You might imagine that I constantly have music playing in my house, subtly influencing my children and setting a beautiful tone for my life.
You would be mistaken.
I don’t know what it is, but background music is often a very very late afterthought for me. It’s the kind of thing where I will walk into someone else’s house where music is playing and I will think, “oh yeah! That’s a great idea! I should do that.”
And by the time I get home, my mind has moved on long past the fleeting desire to creative an atmosphere.
One other impediment to using music as a mood-setter is my lack of music playing devices. I use my phone, which is subpar for a few reasons, not least of which being its powerfully distracting ability. I will eventually get an Echo Dot or some such thing, but it’s pretty low on my to-do list.
For now, I work with what I have, and I did eventually create a playlist of peppy Jewish songs to get my kids in a moving mood in the morning. I titled it (very originally) GOOD MORNING!!!!!!
Here are some of the selections:
And I just added this one, since my kids have been singing it non-stop since we attended his concert here for Chanukah:
I have also really, really been digging the pre-made and shared playlists on my apple music account, and sometimes I just type “relaxing classical” or “upbeat classical” if I want to feel a certain mood.
I also poached some Chanukah songs from other people’s playlists to create a playlist that worked for our family, and that was very easy and very satisfying. I had it playing when we had a little party with friends, and it really did create a festive mood! But no one broke into a hora, sorry to disappoint.
My kids don’t always appreciate the classical music, and occasionally they will refer to it as “mommy’s music,” but I like to at least tell them who the composers are and a fun fact about them, so that it’s not a completely foreign concept. But no way am I going to force feed it to them, I’d rather have it be a pleasant memory from childhood as opposed to something they will resent. We’ve gone a similar route with music lessons, but that’s a topic for another post!
What are some songs that you turn to for a certain feeling or mood? What’s on your playlist?
Photo by Mohammad Metri on Unsplash
