The Kid Should See This.
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There's just so much science, nature, music, art, technology, storytelling and assorted good stuff out there that my kids (and maybe your kids) haven't seen. It's most likely not stuff that was made for them...
But we don't underestimate kids around here.
Kid-friendly not-made-for-kids videos for all! Collected by Rion Nakaya and her three four year old co-curator.
Tip Jar: Curating this blog takes work! If you like the videos on this site, please support the science education projects that we've picked on DonorsChoose.org.
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Giant piano! And on this particular giant piano (with rainbow light up keys!), a happy gentleman at NYC’s F.A.O. Schwartz plays the Mario theme song… and not perfectly, which is the best part! — It’s the only way you can tell how much practice and work it must take to tap out such an epic song on such a giant instrument.
h/t @mindfulmimi.
When the elephant keepers at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo hear the sound of a harmonica, it’s not the radio they’ve left on. Instead, it’s the Zoo’s 36-year-old Asian elephant, Shanthi, who, unsolicited, has a propensity for coming up with her own ditties using whatever instruments the keepers have provided. These include harmonicas, horns and other noisemakers. The Zoo has captured some of Shanthi’s most recent capriccios on this video…
Shanthi is the mother of the Zoo’s 10-year-old calf, Kandula. Asian elephants are endangered in the wild, where 30,000 to 50,000 Asian elephants still live in the forests of south and southeast Asia.
via Viral Viral Videos.
In April 2012 Copenhagen Phil (Sjællands Symfoniorkester) surprised the passengers in the Copenhagen Metro by playing Griegs Peer Gynt. The flash mob was created in collaboration with Radio Klassisk. All music was performed and recorded in the metro.
via The Awesomer.
May the 4th be with you! Have a piano? Or just love music and/or Star Wars music? Then please enjoy this simple Imperial March tutorial, a slightly more advanced Cantina Band tutorial, and for inspiration, five year old Lucas playing the Star Wars theme on piano.
Here’s Tito Puente rocking the Bronx with A Maria Cervantes on the vibraphone in 1945. And here he is again with the same song at the Montreal Jazz Festival almost 40 years later in 1983.
Remember sound designer and composer Diego Stocco? He made music at the dry cleaners! And now he’s made a Burt’s Bees commercial with the help of trees and other things in nature. From his project page:
To celebrate Earth Day 2012 Burt’s Bees asked me to create a video performance in the style of my Music from a Tree. We thought to include as “instruments” also some of the ingredients used in their products, like honey, almonds, rice, and coconuts; also bees had a musical role in this piece. I performed the whole composition by playing these natural elements, no synthesizers, samplers or additional sounds have been used.
Despite it being an ad, it’s a really clear illustration of how you can get sound and music from anything, even if you’re out in the backyard “with nothing to do.” Go outside and make some music!
via SwissMiss.
Previous music + nature + commercial: the beautiful Touchwood SH-08C’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring from Japan.
How It’s Made: Cymbals! The kid liked this slow motion cymbal video so much that we kept looking into cymbals and found a great clip from the Discovery Channel/Science Channel’s How It’s Made.
A cymbal hit, filmed at 1,000 frames per second, does a lot more vibrating than one would typically imagine. These slow motion videos went viral mid-last year, but my kid missed it. Maybe yours did, too. See all of Fluke Corporation’s vibration videos here.
Update: And just in case you need to know what a cymbal sounds like, there’s this How It’s Made video, and we do have Max Roach on the hi-hat, which is a little different than a cymbal, but oh so worth watching.
via prosthetic knowledge.
Tokyo resident Ken Yokochi plays accordion. The song is Tama-Chan Snoa by Lars Hollmer. Some detail for explaining to the kids:
The instrument is played by compressing or expanding the bellows whilst pressing buttons or keys, causing valves, called pallets, to open, which allow air to flow across strips of brass or steel, called reeds, that vibrate to produce sound inside the body.
Here’s another example of accordion music (Astrid’s Waltz) played on a Castagnari accordion. — The company has a photo gallery of an accordion being made. — And here’s the same song, this time with a “singing” dog!
