This is just one of the reasons I get so upset every time I hear about government cutting funding for science initiatives.
Casper Addyman, an expert in child laughter, and music psychologist Lauren Stewart joined forces to create a “song scientifically proven to make babies happy”.
They interviewed parents to find “earworms”, nursery rhymes and jingles that get caught in babies head, as well as for silly sounds babies enjoy.
They next coordinated with Grammy award winning composer, and parent to an 18 month old daughter, Imogen Heap. Here are the notes she was given:
“We met with Heap and gave her a set of recommendations based on what we had discovered from the past research. The song ought to be in an major key with a simple and repetitive main melody with musical devices like drum rolls, key changes and rising pitch glides to provide opportunities for anticipation and surprise. Because babies’ heart rates are much faster than ours so the music ought to be more uptempo than we would expect. And finally, it should have an energetic female vocal, ideally recorded in the presence of an actual baby.”
You can listen to the final project HERE.
So obviously I had to try this myself with little G-Man. He is 4 months old and loves listening to music. Although he took a greater interest in chewing on his sleeve during the first verse, he did take a much greater interest from the second verse on.
You can also watch the making of The Happy Song HERE.
The team at IFLScience has a more in depth write up about the experiment.
Geeky Daddy 