6 Gifting Ideas that will Strike a Chord!
Perhaps you are a music student, wishing to present your teacher with a tuneful thank you for the gift of music. Or maybe you want to leave some presents for your friends in orchestra or band. You might be a teacher who wants to thank your students for their work during the year to help motivate them for the future. Or you’re a parent who loves to encourage your child to keep practicing and learning! Maybe you just want to gift in a way that hits the right note! Here are some fun ways you can gift some joy!
This article will share six sound ideas that you can use to amp up your gifting this season!
I should warn you, this article tunelessly contains some musical puns – see if you can spot them!
What is a great gift?
A gift provides a little moment of joy that you pass to someone to help them feel valued. Great gifts are considerate of the recipient and mindful of what they will value and enjoy. A great gift also contains a something unique about the giver as well. This might be the recognition of a past shared experience or current shared interest. Or it might be something the giver gives of a more personal nature from their heart. When gifts are given in interesting ways, the resulting surprise and the magic of creativity amplifies the pleasure and delight to both people. Shared experiences, like these, increase the bonds between people. This fosters greater trust and garnering happy connections with each other, or within a group of people.
A group of students, friends, band-members, siblings or teachers can have their connection to each other augmented by sharing symbols. Music has many symbols, and musicians understand them in a unique way. They know that a quaver or crotchet has a time value and a sharp or flat can change a pitch. Musicians amplify their connection through wearing or sharing symbols that link them to their group. It also sets them apart from other groups. Thereby enhancing their connection to music and to each other. This sets the tone for many happy times together. A simple idea might be to gift a badge, item of jewelry or other wearable item that sports a symbol of shared connection. This will help form a deep and lasting tie to each other.
Great gifts are not therefore, the most expensive, or most elaborate. They are more likely to be great, even if they are small. If the gift is a symbol of something shared, the respect, consideration and good feelings spent together increases.
Read on for five fun and creative ways you can give more than just a gift; you can give an experience.
- The Incognito Gift
Hide a gift in an unexpected, but easy to find, place where the recipient will discover it! If your teacher or friend has a favorite cup, put your gift in it (when its clean and dry of course!) Or leave it on their computer, chair or in their instrument case. Before or during orchestra or band practice, leave a gift on their music stand. You could feign ignorance to the gift or confess when they discover it! Either way, it’s dolce. Just ensure it’s a place they’ll see it, and won’t accidental-ly get picked up by someone else! It’s a good idea to be around nearby to ensure everything goes to plan and to see their surprise and smiles! (and to make sure no-one gets crotchet-y)
2. Hide and Seek a Gift!
You could take the first theme and amplify it, by hiding a gift in a more challenging place to find, but not impossible! Tell the recipient that you have hidden a gift for them and challenge them to find it. You could say ‘warmer’ / ‘colder” or play a question / answer game until they locate the item. You could even use a metronome to communicate where the gift is! A largo metronome setting might tell them they are a long way from their gift. You can set the metronome speed progressively faster as they get closer to the gift!
A variation on the theme, is to leave written clues to the location of the gift. The written clues could be riddles to solve, cryptic puzzles. Or it could be musical code using note names on a stave. Or music references, music theory or music history. This would be like a gift Chopin Liszt! The first clue will be the one you leave for them in an obvious place. You could also audiate, sing or play it for them. They would need to solve that clue to get to the next location to find the next clue. And so on until they find the gift! This is a great game to play with your music friends. It’s an excellent game for music teachers or band/orchestra leaders especially for something fun for the final lesson of the term or year!
3, The Sneaky Gifter (or whodunit)
This idea involves leaving a number of small gifts or tokens over time without them noticing who might be doing it. The aim is to see how long it might take them to work out the pattern and discover who has composed the game. You might attach a badge or charm to their stuff when they’re not looking. Then wait to see when they notice and how they react! The objective is to compose in your recipient a feeling of being happily surprised and curious.
This is a fun idea when you have a group of friends or students who you can randomly or secretly gift without them noticing eg: attach a badge to their bag or jacket, or leave stickers in their pencil case, during your daily interactions. You can subtly encourage them to guess who in the group is the person responsible for the little treasures appearing by saying “I wonder who left you that musical badge!” See if anyone guesses it was you!
4. The thoughtful offer:
Offer them your musical sharpener or pencil and tell them they can keep it! When they look closely they might find the heartfelt thankyou, warm Congratulations or festive note you had left tucked into the sharpener or wound around the pencil and they’ll know you really intended to give it to them all along.
5. The task based gift
This gift experience is perhaps more likely to be created by a music teacher, coach or parent. It involves creating a task or activity for the gift recipient to undertake. Photocopy music notes from the piece you’re working on together, cut out measures, or lines of music and leave them in a trail on the floor or desk. Ask them to follow the trail of music pieces, gather them and put the piece together! Give them the gift when they complete the task! It would be fun to get them to play the piece of music they put together to see if they assembled it correctly! This could also be done with sections of rhythm or a chronology of music history.
Other tasks that could be used instead include: taking measures of written rhythm and the task is to order them in easiest to hardest then perform them!
Or provide them with key signatures and ask them to match the major or minor note names that correspond to the key signature eg 3#’s should be matched with A Major and F# minor.
6. Make your gift
There is nothing quite like a gift you have spent time preparing, collecting or making! It truly offers a thoughtful touch and the investment of your time in making something that the giftee will enjoy! You could make an advent calendar! Advent calendars are often used to count down the days until Christmas, and is checked at regular time periods eg each week / day / or hour block. On each time measure of the countdown the calendar provides an affirmation, concept, thought or gift. Checking it at the assigned intervals becomes part of the routine leading up to an exciting event and helps augment the feeling of anticipation, excitement and preparedness.
An advent calendar could be for any type countdown. For musicians, it could be a countdown to a performance day or exam. Each box or section of the calendar could be opened as a reward for practice, or work achieved for each step towards the performance or exam. Small motivational gifts and messages and thoughts would make the perfect inclusions in a calendar! This kind of advent calendar may also help to motivate and inspire the recipient in many ways!
At the time of writing this, Christmas is approaching and home-made Christmas bonbons are such a joy to open! Especially when they contain something unique to the receiver! Small musical items can make Christmas day special for the musicians you know! But bonbon’s don’t have to be for Christmas alone! Friends could share a hand-made bonbon to acknowledge a birthday, celebrate a performance or mark the end of a year of lessons or time together!
The whole package!
Lastly, don’t forget the presentation of your gift. The wrapping of your gift represents a chance to mark the occasion in your unique way. Great gifts are the ones where we give a little something of ourselves as well. So, you can be creative with your wrapping and presentation! Think of unique wrapping materials. A gift nestled in a box of feathers, hessian or shredded cloth.
A gift wrapped as something else is always a fun surprise. Eg. an item of stationery contained in a box that initially looked like a chocolate box. Reed making tools wrapped in a box that looked like they were from a perfume or jewellery store. Individual badges, or pieces of oboe making equipment presented in small cup-cake papers or cake-presentation boxes. These can be fun when presented to someone you know will appreciate your humour. Your wrapping could be made from old sheet music or photocopies of sheet music! And you could find or make a matching card as well.
Make your gift unique to them, and do the gifting in a way that is unique to you, and you will truly have created lasting happiness for you both! I hope you go into your gift giving season with happiness!