Noah's early music

I've started teaching Noah about the related major and minor keys. A few weeks ago, he didn't understand my explanation of the circle of fifths, but I can see he'll be ready for it in a few more days. I'm going to run out of music theory to teach him pretty soon. He's started singing little songs. His first one went, "If you take me away from my home, I'll be very very sad. Please don't take me away from home."

A couple of days ago, I took him to a concert by a bluegrass trio at the library. At the end of one of the songs, he said to me, "That was in the key of G." I knew this was right because I had heard one of the musicians calling out the key to another at the beginning. Noah observed that he can tell the key of a song by listening to the last note, because that's the Do. I found that to be pretty astonishing.

I checked the tuning of Noah's keyboard against Yoni's piano over the phone. It's a half step sharp, which doesn't matter to anyone without absolute pitch. Noah heard Julia say she was going to play a C. Then I played a B on the keyboard to match the pitch, and Noah said, "Mommy, that's a B. You played a B. MOMMY, THAT'S A B!" I distracted him, but later, all of us went to Sam Ash to look at digital pianos. Noah started playing one and immediately told David that it was off from his keyboard and that a B on the piano was a C on his keyboard. David told him he'd have to relearn the names of the notes when we got our new piano. Poor Noah.

We watched parts of the Wizard of Oz today. Noah resisted at first, because he knows there are scary parts in it, but I promised to sit with him and only show him the non-scary parts. I can let Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music run, but God forbid Noah see the Wicked Witch or, even worse, those horrible monkeys. He (and therefore all of us) won't sleep for days.