we’re in the “sampling” phase of odin’s musical journey. he plays a bit of guitar, piano, violin, xylophone, flute etc. we’ve done nothing by way of formal training at this point. i “teach by example” and show him little things here and there and he picks up on it all really quickly. he has a really good “ear”, especially on the piano, for picking out pretty little melodies and improvising riffs. we’ll definitely get him lessons for at least one instrument in the near future, but the tough part is deciding what to invest time and energy in because he enjoys them all.

we walked into a local music shop recently and he sat down for the first time at a drum kit, paused, and clicked the drum sticks together four times like he was setting time for the band before launching into a drum solo.

“wow! why did you click the sticks together four times?”

“oh, i don’t know. it just seemed like the right thing to do.”