crocodile rock
Nora’s paternal granny bought her this very nice crocodile xylophone toy. It’s colorful, it’s noisy, it rolls around, it’s great, and she loves it. And I love that she loves it, but?
I have to admit that I find this toy incredibly frustrating. Before I point out what bothers me so much (it’s not the noise!), here is a picture of Nora loving it (to remind myself why it didn’t go out on the curb this morning).
Okay, first (this is trifling), it bothers me that the thing has only 6 bars tuned (more or less) to C, D, E, F, G, and A. Only two more bars and we’d have the full C-major scale and we could play hundreds of fun songs. As it is we can play a large number of songs and Nora gets to learn about whole, half, and quarter note rests while the missing notes go unplayed. :) This I could live with. It’s a child’s toy, it’s not really supposed to be a musical instrument. Fine. I get it.
But it’s BACKWARDS! And it’s not even merely backwards but it’s backwards twice in non-complementary ways. It’s 180 degrees off true in two separate dimensions! First of all, the keys are arranged in the opposite direction from a piano keyboard (high on the left to low on the right rather than low to high). This isn’t so bad. It means that she’ll eventually have learn to invert any songs she may have learned on this thing, but that’s probably a useful mental exercise.
The thing that’s really driving me bananas though is the color arrangement. They’ve associated red (the color with the longest wavelength in the visible spectrum) with the highest frequency (shortest wavelength) note A (actually, it’s a flat Bb) and they’ve associated violet (shortest wavelength in the visible spectrum) with the lowest frequency (longest wavelength) note C! How hard would it have been to get this detail right?! *sigh*
She loves it so it stays, but that crocodile’s arrogant smirk mocks my pain.
September 5th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Hey Kevin – turn it around, maybe that’ll help you out with the low to high. :) As for the lengths, hmmmmmmm – I guess LIVE WITH IT!!! :)
September 6th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
My poor poor nephew!! Get a life! It’s just a toy. Really though. Marge and I both enjoyed your colorful explaination of wavelengths and spectrums. See you all next weekend.
September 7th, 2008 at 12:30 am
Tami,
The thing has keys on it like a keyboard; turning it around won’t help. I’ve figured out how to tune the bars (to bring the flat ones closer to true notes — you can’t really fix the sharp ones) and could easily strip and repaint them during this process. Of course, I don’t have the *time* to do these things and will not bother, but knowing that I could fix it if I really wanted to makes me feel much better. :)
September 7th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Oh mi, Oh my! As soon as I saw the first two sentences, I knew exactly how the rest of this was going to play out. The daughter of friends was given the same croc by some well-meaning person (not me – I give cool, mom-approved things from Ikea). Now, these good people didn’t notice the color issue, but watching her Dad trying to get the thing in tune was good for some laughs.
I’ve decided that if the parents are musical, gifts should not include musical instruments. Give the parents the money to buy their own musical toys for their kids.