This website is primarily aimed at school children aged about 7 to 12ish. I have tried hard to keep the vocabulary, sentence structure and concepts at a level that can be understood and appreciated by children of this age. Having said that, I have also tried hard not to ‘talk down’ to children. I think this is a failing of much material aimed at children, especially in music. There is a lot of material around that talks about ‘children’s music’ and many CDs of so-called ‘children’s music’. In my opinion this is patronising. It is my experience that children can actually appreciate a much wider range of music than most adults give them credit for. In fact, children are normally more open minded about music than many adults. See the page on modern classical music for a little story about the time I learnt this lesson for myself.
If only for this sake, I hope adults, as well as children, will find something of interest on this site. I also hope adults will be able to appreciate the discussions that crop up on this website about the importance of music. Music is actually far more important, and far more fundamental to humanity than many adults realise. It is a human language that is far more ingrained into the human psyche than the words you are reading now. Trivialising or marginalising music means trivialising or marginalising an essential part of what it means to be human.
That’s it. Sermon over! What I really want to say is this—adults, do come in, have a look round, watch the videos, etc. The more, the merrier! If you see a typo, a video that doesn’t play, a link that doesn’t work, or anything that seems amiss (such things are highly likely in the early days), then please do tell me by sending a comment. More generally, please feel free to send comments telling me what you think about this site. Feel free also to link into my website, subscribe, and spread the word in any way you see fit.
If you do send comments or link into this site, however, there are some things I wish to draw your attention to.
- Comments:
Please keep in mind that this website is for children. Therefore I will be very strict about moderating comments. In particular:- Rude remarks or bad language will not be allowed.
- This is generally not the place to enter into a debate about the finer points of music, about the superiority of one composer over another, or whatever. Having said that, if you feel there is something along these lines that you wish to bring to my attention, then by all means do send me a comment about it. It may not get publicised, but I will certainly read it, take it into account, and possibly make appropriate changes to my website.
- Linking into this website:
I will appreciate this very much. However, I should let you know that I may not reciprocate by linking in to your site. If I don’t reciprocate, the reason will normally be because my site is for children. I don’t want to give external links to sites that are not appropriate for children—especially sites that have nothing to do with music (I do have some links to ‘grown-up’ sites—but these are either official sites of musicians I mention by name, or footnote credits for material I have used in the body of the page).
I think that’s about it, apart from information about the videos.
Enjoy this site!