My husband is a trained musician.  The rest of the family is pretty musical as well, so how to teach music to children is a topic we discuss not infrequently.  One thing we’ve found frustrating is that there aren’t many tools available to enable untrained parents (i.e. me!) to teach music theory to young children.  (And musical theory concepts aren’t really any harder than learning to read or learning colors; they’re just unfamiliar and usually only taught by adult-level methodology.)  Soooo…

I was thrilled when I was introduced to The Tuneables  and asked to review this DVD.  The Tuneables: I Love Music is a DVD, the first in a (soon-to-be) series designed to teach children ages 3-8 musical concepts in an engaging manner.  The parent or other teacher does not need any musical knowledge; it’s largely self-teaching.  (Reinforcing the concepts outside of the video is encouraged, though, and suggestions are offered for how to do this.)  It can be purchased with or without the “matching” audio CD, The Music Box, which includes the songs from the DVD.

This animated video begins with two children entering a music shop, where they are introduced to the magical world of the “tunies.” Essentially, they have a good time with characters in the shape of various instruments.  They play games and sing songs to learn concepts like rhythm and pitch.  It seems to be pretty musically sound, beginning with a pretty good musical interval for, well, beginners.  It gets them involved, with patting their knees, getting up and moving and, of course, singing.  Although it claims to immerse students in classical music – and there are threads of great pieces woven throughout, I didn’t feel that this was very obvious, or a real strength of the program.

What did my kids think of it?  Well, because of the aforementioned musically-trained daddy, there wasn’t really anything in this video that was new to my 4-year-old (except perhaps terminology that he may not have bothered with when introducing her to concepts).  The first time I gave this to my children (the 4-year-old and just-turned-9-year-old) to watch, they were not impressed.  It seems to have grown on them, though.  The 4-year-old now asks to watch it almost every day, and always plays the CD as soon as she has finished the video.  The 9-year-old doesn’t ask for it, but usually does join her sister.  Both of them sing the songs from the video all the time.

What do I think of it?  Musically, it seems quite sound.  I will be interested to see how many videos the completed series ends up with, and how broad a spectrum it covers, as far as musical concepts.  The only thing I really don’t like about it is that the music isn’t very adult-friendly.  It gets pretty annoying to hear my children singing these songs repeatedly.  Most of them are simple ditties purely to demonstrate rhythm, or along the lines of vocal “warm-ups,” and the the lyrics are childish.  I’d much rather listen to “do mi sol mi do” again and again (which is what hubby had them singing before, along these lines) than to “This song’s funny, ha ha ha” (which is what they’re singing now).  Still, I think they are well-done; I just hope the creators will keep us poor parents and teachers in mind as they create the rest of the series!

I would definitely recommend these, especially for non-musical parents who want to teach these skills to their children.  I wouldn’t rely on it, though, for music appreciation; just for musical skill.

Disclosure: I was provided with a copy of The Tuneables: I Love Music and The Music Box to facilitate this review.  As always, all opinions are 100% mine!