Customer Reviews

Baby Einstein - Meet the Orchestra - First Instruments

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

To tell the truth, I was a little disappointed in the DVD. I have been waiting for it to be released, and my expectations were very high. All in all though, I do have to admit that it is a good introduction to musical instruments for small children. My son is 19 months old. He definitely enjoyed the video, and I think it will be beneficial for him as well. I'll list what I feel are the positive and negative aspects about the video below.

Good Things:
*Tons of real footage of children and adults playing instruments solo, in small groups, and in full orchestras. Scenes of marching bands were included too which is nice.
*The video was broken out logically into all of the major sections: Brass, Woodwinds, Strings, and Percussion. The piano & guitar were introduced together at the end. Both the String and Percussion section included all of the major instruments one might think of. Though, there are so many different percussion instruments that a Percussionist might disagree. :)
*Lots of puppets which my son always loves. There is nothing more fun for him than watching those silly hippos!

Not so good things:
*The brass and woodwind section left out some major instruments and included some minor ones instead. The woodwind section introduced the recorder which is RARELY (if ever?) found in an orchestra and left out the oboe which has ALWAYS been a critical instrument in the orchestra. The brass section included the bugle and left out the euphonium. This doesn't bother me as much, but it doesn't make a lot of sense.
*In many of the scenes with elementary children and junior high children, it was obvious that the kids were actors who had never held the particular instrument in their lives. Would it have been terribly difficult for them to borrow kids from real music programs who knew how to hold their instruments properly? That is the first thing you learn before ever playing your first note. Granted, the babies and toddlers don't know how to hold the instruments, but I don't have issues with that.
*Some of the music sounded obviously synthesized. When introducing what an instrument sounds like, shouldn't the real instrument be used rather than a synthesized version? I did notice this only in a few places, most obiously with the "recorder".

Here is a synopsis of the instruments introduced. It is not listed anywhere on the DVD cover.

Brass:
Trumpet
Trombone
Tuba
French Horn
Bugle

Woodwinds:
Flute
Clarinet
Saxophone
Bassoon
Recorder

Strings:
Violin
Viola
Cello
Bass
Harp

Percussion:
Drums
Xylophone
Cymbals
Timpani
Tambourine

Piano & Guitar


My husband and I have a very strong background in instrumental music, so we had very high expecations and were being very critical when evaluating this dvd. Our goal is to instill a love for music in our son from a young age, and since this DVD is for young children, I guess it is OK that it isn't 100% perfect. I do believe that this DVD will be a great for our son, and he enjoys it. Had I not had particular issues with it, I would have given it 5 stars.

Also, please note that it is definitely not for the youngest Baby Einstein audience. My son would not have enjoyed it a few months ago, and I believe he will continue to appreciate it more as he gets older.

Baby einstein usually puts out great videos. We so far have 5, I think. I have noticed that the newer ones are starting to lack some quality. I think they are being rushed into production, possibly after having sold to disney? But that is just a hunch.
Anyway, my husband and I are both orchestra teachers and our daughter loves instruments, especially violin and cello, so we thought this would be right up her alley. Unfortunately as mentioned above, the sounds are mostly synthetic, the animation is truely aweful and there is very little use of the trademarked baby einstein puppets that my daughter loves. They do include some odd choices of instruments- like why included recorder in the woodwind section but not oboe? But bassoon is included. Very odd.
As a strings teacher I am offended by the "music box" orchestra. I don't understand why baby einstein feels that children cannot appreciate fully orchestrated pieces. Personally, I feel that it is just a ploy to get people to buy their cd's for kids instead of using regular classical recordings. Our daughter just loves listening to Beethoven's 5th over and over and over.
Perhaps the worst thing about this video is that it does show kids playing the instruments wrong. How is that supposed to be a good model for kids? If they are going to hire kids to be shown playing instruments have the common sense to hire kids that can play the instruments.
And finally- why did they have to "jazz up" fur elise at the end? Really it is a classic all on its own and kids love it.
my daughter will watch the other baby einstein videos we have straight through, but this one doesn't hold her attention for more than 5 mintues.

First off, my local grocery store obviously accidentally put this out early because I bought it today, 4 days before the release date. So I bought it for my 1 yr old girl who loves, loves baby einstein.

My review of it was it was ok. I was pretty excited about it coming out thinking it was going to be great but like I said it was just ok. I feel like it lacked visual colors that stimulate babies and toddlers. It also didn't have alot of the cutesy things in the dvd that I always wonder where they get this stuff( like toys playing instruments, ect). It mainly used alot of teenagers playing instruments, showing bands playing, and it used the puppets alot more that some of the other dvds. I do think that a toddler watching this would definetly understand that music is something you can make and do, If it keeps their attention long enough.

I liked the recent 'on the go' dvd alot more and so did my baby.

What a missed opportunity! What could have been a great chance to introduce babies/toddlers to music was missed. Instead, instruments are introduced using some fake electronic violin, cello and other instrument "sounds." Also, as someone else noted there was an ommision of the oboe, which is a very integral part of the woodwind section. When the piano is introduced there is a jazzy version of "Fur Elise" which is an easy choice, but the video misses out on a wealth of piano music. Then piano and guitar play "Fur Elise" AGAIN Flaminco/world music style. When the orchestra is finally introduced they play a hockey version of Beethoven's 9th with the "canned" instruments. You could just picture some guy at Radio Shack playing it on some Casio electric piano. Please do yourself a favor and take your child to a real concert or better yet wait for something on television with real musicians playing real music!

I was unimpressed with the infant videos (Mozart, Bach), so it was only after several recommendations that I gave "Baby Wordsworth" a try. My daughter LOVES it and we watch it nearly daily (at her request...okay, insistance). Besides that, I found it beautifully done visually and musically, even though the "music box orchestra" concept bugs me to pieces.

Getting more than a little burned on Wordsworth, I was pleased to see this new DVD coming out, since she adores music. What a disappointment.

While the video does present many of the instruments of the orchestra, the quality of this DVD leaves me with the impression that the BE group was under the gun to produce something, and fast.

My comments:

*** The animated sequences that introduce each instrument are hideous. Seriously, this looks like something that an 8th-grader learning basic in the 1980s might have haphazardly tossed together! This, by a company owned by Disney? Yikes. The puppet sequences were better, but still, even the puppets looked cheaply created as if in a hurry.

*** The music. As another commenter posted, synthesized sounds are obviously supplied for some of the instruments (nearly the entire brass section, for example). While I've adjusted to the music box orchestra for BE's other productions, this is just plain bad...the soundtrack actually sounds worse than that used on other videos, and it's inappropriate to use a synthesizer for "what a trumpet sounds like." Blech.

*** Would it really be *that* difficult to find out which direction to hold a flute or a guitar? Both are shown held backwards.

We will not be keeping this one; I'm certain I can find better ways to introduce my daughter to instruments.

I am generally very happy with the Baby Einstein videos but this one is appalling. I have several factual errors to point out.

1) For being titled "Meet the Orchestra", this video spreads mis-information. The saxaphone is rarely used in orchestras as its range is covered by the bassoon and the clarinet. The recorder has not been used in the orchestra since the 17th century- when it was replaced with the far superior flute. Also, to exclude the oboe, one of the most important orchestral instruments is appalling.

2) The guitar is also not a member of the orchestra.

3) The children "demonstrating" the instruments often don't play them. It's as if they gathered a bunch of kids and told them to fake it. There is even a flute player that holds the instrument backwards! Is it impossible to find kids that actually play the instruments that they deomonstrate? I think not. In just about every case, what the people are playing does not match the music coming out of the instrument. Some of the "demonstrators" do actually play the instruments, why not let them play the examples?

I was very disappointed with the accuracy of this video

Youngsters will enjoy the bright colors, movement and sounds this DVD has to offer, but an appreciation for the orchestra - I doubt it. If parents believe they are introducing their child to the world of classical music, which the producers would like you to believe, they are being duped. If they simply want entertainment, go for it.

Synthesized junk from start to finish. Most of the time the music doesn't match what you see being played, and the sounds are laughable. Even when the music matches what the musicians are playing (like the piano section) they over-dub a synthesized version... like kids prefer electric sounds to real instruments! Truly awful. I'm really mad. They had such an opportunity to be educational and PURPOSLY SCREWED IT UP!!! Save your money and go hear a REAL orchestra.

My almost-three year old was not taken by this DVD. He lost interest quickly compared to "on the go". I am very into musical instruments and had high hopes, as I would like my children to at least know about music, if not love it. I hated that the young players did not match the music (fingerings were all wrong). I thought bugle and recorder were strange instruments to portray. Basically disappointed with this one in comparison to the other DVDs. We won't toss it, but I don't see my son choosing it in his regular rotation of Thomas, Elmo and other Baby Einstein DVDs.

I am a professional composer with a Ph.D. in composition and have taught orchestration for many years at the college level. Not that any of this necessarily means anything, but I do take music-related DVDs that are supposed to educate my child very seriously.

You would think that a DVD entitled "Baby Einstein - Meet the Orchestra," would introduce REAL instruments to our children, right? WRONG. This is entirely (or almost entirely) synthesized and FAKE from beginning to end, and the sounds are 1980s quality (i.e., primitive), at best. This is not only infuriating and insulting to classical musicians and orchestras, but is also insulting to our collective intelligence. It sends the message that Disney and Buena Vista are lazy companies and their corporate bottom line is more important than our children's education. The composers they quote badly (Mozart, Bach, et al) and even Einstein himself (who played a real violin in his free time, by the way) would roll in their graves if they heard this.

Here are some of the flaws I find most annoying, in no particular order:

- When they show live instruments being played by real people, you hear synthesizers, not the people actually playing the instruments. They even do this at the beginning with an entire orchestra! Was this really necessary? They couldn't find young musicians who could play fairly well and tape them live? There are probably loads of kids who would have done it for free, or very little, not that Disney needs to skimp, which is all the more insulting.

- As mentioned by others, the animation is absolutely awful. The puppets are also utterly simplistic, like hand puppets I remember making in grade school. Maybe that's the point, I'm not sure. Jim Henson's Muppets, they are not. Even the puppets in Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem from the Muppet Show look more realistic than this.

- They introduce the woodwind section with a saxophone. What's up with that? Saxophones are not standard in most orchestras. They also show a drumset right at the beginning of the DVD. Is that to make the orchestra look cool?

- They include a recorder, another instrument almost NEVER found in orchestras, and follow the artificial recorder recording with a hurdy-gurdy sounding synth track that sounds nothing like recorders. And why is there no oboe? Very strange. Maybe they figure they'll leave out the oboe since that's a difficult instrument for young players to master. Great--teach our children to not strive to do something difficult and to settle for the easy route. Einstein would not be proud.

- Their representation of the percussion section is a joke. At one point, they show a cartoon playing a single timpani drum, but you hear two. To illustrate a tambourine, they show a RhythmTech, half-moon, headless tambourine, like the ones you see rock group back-up vocalists use. Sorry, but orchestral percussionists just don't use those. Many times, they show an Orff instrument as the xylophone, with one row of keys. And you also hear synth bells in the recording. The do finally show a marimba player, to their credit, albeit with what I think are extremely carefully synchronized synthesized marimba sounds (maybe the kid hit too many wrong notes?).

- I won't even go into how poorly they represent strings and how bad they sound. It's just plain awful. I'll leave that to the other reviewers here.

- As pointed out in other reviews, most of the performers are using poor technique. Surely, Disney could have teamed up with one of the many schools in this country with excellent music programs and found kids that could actually play well, so that our own children could have good role models.

As parents, you have to ask yourself: is it OK to teach your children to recognize the sounds of an orchestra by playing them artificial sounds, synchronized so they look like they are being played by real people? This is like teaching your child that a strawberry-flavored Jolly Rancher candy is a real strawberry.

As an aside, my wife is a professional violinist who plays on Broadway, and producers are always looking for ways to cut costs so they are gradually replacing live musicians with synthesizers (while charging the same or more for tickets, by the way). This may sound paranoid, but since many musicals and films are by Disney these days, I think this DVD is one of many efforts by Disney--whether overtly intentional or not--to brainwash our children into accepting artificial sounds as real, so that when they grow up, they won't know the difference, and so that children will also learn to like the Baby Einstein recordings that are synthesized. In one word, yuck!

To my mind, the only redeeming quality is the bright colors, which are very attractive to young children. Even with the bright colors and copious corporate branding, my two-year-old son, who normally sits through live classical performances and loves them, was bored after a few minutes and left the room to go read a book! I think that just about says it all right there.

If you love your children and want to give them the best education possible, stay away from this DVD. It is an insult to parents, children and classical musicians.