The Complex Simplicity of Songs Written for Children

The wonderful fast talking, doodling music vlogger 12tone went back in time to the songs he learned as a child and like any good music theorist, decided to look at the core musical structure of these nostalgic songs. What he learned was that while these songs sound simple there’s a quite bit of musical and cultural complexity embedded in each of them.

There’s all sorts of music out there, but one genre that probably doesn’t get enough attention is the songs that we sing for children. It’s easy to write them off as simple (Because they are) but there’s more to it than that: Children’s music is how we pass on cultural ideas about the structure of music, and examining how they work can tell us a lot about what’s actually important to us.