Hearing Music
By Jinny Gudmundsen,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Great games teach kids to listen to music.
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What you will—and won't—find in this game.
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What’s It About?
HEARING MUSIC is a musical activity center developed by composer Morton Subotnick for kids age 5 and older. The software provides carefully sequenced exercises designed to improve your child's ability to listen to music. Children learn to hear nuances in music including changes in tempo, differences in pitch and endings, and variations of a melody. The software uses works from Mozart, Beethoven, and others.
Four activities are accessible from the opening screen, which resembles a playground. Select the children playing hide-and-seek, and you find a matching game where kids click on the different bushes to find two that are playing the same musical phrase. Click on the kids riding a train and you find an activity in which you order musical phrases to complete a piece. The man on the park bench leads to a game where you match musical notation to a melody that you hear.
Is It Any Good?
Each activity offers four levels of difficulty and 15 challenges within each level. The content adjusts in difficulty, depending on how the child is responding.
Because this software has no overall story or external incentive to play it, some kids may lose interest before finishing all the musical puzzles. Parents interested in encouraging their kids to explore this software might want to participate with them to create a cooperative play experience.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the concepts they learned. Listen to music in your home library and talk about tempo, melody, and pitch.
Game Details
- Platforms: Windows, Mac
- Available online?: Not available online
- Publisher: Viva-Media
- Release date: June 18, 2004
- Genre: Music & Dance
- ESRB rating: E
- Last updated: November 4, 2015
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