Pitch Bar Set
- Regular price
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$74.00 - Regular price
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- Sale price
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$74.00
This beautiful, innovative instrument is sure to bring joy to your little musician. The color-coded pitch bars and song cards allow a child to play music with ease and intuition. It’s the perfect Montessori-inspired instrument to introduce children to playing, singing, and making beautiful music.
The perfect addition to your homeschool & musical resources!
EVERYTHING IN THE SET
- 8 aluminum pitch bars, professionally tuned to a C major scale
- 6 wooden mallets, so multiple musicians can play together
- Beginner song cards: 7 simple songs with color-coded notation for children to play on their pitch bars with intuition & ease.
Our music notation was developed for children to play along familiar songs. Songs begin with just three notes, and notes are incrementally added until they can play the full range of the octave.
HIGH QUALITY PRINTS
- Beginner song cards are printed on high quality, gloss card stock.
- Cards are detached, so children can easily separate and work with just one card at a time. They include 7 familiar children's songs with simple playing instructions of easy-to-follow and color-coded music notes.
- For our Christmas + Religious song cards, you can purchase them separately, or get them in our Playful Pitch Bundle.
SHIPPING INFO
- Ships within 1-2 business days.
- Great International shipping rates for Canada, and UK.
- Rest of the World - shipping calculated at checkout but you can also reach out to us for custom quotes.
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Let customers speak for us
I cannot wait to get this instrument into the hands of the children of the children in our atrium (using Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, a Montessori-based method of faith formation)! The tone is absolutely beautiful and the music sheets are thoughtfully curated with rankings from easy to challenging. The owners of this family-owned business are top notch and incredibly responsive. You can tell that they care deeply about children, music, and their customers. Buy a Playful Pitch Bundle and you will be delighted that you did!
Originally purchased as a Christmas present for my seven kids, 15 down to 10 months. I expected this to be a step up from our toy xylophone. And I guess you could say that! --A BIG step up! My 15-year old played with the bars for hours on Christmas Day. The next day, cousins from as young as 3 to as old as 16 played on them. As a musician myself, I appreciate the beautiful tone these produce, both with the wooden mallets and the rubber ones. The music sheets are nice because they don't require the musician to read music. They're a gentle introduction to note-reading. I look forward to the day when additional pitches are available, as well as more music cards!
Absolutely beautiful and flawless product! The sound is amazing!!! Thank you for such a great instrument to learn on!
Oh my goodness, these pitch bars are GORGEOUS. I can't say enough about how much I love them. The tone is pure, precise, and beautiful and I love the music cards that came with them (Tantum Ergo is divine!) They came quickly and were packed carefully. I can't wait to start teaching my son how to play.
The chimes are really beautiful and my young piano pupils have really enjoyed playing the Christmas carols on them. I am using them to help build confidence and to encourage the children to sing along before transferring their skills onto the piano . They are a great resource for making music lessons fun whilst the children are learning all about pitch, rhythm, tempo and exploration. Many thanks for developing this beautiful resource.
We ordered the Playful Pitch bundle for our 4 and 2 year olds for Christmas. Shipping was incredibly fast. The quality is amazing. I think my husband and I fought over playing it more than our girls did. Haha. A family favorite for sure!
The whole kit is wonderful. My children are simply exploring the sounds it makes now, and beginning to look at he music cards and see how the colors correspond to their instrument. It will be a gradual, enjoyable process, learning how to create the sounds as they're written on the cards. While they learn, we're all enjoying the sounds they're making. The extra coating on the special mallet makes a huge difference!
The set is beautiful and was received well by my children on Christmas morning. I intended it to be played most by the 17 month old and 3 year old, but the 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, and 14 year olds were all intrigued and took turns tapping out tunes throughout the day as well. The cards that come are thoughtfully designed and offer a range of music to begin using the set immediately. Since my older children all take piano lessons, they loved tapping out some of their songs on the bars. I love the carrying case as it helps to aid pick up and keeps everything together. Shipping was very fast which was an added bonus.
The set came very quickly and is great quality. The cards are exactly what I've been looking for to use with my own family and children's ministry at church. My daughter was instantly absorbed in learning how to play songs she's heard her whole life. She was so satisfied!
I bought this for my niece who has 4 young children. Her response was " what a cool gift!! " I'm sure they will spend lots of time enjoying it.
Quality instrument! We love the sound quality and clarity. The color coded music notation is simple but perfect. Our 4 year old is learning, 6 year old loves them, and 9-16 year olds have sat down to play music too! Five Star! The only thing I wish I would have changed was to purchase more song cards! They will be coming for birthdays!
The quality is absolutely breathtaking, yet still sturdy enough to stand up to handling by little hands. The variety of songs/difficulty levels is great. I especially love the religious set! The sound quality is so beautiful, cheap plastic versions just can’t compare. Lots of fun for both kids and adults!
Beautiful set - the kids all took turns playing songs on Christmas morning! I even tried them too. Appreciated the pack of Catholic song cards that the kids could learn, too. The carrying case is handy. Would happily buy again.
All In The Details
Not all instruments for kids are created equal. Our Playful Pitch collection are made from quality materials that produce beautiful sounds.
Listen to the sound!
Our Materials:
True to the Montessori philosophy, our materials are real, beautiful instruments – made with natural elements to produce a high-quality, beautiful sound.
Beech Wood, Aluminum Bars —
Accurately tuned so that the child’s pitch awareness is being taught and reinforced in the subconscious, as the child works and plays their way through our songs and pitch cards.
Professionally Tuned:
Tuned to a C major scale (C5-C5), each pitch bar is professionally tuned and quality checked before leaving the factory, to ensure a quality, accurate, beautiful sound for every set we send out!
Playing the Instrument:
Each pitch bar has a letter name and colored symbol to help children identify each note. Use the mallets to strike the bar with a bouncing motion to sound the note.
It can be played alone, or multiple musicians can work collaboratively to play a song.
Bars are separated, so the instrument can be simplified for the youngest learner. Children can set up only the bars needed for each song, and play with more confidence and accuracy!
Educational Context:
The pitch bars and song sets are designed so that children can learn, practice, and master songs with self-led direction. Pitches are incrementally introduced so that the most natural singing intervals are presented early.
Children’s sense of pitch and rhythm are reinforced as they work their way through the song sets and master playing familiar tunes and songs. Check out our Beginner | Christmas | or Religious Song Card Sets for more info.
Quality Standards:
The pitch bars meet the standard of ASTM F963 and have been certified by TUV. All the materials are safe and non-toxic. The beech wood bars are sanded and polished for a soft, smooth finish, safe for little hands.
Please contact us if you have any questions about our instrument and song cards. We look forward to being a part of your family’s music education and helping you in any way we can to grow musical joy and skill in your home!
Our Wall of Love
FAQs
The Music
Do I have to know how to read music to help my child use Playful Pitch?
Nope - our notation is color coded and intuitive. We use familiar and popular tunes so learners can know how the song should sound - and use our friendly, simplified notation to play it out!
How is Playful Pitch notation different than reading other music?
Our notation and instruments are color-coded to make music-reading intuitive and fun. We also slightly change rhythm notation - so that long notes appear long, and short notes appear small.
We blend traditional black-and-white music notes with a fun, easy-to-read system for a gentle introduction to music reading.
Will there be new songs available in the future?
Yes, The Online Classroom will have a new melody to play with the change of every Church Season, or every month. Additionally, we are constantly designing new printed song cards that we’ll put in our shop when they’re ready!
The Instrument
(About Our Pitch Bar Set)
What’s the difference between Playful Pitch Bars and toy xylophones?
Toy instruments are typically made with low sound quality, cheaper materials, or with battery-operated, electronic sounds.
Playful Pitch Bars are made from professionally-tuned, high-end aluminum bars and beech wood – for a child to learn music-reading and pitch-training from a real, professional, durable instrument.
Do the digital bars work just as well as the physical instrument?
Unfortunately - No. There’s just no substitute to a real, natural, professionally-tuned instrument. The timing, feeling, and sound of digital instruments will never be as good as the physical thing.
We love the digital bars for introducing kids to the concept of our music notation! But it works much much better for the real instrument.
Does it take a lot of guidance/time to teach a child how to use this instrument?
We designed Playful Pitch to be as child-led and intuitive as possible. We believe in the Montessori principle of fostering an independent work environment with rich materials, so that the child’s natural curiosity and delight take over the learning process.
An adult may demonstrate the initial set up and care, but after a short time, the child’s natural love of music and intuition should be able to take over!
As parents, we personally love to send our 4 and 6 year old children downstairs to play the pitch bars independently while the toddler and baby are taking a nap. The sound is soft enough to keep the babies asleep. We love to hear the pleasant, subtle background sounds of the pitch bars in the home, similar to soft wind chimes.
What age is this instrument/method for?
It was designed as an introduction to music making and reading for ages 3-10. Though, most of our customer feedback tells us that THE WHOLE FAMILY loves this instrument. Adults and teens have just as much fun as children, playing beloved familiar tunes on the color coded instrument.
Our most common review is “EVERYONE is wanting their turn on it....from the youngest child to the parents”. Many parents messaged to tell us they secretly played with it before wrapping it up and giving it to their children.
We LOVE that!!
Why not just start kids off on piano or violin?
We believe that fostering a love for music making should start with a play-based approach that capitalizes on the child’s natural love and intuition for music.
Formal lessons often come with a stigma of overwhelming assignments and mandated practicing - things that can squash a child’s joy for music making. If they first experience success on our gentle process and simplified with relative ease, it builds a confident, joyful musician who becomes inspired to work through the later challenges of music making.
Also - some kids and parents are just not ready for the time and financial commitments of formal lessons and professional instruments. Playful Pitch provides a way to introduce children to music, without spending the thousands it costs to buy a professional instrument and provide ongoing lessons.
I want to order the bars now, where can I get them?
If this is your first interaction with Playful Pitch you can simply enter your email below (or on this page) where we give you a welcome discount to any of our physical items in our online shop. Even if you dont intend to use the free Playful Pitch Online Classroom, you will still receive the discount promo codes.
You’ll receive your welcome discount codes immediately via email (check all your mail folders if you don’t see it) and there will be links to our shop where you can place an order.