front the laptop. He has logged on himself and negotiated his way to the CBBC online Halloween game WolfBlood that involves using the arrow keys to move the wolf around the obstacle course within a set time. Tim is familiar with this game as he has watched his older siblings play it. Interestingly the sound is turned off. Tim moves the wolf forwards using his right index finger on the right arrow of the keyboard. He is leaning towards the laptop, eyes fixed on the screen with his left elbow on the table. Tim believes the wolf resembles a dog. He says in a low, slightly American accented voice ‘Oh yeah. We’re running. Come on dog.’ He runs out of time straight away and the games finishes. Tim remarks ‘No, no no no no no, nooooooooooooooooo’ (seven times) pushing his body away from the table, both hands rising up in the air and come back down on the laptop keys on the final louder more emphasised ‘noooooooooooooooo’. Tim starts the game again, checks his right hand is above the arrow key and exclaims ‘Go dog......go!’ On the word ‘go’ he pushes the arrow key down enthusiastically. ‘Vrom vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv’ he vocalises as the wolf flies across the screen. Tim then spontaneously starts to chant and sing ‘Let’s go go go’ on the notes DDF, repeating this fast short musical phrase twelve times. He chants the word ‘let’s’ each time. On the sixth repetition only he changes the notes singing a little higher to FFG to the words ‘go go go’. He then sings the remainder ‘go go go’s back on DDF. As he is singing his whole body is leaning into the laptop, his face is close to the screen, eyes fixed on the wolf and his index finger is busy continuously tapping the arrow key. He stops singing abruptly as the screen changes to signal the end of the game. Tim exclaims as he pushes his whole body away from the laptop ‘Oh no! I didn’t jump through the house. Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!’ He continues to persevere with the game in order to get a higher level. Analysis In Tim’s home the laptop is a placed on the kitchen table at a central location in the house for all to see, hear and use. It is a very social focal point of the family and is well used by everyone in the communal family area. The home, according to Marsh (2004) is an increasingly media-rich, technological environment. Technology is an integral part of Tim’s life and Tim is already technology savvy. From birth he has already been involved in the enculturation process, absorbing music from our media- rich world. Young (2003) suggests many children today are musically ‘multicultural’, absorbing many styles of music and culture from an array of settings, including the home. This seems to be true from my observations of Tim. Tim is clearly influenced by his older brother and sister as he has watched them play the game. He wishes to relate to their interests and is trying to construct an identity to be part of their social group. Young suggests ‘music and media are key components of the social practices which make up children’s self-choice activities... through these malleable and shareable music-media activities children articulate and construct their childhoods’ (2009, p. 698). It is therefore possibly important to Tim that he keeps up with his older siblings as it gives him a feeling of being part of their social group. We might suggest this is a good example to illustrate Bandura’s (1977) social learning theory. Tim’s behaviour is learned from the environment through the process of observational learning. He has observed his older siblings play the internet game and shared their joy of the game. Tim’s ‘oh yeah’ and ‘nooooooo’ is very reminiscent of his older brother’s way of interacting when playing the game. Tim has clearly been observing his brother’s behaviour and imitating it. If the sound of the laptop had been switched on, we could have described Tim’s experience playing the game as abundantly multi-modal. Young (2006) describes one kind of multi-modal as an experience when aural and visual modes combine. The aural experience from the game (of several layers consisting of music with sound effects, a character speaking and voice- overs) was missing for Tim, which was perhaps why he was left to narrate the visual imagery himself. Tim’s spontaneous voice play acts as a narrative to the game he is playing. Campbell suggests that ‘...children think aloud through music’ (2010 p.4). Tim’s short repetitive ‘go go go’ is a simple melodic idea that uses a rising minor third, or soh-mi inverted. The soh-mi interval is the first interval young children naturally use when calling. Moorhead & Pond (1941) refer to this as the fundamental interval in children’s social chants (in Europe) that comes peeking out here, there and everywhere in Tim’s play. Tim has spontaneously also sang this interval several times during my observations of him, notably: running under a tunnel singing ‘e-cho e-cho’; singing ‘I’m tall I’m tall’ in response to me saying how tall his sister had recently grown; and then more recently extending it to the familiar soh-mi-lah phrase when racing back home he sings ‘I’m the king of the castle, you’re the dirty rascal’. He has heard this song from his older sister who has sang it with her peers in the school playground. To conclude our descriptions of Tim spontaneously singing these notes, one morning Tim heard his father jest that he couldn’t wake Tim’s elder brother for school. He suggested to Tim ‘Right, let’s all go and sit on Jim’ and Tim responded ‘Let’s all go and sit on Tim’ to the familiar soh-mi-lah phrase. Kodaly, Susuki and Orff teachers among others believe that it is important to master the soh-mi interval. They believe that soh-mi should be the foundational interval that generates learning about and reading tonal patterns in music. Once this interval has been mastered in singing (and later reading and writing) the next note in the structured sequence can be added, leading eventually to the chromatic scale. Elliot (1990) describes this approach in the Western developed world as singing for a pedagogical purpose. Bennett argues that if soh-mi is the interval that children can most easily produce then ‘why is this a building block that necessitates prolonged repetition and practice?’ (2005, p. 44) Tim has shown that he can already spontaneously sing those notes in an array of contexts, so why do some music education programmes build a linear learning curriculum around it? Bennett (2005) believes that learning does not occur in tidy steps that follow a straight line. Herman (1992) proposes that learning is not linear but instead can take many directions at once at an uneven pace. To conclude perhaps Tom’s behaviour raises questions about how different approaches to music education are used. In the video clip, Tim is also vocally imitating sounds. When he says ‘Vrom vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv’ he is vocalising to match the movement of the wolf. Young (2003) would perhaps say Tim is deeply involved in dramatic-music-movement play as he vocalises and synchronizes his finger on the keyboard ‘playing with time and space in his own movement and the movement of objects’ (2003, p. 91). The object in question is on the screen, but perhaps as well as seeing, Tim still virtually feels it kinaesthetically, feeling the motion and the timing of the wolf’s movement ‘as an integrated whole’ (Young 2003, p. 91). Tim’s vocalisations are perhaps one part of this whole multi modal experience. Child’s perspective: What did Tim see? I showed the video back to Tim and asked him ‘Tell me, what do you see?’ He replied ‘Errrr me..... a table.’ He then looked intently at the screen, following the movement of the wolf and smiling. Tim leaned further in to the laptop to look closer at it and smiled even more when he saw himself finish the game. I ask him ‘Can you tell me anything about it?’ Tim says nothing. I then say ‘Can you tell me what you are doing’ as the video clip is showing Tim singing his ‘go go go’ repeated phrase. He says ‘Ummmm’ and puts his head on his arm. I take this a signal that he does not wish to be questioned. He then says ‘Ummmm....I am playing on the computer....on the table.’ If Tim felt he was singing or vocalising, he did not express that. In fact, more interestingly, it seems he didn’t spot the music in the film. Is he therefore making the music subconsciously? Nash (1974) proposes that in play the child is close to his subconscious. Burton (2002) also researched feedback from children on their spontaneous singing. She suggested young children were not able to verbalise a purpose for their vocalising and proposes ‘...it could be that although these children were spontaneously singing and chanting they did not have a musical intent for their improvisations and were not thinking of their improvisations in musical terms’ (2002 p. 11). Video 2: The piano Tim is sat on the left hand side of the piano in the dining room. It is in a central place in the house by the table where Tim’s elder siblings and father are sat doing homework. Prior to this Gwyn has been sat at the piano working out by ear the Harry Potter theme tune. She had asked me to sit with her and help her. Tim has now asked me to sit next to him. Using both his hands and wrists he plays two short sharp clusters of notes together. He is smiling broadly and stops to turn around to look at his older siblings who are engrossed in their homework. He quickly turns back and plays six more chord clusters, striking the keys at a medium tempo, mouth open and head shaking from side to side as he plays each cluster. He starts with his hands at opposite ends of the piano and after each cluster of notes he moves his hands slightly closer together to play different notes until both hands meet in the middle. He is putting most of the weight on his thumbs bent inwards and his wrist. Tim pauses and leans both his lower arms into the keys in the middle of the piano to produce a long sustained sound. He says to me ‘You do it like this’ as he plays just two alternating notes using his index and middle finger. He continues ‘And I’ll do it like this’ (he crosses his wrists over and presses them into the keys) I play what he has suggested – the two alternating notes and he asks me to stop as his eye has caught the sustaining pedal. He jumps down from his chair and pushes it as close as possible to the piano. He sits back up again with his foot stretching out just touching the pedal and his body pressed up against the keys. He exclaims ‘Three, two, one go!’ and plays the same little two note alternating motive he has shown me, quietly using both hands, with his foot extending down on the pedal. I mirror him. He then changes to the same repetitive rhythmic motive using both his wrists and arms facing in to each other. He is looking at me and smiling. I continue to join in with his louder repetitive rhythmic motive also using my arms. He goes back to just using his fingers for the motif and repeats again. I continue to mirror him. He alternates once again to playing the rhythm with both his arms and this time I simply continue to copy him just carrying on with only using my two fingers. He stops and has noticed immediately my error in failing to accurately copy him. He says to me ‘No....you play that one like this’ as he shows me both his arms leaning into piano. I oblige and lean into the piano. Satisfied, he then starts a new rhythmic five note pattern, using both index and middle fingers on both hands repeating it several times. On the fourth and fifth note of the pattern he also begins to nod his head. I again mirror him. He stops and just plays the initial two notes alternating. I copy him as he waits and watches me. He plays it again. Once again I copy him. He then raises both arms up into air and brings them crashing down onto the very lowest notes of the piano. He looks around to his father and siblings still sat behind him working at the table. We continue to turn take, playing loud clusters of notes. We repeat this episode five times and Tim laughs, looks at his father and says ‘Ooooo that’s noisy.’ His father replies ‘I know. I’ve got a headache’. Tim turns back and continues to play the loud clusters waiting for me each time to copy him. I start by imitating him but then I slowly start to synchronize playing together and end up playing the clusters at the same time. We stop, look at each other and laugh. Analysis Tim’s music is clearly structured. He plays a number of contrasting ideas beginning with repeated clusters of notes that are almost predicable and mechanical but perhaps give Tim ‘a stability’ from which he can them move on (Young, 2003); chord clusters starting at opposite ends and moving towards each other; a two note repeated motif (which we shall call ‘home’) alternating with the same rhythmic motif but using more note clusters; a five note repeated pattern alternating with his original recurring two note motif (‘home’ again), loud dramatic chord clusters, with a pause (to see the effect of his playing on his family) and then a grand finale of initial turn taking chord clusters culminating in both of us playing together at the same time. To the untrained ear this may have appeared to be sporadic and random, but Young (2009a) suggests that the music-making of three –to five-year-olds is full of coherent musical ideas built on components of musical structure. If we were to analyse Tim’s music using our Western notion of classical music structure we may even say that Tim’s music has elements of a rondo form as it has the recurring two note motif that is developed. Young (2009a) refers to this as developing ideas by linking them together in chains. Tim’s music making shows different types of play. He uses an array of body movement vocabulary using a variation of gestures including mouth open, head turning and full body leaning towards the instrument. His first idea develops from exploring the action of playing the keys themselves using his whole body movement. Tim then continues to explore the piano in a number of ways using a mixture of fine motor skills of just his two fingers to gross motor skills where he presses his arms down on the keys and extends his foot on the pedal. Through a mixture of movement ideas we can see how his music progresses. Gluschankof (2005) suggests that children are interested in the tone colour of instruments and perhaps that they do not seek playing particular pitches but rather different timbres. Cohen (1980) believes that young children pay attention to the whole sound produced and perhaps they do not separate out the sound into smaller cogs. In short, we could break down Tim’s one chord cluster by looking at its extremes of pitch, dynamics and intensity but he possibly hears this as just one type of tone colour. Tim felt comfortable to initiate his own ideas and I, as his play partner, judged how and when to join in with his playing, connect to it and possibly by joining in therefore extend it. Tim plays his idea to me, I match it and so Tim hears his music played by someone else. Young (2003) suggests it is valuable for the child to give them the experience of hearing and feeling someone else fitting in with their music-making. Tim therefore retains the initiative and the music making is on his terms (Young, 2003). This is a wonderful example of sustained shared thinking where the interaction between the adult and child is important. Tim and I worked together in an intellectual way to extend the musical narrative. Siraj-Blatchford et al (2004) conclude that both parties must contribute to the thinking in order for it to develop and extend our understanding. Tim is also aware of the importance of the piano in the family home. He watches and joins in with Gywn’s playing, observes me play and therefore knows this is a valued activity. The piano lid is always open, the instrument itself is polished, looks inviting and is at a central point in the house. Tim’s home is a musically rich environment. Lehmann suggests ‘parents and caregivers can provide environments that significantly accelerate the rate of acquisition of musical skills. … supposedly “special” abilities, such as absolute pitch, are less influenced in musical development than more mundane factors, such as parental support and involvement and sustained practice’ (Lehmann, 2007 p. 26). I was most intrigued that Tim’s rather exuberant energetic playing did not distract his siblings sat near him intently working. Gluschankof (2003) suggests that perhaps children make use of filters that allow them to screen out all external stimuli not related to their chosen activity. Gluschankof proposes that no episodes of child’s self initiated music play would have occurred ‘without the tacit acceptance of the adults’ (2005, p. 331). Even though Tim’s father had voiced his quiet disapproval of Tim playing so loudly on the piano, he had accepted that it was a valued play activity. Child’s perspective: What did Tim see? I showed Tim this video and asked him ‘What are you doing here’. He replies ‘I was playing on the piano’. He didn’t say anything else but looked intently at himself playing and smiled. He did not want to watch all the video as he was keen to watch a different unrelated clip he had spotted when I loaded the film. Field Notes: Lunchtime Tim is sat at the kitchen table eating lunch with his older sister Gywn. Taking a large bite of his bar, Tim begins to chew with his mouth open and chant ‘Num, num, num, num, num’. He is also simultaneously swinging his legs under the table. He stops and looks at Gywn sat next to him, waiting for her reaction. He knows he should eat with his mouth closed and is teasing her. He takes another bite and this time extends the ‘num’ chant to seven repetitions. As he chants he rocks forward and backward matching the words. He stops again and says to Gywn ‘I love making noises!’ Gywn replies in her teacher like voice ‘Can you stop making noises?!’ Tim, smiling, continues with a dotted rhythmic pattern ‘naaaaa na, naaaaaa na’ Gywn replies ‘carrrrrrr car, carrrrrrr car!’ Gywn, deciding to join in with the game, continues ‘a yum yum yum, a yummy yum yum’. On the final ‘yum’ she pats the table with both hands. He replies ‘a num num num..... a nummy nummy nummy nummmmmmmmmm’ and laughs. Gywn repeats her musical chant again ‘a num num num, a nummy num num’. Her chair is tipped back with the palms of her hands pushing against the table. She releases the pressure on her palms and the chair resumes to all four legs on the final ‘num’. Gwyn pauses and then says ‘bum’ very quietly. Tim immediately responds ‘bum bum bum’ very quickly. Gywn responds ‘bum’ and bounces on her chair as she says this. She repeats this over and over this again with the same word and the same repetitive movement and Tim joins in copying her. Tim excitedly chants ‘bummy bummy bummy bummy bum!’ and copies Gyn’s bouncing movement, bouncing five times in time to the pulse of his rhythmic phrase. They stop and laugh as they have spotted me from a distance observing. Analysis In this example Tim and Gywn are using their invented rhyming musical chant to communicate to each other. They have integrated their music in to the task of eating lunch. According to the ‘Development Matters: Communication Language and Listening’ (2012) Tim is currently working at the level of a child who is 30 – 50 months as he can joins in with repeated refrains and anticipates key phrases in rhymes. Tim is also having fun playing with words and eliciting a playful response from his older sister. The chant has been initiated by Tim and scaffolded by his Gywn. The theory of scaffolding was first introduced in the late 1950s by Bruner. Scaffolding comes from Vygotsky's (1978) concept of an expert assisting a novice, or an apprentice. Wood, Bruner, and Ross's (1976) idea of scaffolding parallels the work of Vygotsky They described scaffolding as the support given to a younger learner by an older, more experienced adult. In this example we could suggest that Gywn, although not an adult, could take on the role of the more experienced peer. Scaffolding could therefore represent the helpful interactions between these two siblings that enable the younger child to do something beyond his independent efforts. Looking at how Gywn scaffolds Tim’s chant, she takes his second idea of the repetitive ‘na naaaaa’ and initiates the beginning of the rhyming sequence ‘car carrrrrrr’ imitating both his rhythm and tone. She then takes his first idea ‘num’ and changes it to ‘yum’ incorporating it in to two distinct phrases with clear rhythmic phrasing and a strong feel for the pulse. She emphasises this with a final movement where her hands tap the table in time to the pulse. Tim attempts to copy his older sister and she repeats her phrase again for him. We can see how Gywn and Tim are communicating to each other through a chant. Malloch & Trevarthen (2009) suggest that musicality is intrinsic to communication between parents and adults. They propose that the language between a parent and child when they are interacting can be musical and that this communicative musicality is present from birth. Panksepp and Trevarthan describe communicative musicality as a ‘form of playful and endlessly inventive social behaviour that helps build epigenetically the social brains of our children’ (2009, p. 105). We could relate this example to Arculus’ (2011) theory of ‘communicative musical funniness’. She has devised this term from two theories: Communicative Musicality (Malloch & Trevarthen 2009) and Funniness defined by Reddy (2010). Reddy (2010) suggests that funniness, like music, is communicative and social. Communicative musical funniness has been co-created by Tim and Gywn. This is sophisticated form of communication and multi modal. Arculus also proposes that highly complicit games take place in ‘in-between’ spaces (2011). The lunch without the present of an adult close by could be seen as an ‘in-between’ space where Gywn and Tim tune into each other. Alcock (2007) has also intimated that older children make fun for themselves during obligatory routines. As soon as the siblings noticed me approaching their complicité stopped. Recording 1: ‘Tidy Tidy Tidy’ with a leaf Tim is sitting holding a leaf in the back of the car. We are driving home from a music session where the music leader had incorporated leaves in an activity. Tim explains to me that he is cleaning the inside of the car with his leaf. I cannot see what Tim is doing but catch the occasional glimpse of him pretending to use it to clean his window and the back of my seat. I switch on my mobile phone recorder and start recording as Tim is starting to sing quietly ’Tidy tidy tidy, tidy tidy tidy, tidy tidy tidy, o tiiiiii-dy ’ recognisable to the opening tune of The Farmers in his Den on the notes E E E, G# G# G# and then higher notes are roughly aiming for a BBB finishing on a swooping glissando down in an attempt to get back to the E on ‘dy’. He is clearly striving for these notes but to our Western ears it sounds like he is sometimes singing micro-intervals. He then repeats this again singing slightly louder ‘Tidy every day, tidy every day, tidy every all day, er tidy everyday’ aiming on a similar set of notes, just following the contour of the melody on the final ‘er tidy everyday’. Tim then repeats the ‘tidy tidy tidy, tidy tidy tidy every up’ adding an enthusiastic vocalised ‘yeeee ha’. He has heard the music leader vocalising this ‘yee ha’ at the music session that day. Tim sings ‘tidy tidy tidy’ again but much quieter. He repeats this singing ‘tidy tidy tidy’ on the same note. He pauses and then starts again singing slower to the familiar Farmer in his Den tune. ‘Tidy up again, tidy up again, tidy up again’ elongating the final ‘gain’ much louder. I briefly watch him in the rear view mirror as he holds the leaf in the air above his head looking up at it. He stops as he possibly realises I have noticed him. Analysis This is an example of Tim playing with a known song he has learnt in nursery. Prior to this observation, Tim had a few days earlier sang the opening phrases of the original song on another car journey. The song has now reappeared with altered words and an altered melody from its original source at nursery. Tim possibly has not remembered the whole song so we hear just repetitive singing of a section of it. Young (2009) points out ‘it is much more fun to, more interesting, to play with the song, to fit it around what you are doing at the moment, make it match a movement, make the words fit the toy you have (and) to add some melody of your own making’. Tim’s song that he has in his head has resurfaced in connection with his playing with the leaf. His vocal play has been stimulated by an object that he can sing about. Tim is learning to sing a song from his own culture that is purposeful and meaningful to him. Welch suggests that Tim’s reworking of a known song is a ‘...utilization of enculturated song fragments’ (2006, p. 316). This particular nursery rhyme is one that has heard frequently at nursery and then at home. Over a few weeks Tim has been practising the song with frequent repetitions of the opening phrases. We have had fun singing together adapted versions of this song which Tim has initiated. This song is clearly embedded in Tim’s everyday situations and he is re-making it for himself, constructing it bit by bit (Young 2003). Barrett (2006) proposes that children construct songs by adopting and adapting the musical structures they encounter as singers and listeners. Perhaps, as Young (2003) suggests, Tim is attracted to this song because it can ‘do things’ for him and he is drawn to it because it fits in with his ‘current needs and capabilities – musical, language, social (and) emotional’ (2003, p. 97) We could use this recording to look at Tim’s singing ability. Moog (1967) researched children’s ability to sing accurately and reported that at four years of age, 38% of the children correctly imitate songs, apart from small errors. Welch (1998) even produced a model for development that he divided into four phases based on the child’s ability to pitch match. Tim perhaps fits in to Phase 2 and Phase 3 of Welch’s model as he demonstrates an ability to sing the melodic outline ‘generally following the contours of the target melody’ and his ‘tonality is generally phrase based’ (Welch, 2006, p. 317). He warns us that ‘the path of development is not necessarily linear for any particular individual’ (Welch, 2006, p. 317). Rutkowski (1997) also measured the development of the singing voice and noted by the age of 4 a child showed signs of being an ‘initial range singer (who) exhibits consistent use of (the) initial singing range (usually D to A). Conclusion It has been an honour to observe Tim’s ‘musicking’ in his own undirected play. Small (1998) came up with the theory ‘’musicking’’ to describe music not as a thing, but rather an activity. "Musicking," is a verb that encompasses all of Tim’s musical activity. Furthermore, according to Campbell musiking encompasses ‘all human musical activity’ (2010, p. 5). As Campbell quite rightly points out whether a child’s music is ‘.... natural or acquired, songs or song segments, even rhythms without pitches ...(it is) their music, nonetheless.’ (2010, p. 4). By listening to Tim’s spontaneous music making I have become a constructive, creative and active listener (Young, 1995). Tim has been the active music maker and I have been the active receiver. Blacking (1979) suggests that my active listening has made Tim’s music ‘music’. Perhaps Tim’s music is only viewed as music because of my attitude and feeling towards it. From my perspective I see Tim’s music as musical. Further research is to question whether other practitioners recognise spontaneous music making as musical. Young (1995) calls these human expressions caught in ‘sound forms’. Tim’s musical play reveals a number of characteristics. Firstly it is multimodal. He blends and weaves his music with movement and objects. Marsh and Young (2006) suggest children’s music making, as well as being aurally active is also kinaesthetically and visually active. Secondly Tim’s music was not pre-planned but spontaneous. Thirdly his music is sociable. Marsh and Young write that ‘...music is a means for playing with others...’ (2006, p. 290). It is evident that Tim’s space, social interactions and resources around him all influence and play a part in his music making. Observing Tim’s spontaneous music making leads me to re-think the way we teach. We must listen and observe our young children’s responses, letting them be the pedagogues. Tim’s music has its own intrinsic qualities and values and it has a right to be recognised for its own sake in our curriculum. It is our duty as educators to pay more attention to children’s engagement in and with music. We, as adults, should not make the decision to decide what music is, what it is not and how much of it we should allow in a child’s life (Campbell, 2010). Lonie also proposes that music education should not be something that is done to a child (2010). Tim’s spontaneous songs and vocal chants take their ingredients from his musical culture. Using the theorectical models of Bronfebrenner (2005) and Appadurai (1996) we can learn much more about Tim’s soundscape which shows influences that comprise from his enculturation, socialization and education. Campbell writes ‘the musical identities of children are powerfully influenced by their home, school, and neighbourhood environments as well as through the ethno-, media-, and techno-scapes that surround them (2010, p. 12). Campbell (2011) suggests that the home environment has the most influence over a child’s musical culture. Bronfebrenner (2005) calls this the Micro Influence. Bronfebrenner also proposes the home could be influenced by other interconnecting cultural spheres such as peers, spiritual and community affiliation (Meso influences), economics, education and politics (Exo influences) and beliefs and values (Macro influences). Tim’s micro influence and meso influence value his music making. It is perhaps his future exo and macro wider influence that still need to learn more from Tim to understand his music fully. By observing Tim I now have a ‘.....heightened awareness of the child’s own music-making (which) will lead to a stronger appreciation of the abilities and potentials which young children bring’ (Young, 2003, p. 121). It is important to work with what a child knows and can do, rather than determining a curriculum based on what we as adults feel children should know. Evans (2009) warns us that we should not hear children’s music as purely a precursor to ‘adult’ music. 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