VH1 Behind the Music: not so much

November 6, 2019 5:19 PM

I want to make a picture book for a 6-year-old boy who loves music, but I've got no ideas. Maybe he's a rockstar and then.... um yeah I've got nothing. Can you lovely creative Mefites throw me a few story prompts?
posted by pH Indicating Socks to Media & Arts (7 answers total)

Best answer: It’d be cool if whatever instrument he played had magical side effects! Like it could help him fly and then he could give concerts to raccoons in the trees, the high-flying geese, then a concert in space to like astronauts and aliens
posted by sacchan at 5:23 PM on November 6, 2019 [3 favorites]

Best answer: I'm envisioning something like the many iterations of Spinal Tap running gag. The band had different styles, both musical and fashion, through the changing decades and tastes: there was a Beatles era moment, a 60s flower power thing, jazz, reggae, obviously the hair metal era, and then later reunited as the folk group in A Mighty Wind. It's fun, lets you sell a lot of different stories and looks as one story arc, and it's never too early to start teaching children about our lord and savior Christopher Guest.
posted by phunniemee at 5:27 PM on November 6, 2019 [3 favorites]

Our rockstar has an idea for a song riff, but can't quite figure out which instrument would be perfect for it, so he goes to visit different musicians to find the right sound. (Sort of the "Are You My Mother?" of music.)
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:29 PM on November 6, 2019 [4 favorites]

He goes to another planet. Maybe to put on a concert. Maybe he's such a huge rockstar he's known all over the universe. Or maybe people from an advanced civilization somewhere else in the galaxy detected radio waves carrying his music and loved it so much they used their faster-than-lightspeed transportation technology to come and fetch him to their planet for a concert. While on the other planet (or maybe he tours multiple planets), he observes the ways the people there make music. Maybe they have instruments that make sound in similar ways to Earth instruments (blowing air through a tube, strumming strings, etc.) but that look different from the ones we use. Maybe they have some completely different ways of making musical sounds, like trained whistling fish that each emit a certain note when tapped or . . . whatever cool idea you can come up with.

Or he's a rockstar and he has rockstar friends and maybe there's some jealousy or competition but in the end they decide to work together and collaborate on some songs.

Or there's a rockstar who has some kids who want to be stars themselves and one night they bribe or trick their parent's opening band into letting them take the stage themselves. Or their parent gets sick at the last minute and they jump in and put on an awesome show in their place.

Or he's a rockstar who wants to write a song that's different from any song anyone else ever wrote. There are a million songs about love, or about being sad, but what has no one ever in the history of the world written a song about? He figures out what that is and writes a song about it that becomes a surprise hit.
posted by Redstart at 5:58 PM on November 6, 2019 [1 favorite]

He walks through a music forest and learns about a new instrument & song with each new animal...
Snake has a flute, giraffe has a cello, hippo has a tuba, etc.
posted by ReluctantViking at 6:08 PM on November 6, 2019 [2 favorites]

Needing to get to the gig on time and encountering obstacles (and help) on the way. I'm sure the Muppets have used every variation of this possible, but it works.
posted by hydrophonic at 7:26 PM on November 6, 2019 [2 favorites]

What about a book about learning to play music? Maybe the kid finds a guitar/other instrument and, through trial and error, teaches himself a song he wants to play for someone. It could have pictures that show how the instrument works, and pictures of what the kid tries that do and don't work. (Sort of educational in that way.) And the kid could learn by watching people on TV, listening to music, asking people and then trying things.
posted by a huckleberry at 7:09 AM on November 7, 2019 [1 favorite]