I have a room full of music gear (bass, drums, keys, mics, a tambourine, a few kids toys...and a 6 string)
My 5yo autistic daughter used to strum the bass...nothing major there. Then she started playing the drums and every now and then her rythm and timing would blow me away.
She used to bang away on the keyboards as well.
In the last week, 2 events have occurred that have shook awake some ideas in me.
1 - Kayla (5), Shannon (4) and I are jamming on drums, keys, and bass respectively. Basically Kayla and Shannon are just bashing away randomly while I attempt to get a basic connecting bassline happening. We have chaser lights on just for a fun atmosphere and we just have a hoot and make a lot of noise.
During this particular jam Kayla starts banging louder and more intricately while still singing her own words, then goes very quiet (still holding a "beat") and exclaims "Now Shanna". This has happened once before, but with no changes to noise, so I figured nothing of it.
Until Kayla backs off the drums and Shannon rises in the mix...her voice getting louder and she has "a spot" to shine for a while. After a few "bars" of that, Kayla just yells a happy type shriek then goes back to normal volume drumming and singing along.
Cute, random occurrance. Except she does it once more, before saying "Fini" and just chucking the sticks, getting off the stool and knocking the snare over in her usual "I'm done" manner as the rest of the "song" trainwrecks...
2 - Today, she is listening to and "playing along with" the MIDI keyboard while it played Elton Johns "Can You Feel The Love Tonight", one of the learner songs it has.
Interestingly while she chose a bunch of connected keys to belt chords out on (say a CDEF together), not actual keyboard chords like ACE, CEG etc...she was still following the pitch shift of the progressions.
IOW, if the chords went up, she played further left on the keyboard and if it went lower, so did she. She held some chords on time, others a lot over it and some she stabbed. To me, it seems awfully a lot like listening to her contributions to the sound and she seemed more aware of which keys would be higher or lower than I do, after hours of learning on the thing.
This leaves me wondering whether Kayla has some natural, or even savante knowledge in this area, and I'm curious if anyone on TB or music circles has met any teachers, or organisations, that have the means or methods to assess Kayla's musical ability.
To me, music seems natural to her, she enjoys listening to it, often sings along in the car, and if someone can get proper music into her maybe she can make a career out of that if she wants...or at the least teach me a thing or ten about music
Any ideas, or just "cute daughter heart warming story" type replies are more than welcome
