Thursday, January 11, 2007

Babies love Mozart

Or so I'm told.

Check it: You too can strap a stereo to your uterus. I've seen a number of devices out there ranging into the thousands where you can give the baby something to jam on. Here at 20 weeks, 5 days Baby Chaud has functioning ears and can likely pick up a wide range of noises, I would guess most prominent being Rosey's snoring, her discretion being to lap-nap so often in the Winter months.

Our musical tastes have similar origins. Nicole's tastes originate in the classic Alternative/Post-Punk/Indie Rock genre, over time she's gravitated to more of the modern Dreampop/Shoegaze type stuff. My own tastes started in Metal and were eventually crystallized in a Thrash-Funk/Industrial/Punk-Ska-Core that forms the nucleus of my personal library, to which I've later moved into things like Bossanova and DeathCountry/Psychobilly stuff. That's not to say we're that strict. You can find a very wide range of tunes in our collection from Patsy Cline to Marvin Gaye to Marilyn Manson. Granted, some music like Creed makes us want to barf. I have no real faith in the idea that Mozart has some magic/supernatural voodoo in it that raises baby IQ, but I've taken to talking to the baby on occasion, as I can get my voice closer than Mom and since I'm not sharing a circulatory system, it's to my advantage to imprint my excellence as early as possible, even if words are probably beyond his grasp. The music we choose, however, has to be getting to his ears by now.

I hope the kid likes Tom Waits.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pat - as I recall, your musical tastes were strongly influenced by Sesame Street and The Muppets from early on. This continued until mid-late high school when you shifted interests to include Primus and Nine Inch Nails.

Don't discount the creativity of Jim Henson!

I think the contribution that Mozart provides is structured music. Once you appreciate classical music (and Mozart is classical, as opposed to many others who are labeled classical when they're actually baroque, romantic, or contemporary), you can spot the complex patterns of intricate structure. Sort of simple in its complexity. Babies enjoy patterns and this is how they learn.

Gretel loves classical music. Actually, she loves all music. But each day around noon she'll listen to classical for about an hour. She really enjoys it.

-Bob

Lish said...

Henson almost exclusively did covers. He provided inroads to new music one might not find elsewhere, but just you wait, it's only a few years before you see Big Bird belting out a NIN tune.

Anonymous said...

Oh yes. I believe "Disco Frog", "Mary had a Bicycle", "Workin' Dog","Abcdefghijklomnopqrstuvwxyz",and "The Honker Ducker Dinger Jamboree" were covers of someone else's work.

Then again, "Disco Frog" was largely Scott's interest. Darn near ruined Easter dinner with that song.