Pitchy

For over a year, it's been high on the priority list to start teaching some singing. Not teaching songs, but teaching singing. Not all of the kids picked up singing, which I had thought would come naturally. The youngest, with the voice problems and birth defects in the larynx & pharynx is the one who really needs help. I finally started yesterday. First I determined whether or not she could hear pitch differences at all (playing two notes on the piano and asking whether they were the same). Then I asked her to match her voice to a note on the piano. Hmmm. We worked on it yesterday, and several times for a few minutes each today. The good news is that things are improving, and we even got three notes (C-D-E) sung on pitch in a row.

But the thing I find most interesting is how long it takes for her to hear the pitch and think before she sings IF she's going to get it right. If I hit the note on the piano and she la's right away, it will be off-pitch. But if she hears it and then waits a full second or second-and-a-half, she will usually hit the note smack-on right! Kids with vcfs supposedly have problems with auditory processing. What I noticed today about her hearing a pitch and WAITING before she could match it with her voice -- it fits perfectly. (I don't quite know what to do about fixing the problem. But it makes it clearer to me that the time-lag between her ears and brain is more of a problem for her than I want to accept.)

By the way, her next cleft-palate surgery was scheduled today. The date set is August 16.