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F or many years it’s been a common belief that playing classical music for your children will somehow make them smarter. We’ve got a stack of jewel cases by the stereo plastered with ecstatic baby faces all making this claim. Not one of these CDs offers any sort of actual scientific explanation as to why this is true, but for some reason, it seems to be an accepted fact that cranking the classical will help make your child a certified baby genius.

As a result, almost every single piece of baby-related hardware in our house comes with a tinny little speaker, an unquenchable hunger for D-sized batteries and a canned repertoire of bland classical music, usually some sort of variation on Pachelbel’s Canon. The baby swing plays Pachelbel’s Canon. The crib-side “aquarium” plays Pachelbel’s Canon. I’m willing to bet that baby’s first potty will play Pachelbel’s Canon every time he goes number one.

Now don’t get me wrong, Pachelbel’s Canon is a nice piece of music. It’s got a gentle wavelike rhythm and is certainly one of the most famous chord progressions in music, but hasn’t anyone come up with anything else that catchy in the 300 years since it was written? Did all the toy manufacturers get together somewhere and pass a resolution making the use of Pachelbel’s Canon mandatory in all children’s products? Could it be some X-Files-type conspiracy to shape the youth of the nation through that one piece of music?

I took a look through the children’s section at a local music store just to see what other options I had for kid-o-centric tunes. I lingered briefly over the nostalgic stuff like Raffi and Sharon, Lois & Bram, and completely skipped the dreadful contemporary stuff like the Doodlebops. I was seriously considering one of a series of albums of modern artists done in a lullaby style, but I ultimately decided against bedtime versions of Nirvana and Radiohead, at least for now. Musical explorations of emotional angst and modern urban isolation can wait a little longer.

What I did discover flipping through the racks was a little wonder called Soothing Sounds for Baby by Raymond Scott. Subtitled “An infant’s friend in sound,” the cover of this unique album depicts a precocious baby sticking out his tongue while an illustrated soundwave enters one ear and exits the other. I knew I had a winner.

According to the liner notes, Raymond Scott was a wartime composer and bandleader but found fame writing music for numerous classic Warner Brothers Looney Tunes cartoons. In the late ’50s he became interested in the nascent electronic music scene, and began building primitive synthesizers alongside his friend and electronic music pioneer Bob Moog.

Programming those early instruments was a difficult and time-consuming chore, so most early electronic music is fairly simple and repetitive, which is perfect when it comes to children’s music. Scott released a series of three Soothing Sounds for Baby LPs on Epic Records in 1963, in conjunction with the Gessel Institute of Child Development.

While no claims are made regarding any cranium-enhancing effects, liner notes state that the music is intended to “serve as an aural toy during the feeding, teething, play, sleep and fretful periods” of infants. Babies evidently have highly developed hearing and love to experience new sounds and since they respond well to the calming vibrations of a rocking movement, they should also respond to the rhythmic vibrations of electronic music.

The incredibly cute ’50s style album covers could not begin to prepare young parents of the time for the alien-sounding bloops and bleeps contained on the vinyl within and as a result, when they were originally released, they did not mingle with Elvis or the Beatles at the top of the charts. They did, however, prefigure the development of ambient electronic music in the ’70s by the likes of famous avant garde acts like Kraftwerk, Neu, David Bowie and, of course, Brian Eno (who has, in fact, recorded not one, not two, but three different versions of Pachelbel's Canon. Coincidence? I think not.) Being a huge fan of those artists, I couldn’t wait to see how my son would respond to it.

As we were winding down that night, working on the last bottle before bed, I put the CD on and observed how Jack would respond to this little experiment in sound. The first song on the album is the 14-minute “Lullaby,” a lovely little number that brought to my mind images of baby robots in nurseries being tucked into their beds by assembly line robots from an auto plant. I paid close attention to Jack’s face to gauge his reaction.

He cried. A lot.

Now, I don’t know if it was a direct reaction to the music or if he was just naturally cranky, but the test subject did not respond well to the stimulus. I personally loved it. It sounded incredible, especially when you consider that it was recorded almost 45 years ago, and a close listen revealed a depth of subtle detail hidden in the deceptively simple melodies. However, none of that mattered since the most important critic hated it. I turned off the CD, feeling a little disappointed that the experiment was not a success.

In the following weeks, I have cautiously tested Soothing Sounds in different circumstances and environments, but to date, the results have been inconclusive. In fact, Jack doesn’t seem to have any noticeable reaction to any of the background music we choose, be it Sunday morning classical or drive-time classic rock.

Maybe music does have some enriching effect deep within his developing brain, but we simply do not have the advanced equipment necessary to track it. Maybe all the science in the world can’t explain why someone likes a particular piece of music. Unfortunately, the only time our little test subject recognizes and responds to a particular piece of music is when his aquarium plays Pachelbel’s Canon.