Not too long ago the world was introduced to a theory called The Mozart Effect™, which developed techniques that used music - mostly classical - to improve memory, awareness and the integration of learning styles. Our doctors use these techniques as therapy for not only mental disorders, but also physical injuries. Based on this same research, the Baby Einstein Company™ introduced mothers everywhere to Baby Mozart™ and Baby Bach™, which raised the bar on child development to a level that the mobiles we were raised with couldn’t even hang onto. What this research basically concludes is: the music goes in, the brain receives it, turns it into a message and then sends that message to the body which, in some cases, has a very positive outcome.

Now let me tell you about another theory which takes this same concept but works in the opposite direction. What if, not only the messages your baby received, but also those that they transmitted, had a positive effect on their development? Then those little la-la’s we too often disregard as gibberish have suddenly become vital in the future voice of our young. Researchers, psychologists, neuroscientists and one Grammy-award winning songwriter/mother-of-three all seem to agree that this, in fact, is more than a theory but the hard truth.

Joy Sikorski moved to Alaska, built a log cabin and created a company called SingBabySing™ in-between home-schooling three kids, chopping wood and fishing for wild salmon in the northern climate darkness. Originially, she’s a composer, performer and vocal teacher from Los Angeles. Today, her gigs are an innovative form of impropera or “music in the moment,” as she calls it. Since the development of SingBabySing™, she has coined the term “The Puccini Effect™” – the next level of early childhood language development. The Puccini Effect™ is, essentially, your baby’s potential ability to sing which can positively influence its speech patterns and communication skills. From this, Joy has created some techniques which help your baby match pitches, gain attention and even calm them down. Now she’s on a mission to share her knowledge with mothers everywhere:

TDO: Thank you so much, Joy, for taking the time out of your day and speaking with us. So what makes you think we would ever want our kids talking sooner than they already do, anyways?

Joy: Well, now that you mention it, perhaps not talking sooner, but definitely singing sooner, especially on pitch! In fact, how about simply replacing talking with singing altogether? Imagine a preschool program called “Life as Opera – the Cutting Edge in Language Development.”

TDO: Ah, yes, where they could learn the ABC’s of opera – Aida, Boheme and Carmen. (Bad joke, I know!) Anyways, tell us how you developed and/or are continuing to develop the Puccini Effect™. As a mother, was this something you just stumbled across while raising your own children or did this evolve from scientific research?

Joy: In Alaska, we tell long tales because the winters are long, and I’m not particularly known for my brevity, so you might want to grab a cup of something and take a deep breath (using your diaphragm properly, of course) because here we go.

I’d say that my personal vocal training and performance, coupled with neuroscience research (both current and historical) and my background as a voice teacher, all influenced my concept of the Puccini Effect™.

It actually started before I had children, during a time when I was doing post-graduate work with a voice scholarship from the University of Southern California. A required course about the mechanics of the voice ignited my questions about what goes on in the brain of a singer during singing. I was told that it all begins with a thought and I wanted to know how the thought got there in the first place. Was it started outside the body or inside? Was the thought itself something measurable within the electromagnetic spectrum, having an inaudible frequency of its own before it translated itself into audible sound? You know, simple questions like that.

TDO: Yep. Simple.

Joy: They didn’t know, but assured me that one of their most prestigious professors was just beginning to ask those types of questions before he died, which, undoubtedly, should have been a red flag for my curious mind, but I was hooked.

In the late ‘80s I discovered the work of Dr. Norman Weinberger of MuSica (Music and Science Information Computer Archive at the University of California, Irvine. His work was instrumental in what became known as the Mozart Effect™. Later, I spent oodles of time scouring resources to find out what was being done to discover the impact of singing on early childhood development and came across all sorts of important but little known data.

I also taught voice to small children and discovered that they could easily understand and apply Bel Canto principles. Teens and young adults came to me for help too, some with talent, others with severe pitch problems, and I learned from teaching them as well. Of course, my dear children heard it all, my vocalizations as well as the voices of my students, so they would sing off key on purpose, just to make me laugh.

Now that my children are grown, I am devoting my time to inspiring as many parents, teachers and grandparents as I can so that children everywhere will be given the opportunity to develop that most powerful but least understood of all instruments, the voice. Interviews like this one, articles, speaking and performance engagements, workshops, expansion of resources available on my website and continuing product development in the form of parent/grandparent/teacher training videos and voice exercises (I call them games) all keep me busy, as you can imagine.

TDO: Okay, but the Puccini Effect™ does not teach your children to sing Tosca – so, with a slew of master composers in classical music’s history, there’s no obvious reason why you chose to name this innovation after Puccini. Or is there? And if there is, let’s say I wanted to teach my children to speak at an incredible rate like say, “The Gilmore Girls” - could there be a “Rossini Effect?”

Joy: I wouldn’t be too sure about the Tosca thing, but the Verdi Effect would sound too much like an olive oil extraction technique, don’t you think? Bellini might be misinterpreted as an eating disorder and Donizetti is undoubtedly a bad noodle dish. I suppose the Rossini Effect might work if you’ve had too much morning coffee. Puccini, on the other hand, has such a nice “ch” sound that one can’t easily pooh-pooh his name. Then there are his melodies! What can I say?

TDO: Granted. According to your website, you say that you don’t need to be a great singer to help your child. But, is it as important to take measures to become a better singer as it is to just sing, graveled voice and all?

Joy: I’ll tell you two true stories and I promise they won’t be long tales this time. The first one took place after a workshop I gave for early childhood educators. A woman in her 30s came up to me with tears in her eyes and said, “All my life I hid my voice because others teased me about my singing, but after what I learned today, I’m not only going to use your CD with the children I teach, I’m going to use it to help myself!”

The second one comes from a grandmother who had never sung to her children because she thought she was tone deaf. She came to me to find out if she could learn to sing to her grandchildren. I worked with her using the same Bel Canto principles that I use with the SingBabySing™ Beginning CD for early childhood, and when she successfully sang a lovely English art song on pitch a few months later, she wept, “To think that I wasted all those years not singing to my children. Thank you that I can now sing to my grandchildren.”

It’s always best for the children if we improve our singing skills, particularly during a day and age when songs with little melody are often sung by harsh and all-too-often tuneless voices. However, it’s better to sing with a graveled voice to our children than not at all. As Kahil Gibran once said, “A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.”

TDO: Have you explored the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of poetry as a means or added tool to develop a child’s communication?

Joy: Ah, poetry. Don’t get me started! I have an educational theory I’d like to proffer in response to your question. Poetry is very musical, as you know. I create and use it all the time. Since poetry was born from oral tradition and is foundationally a vocal art form rather than a written one (Homer, for instance, was known as an aoidos or singer-poet and his poems were probably not written down until after his death), it seems a natural tool for developing a child’s communication skills because poetry’s rhythmic, rhyming and melodic properties flow according to vocal patterns. Early Celtic civic leaders, called ollamh, trained for ten to twenty years in music and the poetic arts before they were granted leadership responsibilities. I wonder how that would go over in Washington, D.C.

Yet, I dare not digress, for all of this leads me to a question.

Since the voice is the prime instrument, not only for delivering poetic utterances but for communication in general, shouldn’t we provide our children with a solid vocal foundation from birth through the first six years, the time when science tells us that lifelong communication patterns are established? Radical? Maybe, but a teacher of mine used to say “singing is your joy released,” so how might the world be then?

Sadly, vocal development is usually not even a minor consideration in our homes or educational institutions, and that’s because so few people really know much about the voice or how easy it truly is to train it early in life. People will ask about talent, to which I reply,

“Sure it takes talent to become a great singer, but does that mean someone who is not talented can’t or shouldn’t learn to sing? That would be like saying you have to have talent to learn to speak, read, write or do math, and that’s just plain silly. Why wait to find out if your baby has “talent” or not? Start shaping her brain connections now!”

Perhaps with interviews like this, we can begin to change that reality.

TDO: Are there any other innovations you are working on at the moment, dealing with language development or not?

Joy: The short answer is “yes.” They include the parent/grandparent/teacher training videos and other voice games (exercises) I mentioned above, plus a TV show concept that I’m beginning to develop.

TDO: What are your next steps to make people aware of the Puccini Effect™? What are some simple steps we can take to spread this knowledge to the mothers of our lives?

Joy: More interviews, articles, conferences and workshops, plus some things having to do with YouTube™. I’d like to encourage your readers to visit my website, of course, and if they would like to contact me, they can email me at joy@SingBabySing™.com. A simple step, I will shamelessly say, is to use the SingBabySing™ Beginning Level CD with your children and grandchildren and tell early childhood educators and others in your area about what I’m doing and send them to my website. Word of mouth works best, of course. No pun intended. Who knows, perhaps I’ll come to Dallas and do Impropera and workshops for you and your readers!

TDO: We will definitely hold you to that. Anything else you would like to add…

Joy: First let me say that I’m grateful to you and the The Dallas Opera for this interview and would like to thank you for your interest in the Puccini Effect™ and what I’m doing with SingBabySing™. Then I’d love to quote a poet we all know:

"How wonderful is the human voice! It is indeed the organ of the soul. The intellect of man sits enthroned visibly, on his forehead and in his eye, and the heart of man is written on his countenance, but the soul reveals itself in the voice only." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

TDO: Thank you so very much for your time, Joy. It has been a pleasure and all the best of luck in your efforts.

Joy: You’re most welcome. A great pleasure!

For more information on SingBabySing™, the Puccini Effect™, Impropera, or Joy Sikorski visit www.singbabysing.com.