Morton Subotnick's Hearing Music

Morton Subotnick is an electronic composer with an interest in promoting musical literacy by providing creative musical play for children. Hearing Music is part of a series that includes Making Music, Making More Music, and Playing Music. The composer deliberately chose to use the word hearing instead of listening to reflect the way we use the words, as in “Listen! Do you hear what I am saying?!” He expressed the wish “to offer children, through games, a way to hear what they are listening to.”

This game is meant for children 8 and up. There are two levels of difficulty – beginner and advanced, and four parts to each level. There are four separate games in all and every action is done with the mouse – point, click and drag.

• Reading – listen to a short piece of music and choose which of two sets of musical notation belongs to it
• Matching – click on three bushes, listen to the music they produce, and find the matching pair
• Ordering – listen to a piece of music, then listen to the parts of the piece associated with 3 or 4 people and place the people in the correct order
• Comparing – listen to two short pieces and decide if they are the same or different

As you advance through the levels the music pieces become longer and the puzzles somewhat more complex. Finishing a level gives you a success screen, where the animated characters dance around to the Hallelujah chorus from Handel’s Messiah.

Hearing Music also features a narrated book, About Music; 10 chapters all about the way we hear and respond to music, read aloud in a pleasantly quiet voice.