Your teenage daughter can rattle off the lyrics to her 320 favorite tunes on her iPod but doesn’t remember you asking her to babysit her younger brother on Saturday night. Your high school senior can improv the sweetest guitar riff complexities by ear on the spot, yet blanks out during the chemistry lecture at school.

What is it about music that imprints a solid memory in adults and teens? Are there ways to use music to improve communication and high school performance? How important is listening? Can music improve parent and teen communication? How important is ear training for young musicians and teens?

Music and Teen Identity

What is your teen thinking?

Every parent attempts to answer this question. Try paying attention to your teen’s latest playlist. Listening to music has become a large part of identity in Click to read the rest…

Series Information

This is part 15 of 17 in the Music & Life series.

Make no mistake: Wii Music is a lot of fun. Where else can you get together with your friends and play “Sukiyaki” on steel drums and sitar, or create a full orchestral jam session in space? Wii Music offers so many nuances of play that small children can play with no chance of failure, yet it can be adapted to create highly competitive opportunities for musicians to play.

What is Wii Music?

Essentially, players of Wii Music play music as Wii characters. Using the Wii remote controls, you choose instruments to play, using movements rather like those required in playing the musical instruments in the physical world. Each instrument has its own nature in Wii Music, just like in the real world, and particular combinations of buttons and movements give you chords or single notes, tremolo or arpeggios, crescendos or muted sounds. Add the Wii balance board for full drum set action.

As you continue to play, you unlock more instruments and more tunes, working up to a selection of over 60 different instruments from around the world Click to read the rest…