Dear Lloyd and co vocalisters,
One general remark and one personal question:
You wrote: ‘This is even true in the music that is printed for children to sing in elementary school. Its range now is from about G below middle C to G an octave above. Whereas in the 1950's, elementary school song books pitched songs from middle C up to G an octave and a fifth above middle C. Quite a difference in range, and, my opinion, a range that is damaging for a child's voice.’
But even this lowered range seems to be too much for today’s children, who are exposed constantly to the monotonous sounds called pop ‘music’. My daughters’ friends (approx. 8 years of age) don’t sing, but just yell and make sounds, in all kind of tonalities. As soon as the tone is supposed to go up, they just switch to a different key; well if you would call it that: it just sounds terrible. They don’t even seem to try to reach a certain pitch, and that’s probably because they don’t learn to do that. They are experts in singing flat in so many different ways, that it is really astonishing. My daughter does it much better, but still makes mistakes. When were children in the old days supposed to sing in key?
One small side remark: Could it be possible that nowadays kids are taller or in other aspects vocally different from the kids half a century ago? I know an almost antiquarian book (written in the fifties) about teaching children to sing, in which the author says, that in his (!) time voices were lower than they used to be. Of course this is highly subjective, whereas schoolbooks with scores seem to be more objective. (Do they still exist? Amazing!) But this is just a side remark: the cultural explanation makes more sense to me.
Then the personal issue (but still something for the list): I saw that that your usual signature has disappeared. Does that mean that you retired, or just that your Mac has turned up against you?
Best greetings,
Dré
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