There are 26 ‘Motifs’ Tracks. These are meant for children and adults with profound learning difficulties, to help them get to grips with recognisable groups of sounds, that Western classical musicians call ‘motifs’, jazzers call ‘riffs’ or ‘licks’, pop singers call ‘hooks’ and people making advertisements call ‘stings’.

The important thing is that these groups of notes are clearly recognisable and easy to remember. They are rather like company logos, but made of sound. They are the building blocks of which almost all music is made up – so to understand music, the brain first needs to grasp motifs, and these tracks are designed to help with that learning process.

Tracks 1–6 are present everyday motifs, both natural and made by human.

Tracks 7–24 present the main motifs from the Tuning In songs. Each starts with simple instrumental versions, then wordless vocal renditions, and finally recordings with words.

For some children and young people, with severe learning difficulties who can’t speak, it may be possible for motifs like these to function instead of words. For others, they can be used scaffold speech that is in the early stages.

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