The incident has several features characteristic of young children’s musicmaking: the musical stream, made as played; the organisation of musical sound by the patterning of body action; the gap between intention and realisation in sound; the difference between perception through doing and perception through listening. It highlights too the challenge for the teacher in working with children in the early stages of making their own music. Does even the intended patterning here ‘count’ as music, let alone the actual sound? What can be expected? Can young children compose? What does it sound like if they do?