For five minutes after they heard the affiliative-inspired tunes, the 14 enlisted monkeys displayed calming behaviors, including reduced movement and increased feeding. Indeed, it sounded a bit like the high-pitched screech of a New York City subway car struggling to stop on worn-out brakes.īut the cotton-top tamarins felt otherwise. 'To my ears, is as irritating as I'll get out-it's like fingernails on a chalkboard,' Snowdon complained after playing a selection of the new classical over the phone. With the help of some outside musicians, they identified the pitch, tone and tempo of emotional monkey calls-from fearful to soothing-and used these to create 30-second rock and classical music selections with Teie's voice and cello. Teie and Snowdon also wanted 'something to match human music in terms of duration and complexity,' to start to address Teie's initial question. Just as humans have learned preferences for music or other sounds that we've heard all our lives, monkeys have developed automated responses to their own species' calls. 'We wanted to have something that wasn't just their calls,' says Snowdon, who co-authored a paper with Teie on this topic published in Biology Letters. So the musician teamed up with Charles Snowdon, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, to compose some monkey music and watch to see how tamarins would respond. It was still possible that monkeys did like music, but perhaps just didn't share human tastes. In fact, prior research had found that cotton-top tamarins, a South American monkey, preferred silence over both German technopop and Mozart. Monkeys not only don't listen to our music, they seemed to despise it. The obvious choice: monkeys.īut a problem arose there, too. He needed a species that didn't necessarily listen to music, but still had a rich vocal repertoire. Teie did know that seeking an answer from human subjects wouldn't work-children form emotional associations with music early on, which leads to biased responses throughout life.

Little did he know that the query would lead him to write shrilly monkey music, and open a new door into animal communication and the evolutionary roots of human speech. That was the question posed by David Teie, a composer and cellist in the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. Might it then be possible for a composer to manipulate an audience's emotions with some carefully chosen notes? Even basic human speech itself is laced with emotional direction: a musical pattern of long drawn out sounds versus short brief ones can be the difference between calming and exciting a child.

Listening is a critical life skill which we nurture with relaxing and soothing music to conclude each Monkey Music class experience.Music is known to induce terror and tears, as well as inspire dance. Toddlers need active time for exercise and quieter times for calmer activities. Band members need a certain amount of self awareness and self discipline which comes with regular band practice! Time to Sleep The Monkey Music Band offers your child the opportunity to practise fine motor skills using hand held percussion instruments. Exercising to music forms and strengthens neural bridges that are necessary for later learning. Moving and dancing freely around the room with Monkey encourages your child to express the music that they hear with their whole bodies. Colourful props aid visual memory while repeated actions reinforce a feel for the ‘steady beat’. Music and language have many things in common and Monkey’s action songs have been especially written to support your child's early language development. Catchy sounds and up beat tunes for making Monkey Music! Time to Sing

Monkey listening to music