[sdiy] My son's first groove

[Steffen Juul]

On 26/01/2009, at 9.37, Magnus Danielson wrote:

> Aaron Lanterman skrev:
>> Today I played some music on the laptop to entertain me while  
>> feeding my son Zachary (who we call Z). I noticed he was happily  
>> bouncing in his high chair, and then noticed he seemed to be kind  
>> of bouncing in sync with the music.
>> Curious, I turned down the music. He stopped bouncing, looked  
>> nonplussed, and then got mildly fussy. I turned the music back up,  
>> and he smiled and started bouncing again.
>> A few more repeats of this experiment convinced me that he was,  
>> indeed, grooving.
>> So what was Z's first groove? "Party Machine," by Bruce Haack.
>> "Low low low, like Kurtis Blow.
>> Down down down, like James Brown.
>> Haack attack is back. Bruce Haack, anti-wack."
>> Hah!
>
> This says something about his fathers taste of music... I do not  
> know exactly what thought, but I will figure it out. :)
>
> Marvelous little things... nice little experience.

Try with Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up. My experiments so far  
show that a "beat" how ever cheesy is sufficient to get the chair- 
bouncing started. Be it YMCK, Lairs, Skreamizm or Stevie Wonder - or  
something in the span of those.

What i find interesting is that my experiments also show they (well,  
I only have one test person at hand) are able to start bouncing while  
listing to (more or less) abstract noise music (the non academic kind  
has mostly been tested), which must mean that they at an early state  
pick out structures from a seemingly abstract and chaotic setting.  
Qua adults ability to communicate through, say, a verbal language, it  
might not be that surprising though. I'm still fascinated though.