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I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

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Re: I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

#21

Post by lubujackson »

Luckily I never got rid of my old CDs. They have been sitting in a cabinet for decades and last Xmas I got my son a portable CD player for $35. They have been exploring all kinds of my old music, which is awesome.

I see it in your photos here - Dookie by Green Day is a big hit with my boys!

Re: I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

#22

Post by UtopiaPunk »

gwbas1c wrote: post #14

An easy way to do this without needing to build a thing is to get into vinyl. One of the nice things about vinyl is that historians will have an easier time figuring out what's on it than many of our digital formats.

We have a record player and some vinyl records in the house. My three-year-old is starting to like them. Today, he even was holding the record carefully by the sides. Made me such a proud dad, haha.

My 1-year-old, however is pretty monstrous to the records. We have some little kid vinyl that I got for cheap off a friend, and we placed those within his reach. He thinks they're interesting, but grabs the record or sleeve and bends them a lot. It's whatever, it's fine. But I did make it a point recently to move my favorite records to another room for the time being :)

Re: I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

#24

Post by UtopiaPunk »

gwbas1c wrote: post #12

> I think we're unintentionally teaching our children to consume music passively. My goal with this project was to teach them to discover it actively, to own it, to care about it at the album level. I think it kinda worked! Some people also say that about prerecorded music and whine about when families had to gather around the piano to sing.

My three-year-old and I listen to music together, and he (sometimes) really engages with what he is hearing. He'll pick out the words and ask about what different phrases mean. I'll say who the singer or band it, what genre it is, and instrument is playing, etc. Or I'll turn it around and ask stuff like "do you want to listen to jazz, or bluegrass, or classical musical?" He's developing a pretty good ear, I think! And, of course, sometimes we gotta dance.

Re: I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

#25

Post by derriz »

gwbas1c wrote: post #14

An easy way to do this without needing to build a thing is to get into vinyl. One of the nice things about vinyl is that historians will have an easier time figuring out what's on it than many of our digital formats.

What's easy about vinyl? If you want a kid to have a physical copies of music, then CDs generally cost between a third and a tenth the price of the vinyl equivalent and are far more "kid friendly" - not just the CDs themselves but the playback equipment. Unless you want to have them listen on one of those novelty mass produced plastic turntables that sound absolutely terrible, a good stylus on a decent turntable is just a kid's innocent bump away from destruction.

Re: I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

#26

Post by blaze33 »

Nice project! Reminds me of a startup whom I met the founders several years ago: they had a system of hexagonal wooden tiles you could put on a device to play a specific songs (also maybe videos). I'm not sure the project is still alive but I found an article with pictures of what I saw: https://competition.adesignaward.com/ada-winner-design.php?I...

While digital files are obviously very practical and efficient for our pictures/audio/video I can't help but see how different our relationship to them is when a physical object embodies the data.

Re: I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

#27

Post by emmelaich »

gwbas1c wrote: post #12

> I think we're unintentionally teaching our children to consume music passively. My goal with this project was to teach them to discover it actively, to own it, to care about it at the album level. I think it kinda worked! Some people also say that about prerecorded music and whine about when families had to gather around the piano to sing.

Curse you pianola! If only we knew.

Re: I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

#28

Post by oliverjanssen »

Love this project! That line about unintentionally teaching kids to consume music passively really resonates. I built something with a similar motivation – Muky (https://muky.app), an app for creating curated, distraction-free music experiences for kids. Different approach (digital vs. physical), but the same core idea: helping kids engage with music intentionally rather than as background noise.

Re: I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

#29

Post by dhosek »

I’ve made a conscious decision to not do streaming services. Having all the music is not much different than having no music at all. I don’t even want all of my own music on my phone. Instead, I use a set of smart playlists to give me a changing selection of songs based on ratings, how long it’s been since I last heard a song and how new the music is in my library.

Re: I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

#30

Post by kulahan »

oliverjanssen wrote: post #28

Love this project! That line about unintentionally teaching kids to consume music passively really resonates. I built something with a similar motivation – Muky ( https://muky.app ), an app for creating curated, distraction-free music experiences for kids. Different approach (digital vs. physical), but the same core idea: helping kids engage with music intentionally rather than as background noise.

I've never been super into music listening, though I do love singing. I'm curious what you think is important about this difference in approach. The idea doesn't come naturally to me - probably for the same reason intentional listening sounds more like a chore to me.

I want to be clear I'm not poo-pooing on the idea! I just can't connect with it personally, and if you're that into the topic, I figured you might have good insight into this idea, at least from a personal perspective :)

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