The Tuneables Review

Music is a big part of daily life in our home, so I was thrilled when Team Mom offered me a free review copy of The Tuneables, a fun new music education approach sponsored by the Music Intelligence Project. My kids love the fun, musical instrument-inspired characters in the DVD. They love to “pat, pat, pat” their heads in time to the music!

I frequently hear them singing the songs from the DVD as they play. I was a little concerned that the music was a little too repetitive, but my kids don’t seem to mind. The repetitiveness of the music may actually be improving their pitch-matching ability when they sing, which is nice! Several of the songs teach solfege, and I’ve found myself reviewing my solfege in my sleep, in a not-especially restful return to music theory class!

Lily is absolutely addicted to this show (I can’t mention it without her wanting to see it), and I hoped that bringing it along would ease the pain of her being left with friends while I went to Emma’s kindergarten orientation. It didn’t work – she stood by the door screaming for the entire hour – but my friend’s kids and their friends liked it!

I do have one issue with The Tuneables DVD. It teaches solfege (Do, Re, Mi, etc), which is typically either fixed with “Do” equivalent to C (a musical note) or movable (focusing on the relationship between the notes rather than the development of perfect pitch). This program has do equivalent to D, which I could excuse if there were not a point in the DVD where the piano is shown playing C but the actual note is D (in other parts of the DVD it does play D). I wish they had either stuck with the traditional C if they were not going to explicitly move “Do” around – or at least had the animated piano play a note that reflected the one being played!

C/D quibble aside, this is a fun, engaging show that gets kids moving and singing within a magically musical world. It’s a show that my kids love, and one I’m happy to have them watch – although not quite as frequently as Lily would like to!