Our Featured Articles

What Good Is Learning Music?
By Kevin taylor

There is a small, but growing, body of real scientific evidence regarding the value of studying a musical instrument at a young age. The impetus for the existence of this evidence is the music industry - specifically the National Association of Music Merchants (NAAM) - who is funding much of the current research. Along with this sponsored research, the subjects of the psychology of music and acoustics are growing academic fields, judging from the symposia announcements I receive every year. I suppose the great question these researchers seek to answer is, what good is learning music, anyhow?....

My Childbloom Experience
By Dianne Wheeler

Early last fall my 6 year old son and I were on a camping trip with some friends. There were a bunch of kids playing tag and one of the boys tripped over a huge tree root and went down, hard, on one knee. He was upset and crying, and his dad picked him up to sooth him. But, after a moment or two, this boy asked for - - - his guitar. He started to play softly, to himself and kept playing for a while until he had really calmed down. That was something I hadn't seen before, and perhaps equally unusual was that he was playing a beautiful classical piece I'd later learn was called "The Ladder", and he was playing it well. I knew this boy could have been some kind of virtuoso or young musical genius and that not every child could pull off Bach or Mozart at 6, but there was something else. There was a visible kind of relationship he had with the instrument, and the music, that made me really curious. I wanted to know where he studied and if I could get some of that for my boy!.