Imitating the Sea of Sound

Ever since I was a kid myself, I have loved to imitate. I consistently got good laughs from imitating sounds, imitating singers, imitating friends. I loved the challenge of exactly matching a sound, whether it was a bird, vacuum cleaner, or person. I worked diligently to match sounds, which I came to see involved a good deal of listening, of patience, and concentration. Imitating is an all-around, comprehensive metaphysical exercise in the use of sound. It is also a blast to do with children.

I quickly found that the more often I engaged my own girls in imitation exercises, the better they got with language skills. They grasped rhyming quickly, and they gained fast confidence in being able to express themselves. They learned languages easily, mostly because they became comfortable with the ambiguity of experimenting with sound. As I made sure it was a fun thing and a safe thing to play with sounds, they felt freer to experiment with vocalizations.

Yes, sometimes I think the girls got carried away with the volume, however, I’d rather have them feel free with self-expression than feel shut down or restricted or self-conscious. We had to give equal time to teaching the responsible use of the voice, as well as timing and sensitivity. They learned to respect all instruments, whether a piano or their vocal chords, and treat the instrument gently and kindly.

An easy and fun game we sometimes did in the car was simply matching tones. I sang a tone and Alexandra and Vivienna had to match it. I had them take turns or we’d all do it together. If one was a little flat or sharp, I gave them the thumbs up or the thumbs down to guide them in raising or lowering their pitch.

I played another game that they loved, which was to pretend I was a beautiful singer who sang in a gravely, raspy loud voice. They then would guide and teach me how to sing much more beautifully, until I finally got it right. They had fun being the teachers, and the sheer comedy of the situation helped them past any self-consciousness.

Alexandra and I matched the sounds of the orchestra instruments over and over. I thought it would be a good stretch for her in being able to imitate a variety of intonations, so she would have vocal flexibility. Of course, concentration, listening and memory all increased through the practice.

The girls each learned the alphabet by age 2 ½, thanks to phonics songs. We stuck to the same song over and over, tying the letter name to its sound: countless repetitions of “ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-Ayy, Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-Bee…” helped them easily identify the letters and supported their confidence with learning to read. They both learned multiplication tables from listening and singing along to very cleverly produced CDs, which progressively multiplied every number, 1 through 12, within a catchy tune. Years later, we will still periodically break into singing about 5s or 8s, and they still sing their way through multiplication answers.

As they got older, quoting movies turned out to be another excellent memory and listening tool for the girls. There is a sense of challenge and even pride in being able to remember not only the exact wording and phrasing of a movie passage, but also the timing, the intonation and the accents.

I knew early on that I was setting myself up to be the recipient of seemingly endless repetitions of the same phrase from a movie or line from a song, over and over, but I also knew the importance of what the girls were wiring in their brains and understanding in their minds. The exercise of matching and quoting has served them in developing concentration ability and confidence in self-expression. The resulting Sea of Sound has all been worth it.