I'm not sure if this is a St. Louis thing or not, but it was difficult to find a piano instructor for Sophia. Sophia showed an interest in taking piano lessons and yet every instructor we talked to said that they don't take any kids younger than 8 years old.

Fortunately we found someone who was highly recommended and was willing to start teaching her. Sophia is enthusiastic about getting lessons and has been taking lessons for about a month. As a former piano student myself, I was very curious what methods are used in teaching young kids. Her music book is interesting and I think it's a better technique than the one I grew up with which I can only describe as "traditional". In hers, it works by numbering the fingers, 2 is the index finger, 3 is the middle finger, 5 is the pinky etc.. Then the music is done by showing the hand positions on the piano and then there are numbers (of the corresponding fingers) next to notes. There is no visible music staff, but there is an implied one as each note position on the page is correctly proportioned above or below the preceding note.

In an effort to keep the enthusiasm high (and encourage practice time), I've offered to record her works so that she can share them with friends and family. The prospect of this appealed to her immensely. So I offer you 4 works played by Sophia and recorded by me.

The first one here is the first one we recorded and I think that the click count-in intimidated her a bit. All the songs are less than 30 seconds long.

Wind In The Trees 440k

Once she got the hang of recording, she quickly recorded these next 3 songs.

The I Like Song 440k
The Doorbell 580k
In The Jungle 256k

Well, Christmas has come and gone. We all had a great time and are enjoying the time off from school and work.

Before school officially let out for Sophia, her school held a Winter Concert. Here's a clip from the event:

Parent's night at Camp Pegnita. The heat index was around 104F, but that didn't keep Sophia from having a good time with her friends.

Sophia and I recently found a cool set of instructions on how to make a native american style flute out of PVC pipe. It certainly looked like a do-able project.

We took some pictures and though I normally toss those into the local database, I wanted to share these pictures with a photo group on flickr called ToolMonger. Well, as it turns out ToolMonger chose to actually put Sophia up on their website. Sophia was thrilled.

Perhaps I'll record some of the flute sounds and post them as well. It really does sound pretty good.

On the 5th of Feb (2007) we had the good fortune of having Béla Fleck and the Flecktones come to the Paegent here in St. Louis. It was a Monday. It was 20 degrees and falling by the time it was showtime. But the crowd came out to see the Flecktones perform and so did we.

From Sophia's email:

This week, on Monday night, I went to Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. It was really fun, I wish you could go with me. I stayed up late and I got my hand marked at the door. It was because I couldn't drink beer.


The show was great and even though Sophia wasn't able to stay awake for all of it, she saw a good half of it and she liked it.

"There are 55", says Sophia.

We have no reason to doubt her. Sophia is showing us around at a school Open House function. We've asked her to show us some of the things that she's doing now that she's 4 (and a half). We mustn't forget the half.

In a room crowded with adults and children Sophia leads us to a corner table and pulls a basket filled with words out. She then procedes to show us how this certain lesson is done. I had my cell phone with me and while it's a great phone, it's a pretty lousy video camera, but I was able to get part of it here.

Sophia likes to listen and play music. Often she and I go to my music studio and play with the Kurzweil, guitars, drums, records and so on.


At one point I recorded an interview with her. It worked well enough the first time because she didn't know what a microphone was and hence was't 'performing'. Well, those days are long over and she now knows exactly what a microphone is and what my recording equipment can do and wants to sing and talk and make noises and hear herself. I tried to be at least a little sneakier on this last one, but she caught on pretty quick.


So at any rate, some of her favourite songs and inspirations are coming from They Might Be Giants and specifically from their album Here Come the ABCs.


The first track on "Here Come the ABCs" is Alphabet of Nations which Sophia picked up on very quickly. Sophia sings the Alphabet of Nations. [Note from Anarkey : notice that she says "Zimbackwe" for Zimbabwe]


Another group that Sophia likes is The Ramones. And one of her favourite songs is "I wanna be sedated". She gives it a go here. She's far more enthusiastic about this tune when she's listening to it.


And for the non-singing portion of the program, I was just asking her questions including "Who drives a magic car?" Her response.