Imagine the scene: While playing cards, gardening, or working together on what promises to be a spectacularly unhealthy dessert, you and your grandchildren are also listening to music. Not their music — you have a limited tolerance for Miley Cyrus and Lil Wayne — but your music.
And then comes a song that really captures their attention. Maybe it’s James Taylor's "Shower the People" or Donovan's "Happiness Runs"; a Sinatra standard like "Fly Me to the Moon”; or some other "grown-up" tune that could just as easily be a kids' song.
This is what educators call a "teachable moment." Once you have them listening, you'll want to capitalize on their interest, and extend that brief intergenerational connection to a whole afternoon of musical encounters. And now, thanks to the internet, you can.
Opening Pandora's Box
One of the most popular music-sharing services on the Web is Pandora Radio, a creation of the Music Genome Project, which claims that its staff has listened to songs by tens of thousands of recording artists both popular and obscure, and analyzed each tune's musical attributes, or "genes."
Secure, easy-to-use, and completely legal, Pandora doesn't pirate recordings but provides streams of songs, which it calls "stations," that share similar attributes.
How it works: Go to the site, click "Create a New Station," and type in, say, The Beatles’ contagious, kid-friendly "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da." In a matter of seconds, Pandora searches for other songs that share features with the classic Lennon-McCartney composition (type of harmonies, vocal style, and more) and creates a steady stream of music that includes The Rolling Stones' "Ruby Tuesday," Ringo Starr's "Oh My My," and a rowdy oddity from the Cockerel Chorus called "Nice One, Cyril." Voila: The "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da" channel.
Smart Radio, Usually
Pandora's choices are usually smart ones. Joni Mitchell's "The Circle Game" opens the door to Pete Seeger's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone"; Simon and Garfunkel's "Bleecker Street"; and Cat Stevens's "Moonshadow." According to Pandora, all of these songs share "mellow rock instrumentation, folk influences, a subtle use of vocal harmony, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentations and major key tonality." Similarly, Katrina and the Waves' upbeat "Walking on Sunshine" leads to the J. Geils Band's "Freeze Frame" and "Mr. Jones" by Counting Crows.
Pandora plays each song in its entirety, but if one of the tunes annoys you or comes up against serious grandchildren's resistance, click the "I Don't Like This Song" button and the service will offer another choice.
Testing Pandora with obscure artists and songs can be half the fun. Enter Canadian sea-shanty singer Stan Rogers; "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid; and Carly and Lucy Simon's "Winkin', Blinkin' And Nod" — each leads to satisfying streams of music. On the other hand, some favorite Sesame Street songs, like "Put Down the Duckie," aren't in the system at all. And you need to keep in mind that Pandora makes no effort as yet to screen its lists of songs for young ears — so a search for songs similar to those of charming, quirky children's band Duplex!, for example, can take you down the wrong road to songs, including "Cocaine (We're All Going to Hell)." Not a perfect match. And while the service is free, it does require you to register and set up a personal account.
| Do your grandkids like your music? |
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Yes; we all have great taste 66.7%
No; they're hooked on their own favorites 33.3%
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Another potential downside to Pandora is that, like a broadcast radio station, you can't rewind to replay a song, so a grandchild's demand to "Play it again!" could lead to some frustration. Of course, as long as you caught the name of the song and the artist, you can purchase it through amazon.com or Apple's iTunes store with just a few clicks.
Real Genius
Speaking of iTunes, Apple's on-line music giant has been paying attention to Pandora's growing popularity. In September, it launched an upgrade that includes a similar feature, which it calls Genius.
If you have an iTunes library on your computer, and your grandchildren responded to one of your favorite songs, click on the Genius logo (it looks like a model of an atom) and the software will produce a playlist of tunes from elsewhere in your library that young fans of that song should appreciate. Of course, the bigger your online music collection, the better this feature will work; if you’ve only got 100 songs in your library, the connections may be tenuous. Alternatively, you can go to the iTunes Store, enter a grandchild's favorite tune, and ask Genius for a list of similar songs. You can then play 30-second samples of each song for free, or purchase them (usually for 99 cents each).
Pandora and Genius are always learning and, theoretically, improving. When you click past a song you don't want to hear on a Pandora stream or Genius playlist, the services add that bit of information to their storehouses of data about connections, which work for listeners, and those that don't. So never expect the exact same playlist to generate twice, even if you select the same song.
It all adds to the sense of discovery for all of you. Now go get those grandkids hooked on the Turtles.
Join our discussion of your favorite songs of all time, and whether you've shared them with your grandchildren. Elsewhere on Grandparents.com, consider how well your grandchildren know you, find our recommendations of the best rock and folk music for tots and the best new music releases for kids, and discover the 25 reasons kids love grandparents.
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