7 Reasons Why Standard Children's Music Tends To Sound So Poor


by Ian Watts - Date: 2009-11-03 - Word Count: 567 Share This!

1) cheap productions
2) no real instruments
3) no actual musicians
4) performed without attitude
5) only produced to collect the money
6) quickly produced
7) poor arrangements

When my own child Dominic was born two years ago, being a musician myself it was a high priority for me to purchase music so that he could listen from an early age. I went on the usual websites and purchased a CD, with a lovely child friendly cover. The CD arrived and I put it on; to my dismay the music on this CD was really awful, cheap, tinny sounding, with horrible twee vocals. I think I managed to listen to about 3 tracks before I started flicking through it to see if the content improved...it didn't and the CD now resides in a CD rack never to be played again. OK, I'd misjudged the purchase so I returned to the CD website and this time looked a little harder. Again I found something with a professional looking cover and a description telling me that the songs on this CD were perfect for entertaining my child; again money changed hands and the CD duly arrive. Again, dismay and dissapointment at the appauling standard of music for children contained within. Then by pure luck we were bought a present by a friend of a collection of some 101 nursery rhymes, surely third time lucky? But no, same rubbish, just more of it and this time strung together is a massive ill fitting medley with a maximum of 10 seconds of each nursery rhyme! Again to the CD rack to live a lonely life.

Now my own parents got me something really great as a child, I remember playing it on my fathers reel to reel tape machine and I remember that it had many acoustic sounding instruments and a guys voice. It really inspired me and I felt very upset that I wouldn't be able to give my own child musical inspiration like this. Then it hit me, why not record my own for Dominic?

I started this mamouth task in October 2008 and enlisted the help of a few musical friends capable of delivering proper music. We set up with drums bass and guitar and through the course of 2 days arranged and produced the backing tracks to what would become The Nursery Rhyme Collection. Over the next 10 months the project became more and more complicated with many musicians coming in and out of Comfy Towers recording studio in Linby, Nottingham, UK to record their own parts in their own styles. Click the links to listen to some examples:

Georgie Porgie

I'm A Little Teapot

Hush Little Baby

What Shall We Do With The Grumpy Pirate

The end product was such a revelation that I decided to make it a public release so that other parents could enjoy the benefits of quality children's music instead of the cheap rubbish for kids (which is not cheap financially of course). My own son absolutely loves the music on The Nursery Rhymes Collection, dancing, singing, learning and sleeping to the various tracks completely unaware of course of the months of effort that went into recording it and completely unaware that it was produced for him. I hope in time he will understand.

The following articles will be about how we started the Nursery Rhymes project, about the musicians involved and the instruments used. Please visit The-Nursery-Rhymes-Collection to hear high quality samples of all 70 tracks.

Related Tags: children, music, kids, nursery rhymes, childrens music, music for children

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