Music Widget

Getting children interested in producing and interacting with music from a young age is a great aim, and Leapfrog are helping parents do just that with some of their Learn & Groove range of toys for babies, toddlers and children.

The Learn & Groove Counting Maracas are aimed at aimed at 6-36 month old babies/toddlers.

The Music Play mode lets baby explore and create music, encouraging creative interaction and open-ended play. Each shake introduces baby to counting 1-10 in both English and Spanish, which helps promote an understanding of number order. Activities introduce the colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple, also in both English and Spanish.

(Continued)

Getting children interested in producing and interacting with music from a young age is a great aim, and Leapfrog are helping parents do just that with some of their Learn & Groove range of toys for babies, toddlers and children.

The Learn & Groove Musical Table is aimed at 6-36 month old babies/toddlers and helps to keep them entertained with 15 musical activities in both English and Spanish.

Colourful, interactive learning stations introduce early reading, math and language development skills through fun and engaging activities. Flip the centre page to Music mode and your baby will move and groove to more than 40 songs and melodies, including nursery rhymes, real instrument sounds and upbeat dance tunes.

(Continued)

When i saw the picture and started reading the press release, I got quite excited about this new paperless sheet music DVD system. It looked as if it could solve some of the problems I’d been having, particularly in a performance setting, either with not having quality paper copies of all the music I use, or else having so much paper it just gets in the way.

Take a look at the picture and I think you’ll agree it looks pretty cool:

The only downside is that none of that equipment is part of the deal. What this system offers is authored DVDs of sheet music that you use with a standard DVD player and your TV. Great for instruments that can be easily moved, but what if your acoustic piano isn’t in front of the telly?

It’s supposed to eliminate the need to manually turn pages because it does it for you. That’s fine, except I was hoping that there would be some foot switch that could do it on command. No, instead, I think the FAQ sums it up best:

6. The page turns too fast.

Speed up your Tempo.

7. The page turns too slow.

Slow down your tempo.

You see what this is? It’s really just a video of music with virtual page turns! Now, I’m sure there are situations where this would be useful, but what if you play a song a couple of bpm (beats per minute) too fast or slow? You’ll get out of sync with the DVD.

It could work quite well on a laptop computer with a DVD player, but the problem still remains - the musician has no control over the speed of the song display.

There are other solutions that give the user more control, and whilst this seems like an admirable attempt at bringing music display into the 21st century, it sounds too limiting to be of use to most musicians.

I love the concept but I don’t think this solution will cut it. Take a look, though, as it might be for you.

Paperless Sheet Music web site