Disclaimer: This is transcribed using AI. Expect (funny) errors.
Mindy Peterson: [00:00:00] I’m Mindy Peterson and this is Enhance Life with Music, where we explore the ways music makes our lives better. At this show, we are huge fans of music therapy. I am constantly amazed by the wonders that music therapists are able to work, and we featured episodes on music therapies, application for pain relief, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, sobriety, eating disorders and much more. Today’s guest is pioneering new ways to exponentially increase the reach of this healing power of music. The platforms we’re going to talk about today have this to say on their website. During the next decades, we believe humanity will witness a fundamental shift in the way the world uses sound and music from a primary form of entertainment to a deeply therapeutic tool. Our guest today has been deeply involved in the research and technological innovation that is making music available as a sophisticated diagnostic and therapeutic tool. Dr. David Greenberg is a research psychologist and neuroscientist. He is known for his research on musical preferences, personality, and autism. His research has been published in numerous journals and has been reported on by media including CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Dr. Greenberg is a repeat guest on Enhance Life with music. He was featured in Episode 57: What the music you like says about your personality. Welcome back to Enhance Life with music, Dr. Greenberg.
David Greenberg: [00:01:45] Thanks for having me. I’m glad to be here.
Mindy Peterson: [00:01:46] David, you always seem to be at the forefront of groundbreaking research and innovation involving music and neuroscience. Your latest project, I’m really excited to hear about today. It involves health tech and artificial intelligence. It’s a multifaceted entity called Chime. I love this acronym. Chime stands for center for Health Innovation, Music and Education. Tell us a little bit about chime, what it is and why you saw the need to create it.
David Greenberg: [00:02:20] So Chime is a platform, a hub, a headquarters for the future of music therapy and sound health. We’re using, as you mentioned, different state of the art technologies and really rooted in cutting edge research to provide quality health care through music and sound health. The powers of music are vast. Yet in my firm, unwavering belief, we have not yet even tapped the surface of what music can do for individuals and humanity. And so Chime is a platform that I’ve created with really many brilliant minds in the field of music therapy, of psychology, of psychiatry, with really very brilliant computer scientists to be a vessel for and a vehicle in order to bring music over the next decades to a place where it’s providing evidence based care at the highest quality and to bring people to health, to mental health and physical health and well-being through music and sound health.
Mindy Peterson: [00:03:35] So putting that into just sort of plain, simplistic language, basically, this is a music therapy telehealth platform. Is that right? Well, that’s one of the entities of it.
David Greenberg: [00:03:48] Yeah. So chime itself, as I mentioned, stands for center for Health Innovation, Music and Education. And it has three separate divisions that are independent but all rooted and connected. And that includes Chime therapy. And that is a platform where people anywhere across the United States, most of Canada, most of Europe can have music therapy by board certified or registered music therapists. Chime AI is complementary to that where for particularly for teens and adults. We’ve been working for the past several years developing really cutting edge technology that can screen through AI and machine learning, 15 different mental health and neurodiverse conditions through people’s reactions to different sound audios. So we have a screening measure that we can talk a little bit about where we can, within ten minutes, screen accurately for 15 different conditions.
Mindy Peterson: [00:04:49] Yeah, I definitely want to talk some more about that. But before we do, let’s talk a little bit more about chime therapy. So under the chime umbrella we have chime therapy which is music therapy telehealth. And then there’s also chime AI which we’re going to dive into a little bit more here in a minute. And that’s more the artificial intelligence screening. Mhm. Entity of Chime. Talk to us a little bit more about chime therapy. The music therapy that’s available completely virtually by board certified music therapists. Talk to us a little bit about that. And what sort of prompted you I think Covid maybe played a little bit of a role in your impetus to start chime therapy. But tell us a little bit more about that component.
David Greenberg: [00:05:37] Sure. Well, Covid was definitely a part of it. Music therapists have been doing virtual online telehealth music therapy for many years, even before Covid. But during Covid, they kicked that into high gear, and music therapists really began to master platforms like zoom to deliver music therapy effectively and quite across the board. Interestingly, there are certain populations that telehealth music therapy are effective for and appealing to. And what we found in our own research through Chime is in a survey of about 6000 people, 60% of people around the world are interested in music therapy. In times of difficulty, 50% indicated that they would try music therapy over talk therapy, but only 5% said that they had access to it in person. So this an enormous gap. Chime therapy is to provide an avenue in which people can receive music therapy who don’t have access to it in person, which is the vast majority of people.
Mindy Peterson: [00:06:45] And and is most of that lack of access due to not having enough music therapists.
David Greenberg: [00:06:52] Part of it is not having enough music therapists. And in those locations, music therapists often have to be traveling to different locations. They could be working at 3 or 4 different locations each week, and so there’s a lot of travel time involved. And so part of that is because of the own capacity of the therapist and the travel time that it takes to travel to different places. And it also has to do with the fact that compared to other professions that are less music therapists. So in the US, I believe that there’s maybe 5000 therapists in Canada. I believe that there’s 400 or 5. Hundred music therapists. So there’s less.
Mindy Peterson: [00:07:32] That’s all. Really? Seriously? Yeah.
David Greenberg: [00:07:34] So there’s a lot less to be able to cover music therapy across these regions if it has to be in person. But if it’s virtual, then that changes the game entirely. Right? And we also had to spend the past better part of the year working with the American Music Therapy Association, really to navigate different jurisdictional issues around telehealth. Can a music therapist in New York provide music therapy to someone residing in Nevada or California? And so we were able to manage all of that on the platform, deal with all those issues so that seemingly people can, anywhere across the US can find a therapist that is right for them. That’s if it needs to be in their area, like Nevada, for example, is a unique case where there’s certain licensures that are involved, where someone residing in Nevada needs to see a therapist in Nevada. But other than that, music therapy as a profession is much more flexible than, say, talk therapy or, um, psychiatry, so that there’s a much wider reach that music therapists can have, both in the US and in Canada than other professions. And that provides that makes music telehealth and telehealth music therapy a really very strong avenue in now and in the future to be able to deliver and increase access to care. Like we said, many people don’t have access in person. And also in general, it’s difficult if you’re looking, for example, like at a family who has an autistic child. There’s so many different things that are going on, different types of maybe therapies and educational resources that every day, each week the families are bringing their child to. And telehealth can really provide a lot more ease, a lot more accessibility. Um, for those families.
Mindy Peterson: [00:09:24] Sure. Just from the logistics, but then also just all of the stimulation that’s probably involved in getting that child from point A to point B, if you can just eliminate that and have them in the comfort of their own home, I’m sure there’s multiple layers of convenience and ease that that music telehealth brings to the table. And chime is live in 38 states and 27 over 27 countries already. Is that right? Yep.
David Greenberg: [00:09:52] That’s right.
Mindy Peterson: [00:09:52] Okay. And you mentioned some of the regulations involved in, say, a music therapist residing and practicing in New York, but treating someone in Nevada. And I’ll just point out that music therapy is pretty strictly regulated in the US, Canada, um, the United Kingdom, a lot of other countries, even though we do have a shortage of music therapists, which I’ve heard many times from many different people, this is a very well established field, and it’s pretty tightly regulated. So people who aren’t maybe as familiar with it, um, can rest assured knowing that this is a well established field, that’s that’s strictly regulated. Like I mentioned in my introduction, we’ve focused on music therapy specific application to several different conditions and several specific situations on this show, but it’s used to treat over 20 conditions and disorders. Are there any that you want to mention that listeners may not really be aware, like just a condition or a situation, that it’s not commonly known that music therapy is really effective in treating.
David Greenberg: [00:11:01] So traditionally, there’s two large buckets that you can say that music therapists, um, a populations that they treat, one is more of a mental health and also developmental conditions or disabilities, including autistic kids and teens and adults. And then there’s another bucket, which is more about rehabilitation. And that includes people with traumatic brain injury like stroke or elder care and dementia or even end of life care. And so within those, that’s how kind of music therapists have a very broad and wide reach in their work. Interestingly, there’s a deep connection between music and autism that I’m happy to go into, which is the some estimates suggest that about half of the clients that music therapists see are autistic or have different neurodevelopmental conditions. One that I would mention here, especially with the current state of the world, is with post traumatic stress disorder. Um, there’s many studies to show that music therapy is very helpful with people who have experienced trauma, both in their childhood and in adulthood, where oftentimes the trauma is difficult to talk about, is difficult to access, and the aftermath is difficult to process with words and difficult to metabolize in words. Music therapy really offers a medium, a platform in which to be able to communicate, process to be able. To really be able to sit with in a safe space, these painful and very difficult emotions. Um, and it’s been shown to be very effective. And it’s not a new idea. This is something that we’ve known for hundreds of years. The quote by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer comes to mind where he said, music can express the deepest of human pain and emotion, but remote from the pain and the hurt of those emotions. And in that way, that’s really what music therapy does. It provides a medium and a container and a platform, a vessel in which people can process, experience these very difficult experiences. And really through that process, through music therapy, be able to reach a goal of what we know as post-traumatic growth and post-traumatic resilience.
Mindy Peterson: [00:13:24] Yeah, that’s interesting that you describe it that way, because it reminds me of exactly the same thing that was said by another guest. Richard Casper started Creativets to help soldiers and veterans heal from post-traumatic stress. And he talked about how music allows people to process those emotions that you’re like you were saying, but without needing to verbalize all of the graphic details of what they experienced. It can be sort of an allegory, the lyrics that they’re creating or that they’re singing, and so it’s a way for them to express and sort of share what they experienced without having to go into graphic detail about the exact specifics of their situation.
David Greenberg: [00:14:13] There’s some experiences that we have on this planet that are beyond words, and especially when you’re across the room from a therapist, what you’re seeking is someone to understand your experience. If you’ve gone through a trauma without necessarily having to explain it. Um, that you can just sit there with a person and. Even just in the quietness, there’s a mutual understanding of the experience. And then a level deeper is that music provides that avenue to be able to communicate certain emotions that can’t be expressed with words, especially for children who experience traumatic events where the verbal ability, the language, the cognition to even be able to begin to describe it just isn’t there. And music can be that way in which they’re really able to to communicate that. And I’ve seen it as a clinician myself, happen in the therapy room where music has this ability, when it’s used in a way that’s intentional, that’s used in an evidence based way by music therapists to really. Provide that way for a child or an adult to express themselves and then ultimately experience themselves in a different way. That’s that’s separate from the trauma.
Mindy Peterson: [00:15:35] You mentioned the high percentage of clients that benefit from music therapy have some form of neurodiversity or autism. I think it was on your website I saw that you mentioned the statistic 20% of all people are neurodiverse or have a mental health condition, but only half have a diagnosis, which those stats just really sort of hit me between the eyes. 1.2 billion people are in need of screening and diagnosis. And this brings us to another component of Chime, which is the chime AI. Tell us a little bit about how music can be used as a screening method.
David Greenberg: [00:16:21] Yeah. Many people, when they first hear about this, they have a big question mark on their face. They’re like, how does that how does how can that work? How can music, how can sound be indicative of someone’s psyche? And the answer is that music we know from research is a window into the mind. We spoke about it last time that I was on your podcast, that music preferences provide a window into people’s personalities, that when somebody likes certain types of music, that it’s an indication of whether someone’s extroverted or conscientious or agreeable and so forth. And so we built a technology that takes that idea even a step further, where people’s preferences for music and reactions are not just about personality, but we can actually pinpoint their mental health status and whether or not they have a neurodiverse condition. Because what we found is that, for example, autistic people react and have certain preferences that are very unique, that there are certain signals in the music that are more appealing to autistic populations. And we found that that same thing is true for people who are obsessive compulsive, those who have PTSD, those who have schizophrenia. There’s very unique patterns for each of these conditions and the way that people with those conditions react to music. And so we had data of over 100,000 people with different mental health conditions, and we were able to train very robust machine learning, AI based models to be able to make predictions that have high levels of accuracy right now at 85% accurate across the conditions.
David Greenberg: [00:18:03] And I’ll just kind of run through the conditions that we can screen for, which is ADHD, autism, bipolar disorder, anorexia, bulimia, general anxiety disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, PTSD, OCD, schizophrenia, seasonal affective disorder, and social anxiety disorder. I may be missing 1 or 2. Um. The list is also growing as we are continuing our research, and we’re also working on being able to predict through our AI models, the age of onset of these conditions. This is a very innovative technology. It’s something we’ve been working to develop to patent over the past two years, and now we’ve built it into a very easy to use screening measure that anyone can take. We call it Snap, which stands for screening for Neurodiversity and Psychology. You really can, within a just a few minutes, be able to get feedback, instant results about these conditions. And we see this, as you first mentioned, as a way to really deal with the very serious problem that we have in the field of mental health, which is that there are a very large percentage of the population who has a mental health condition or has a neurodiverse condition, but they are not diagnosed or screened. There’s just not enough access to different types of diagnostic measures. For example, in the UK there’s about 600,000 people who are on a wait list for over a year to get a autism diagnosis.
Mindy Peterson: [00:19:43] And so my goodness, you’re kidding.
David Greenberg: [00:19:45] No, not not at all. The numbers are just increasing.
Mindy Peterson: [00:19:49] Well, and I want to point out to my understanding, is this is incredibly revolutionary form of screening because a lot of screening tests, most others are really expensive. They take a lot of time. And as you mentioned, they can be really difficult to access. So this is really a game changer. It involves the person listening to a simple audio based test. And once the answers are given, then the screening results are generated in like less than a minute.
David Greenberg: [00:20:22] Yeah. The results are. Yeah, exactly.
Mindy Peterson: [00:20:26] And it includes it includes a report on 15 conditions. And that list is growing all at once. Uh, a report on your traits, your preferences. It’s like you said, 85% accurate. How does that compare to the more traditional, expensive, long form, difficult to access tests that are currently more widely used?
David Greenberg: [00:20:48] So we’ve done comparisons between our accuracy levels for each condition and then the standard measures that are used. And we’re outperforming each one of those currently by about 8% right now.
Mindy Peterson: [00:21:03] Wow.
David Greenberg: [00:21:04] And the main thing is that we’re able to do all these conditions at once, where other standard screening measures, when they are doing a screening, that is typically one condition. Um, so it may be for depression or just for anxiety. There are a few out there that do maybe multiple conditions at once, but nothing at the volume that we currently are doing.
Mindy Peterson: [00:21:26] Okay, so people are on these long waiting lists just to get a screening for one condition say autism.
David Greenberg: [00:21:32] Mhm. Okay. Or a diagnosis. So this is a way that we can really fast track things. For example, if people on a large scale were to take a screening measure that was accurate for autism, then that could and we knew that someone had a higher probability of having autism than someone else. Then they could be, for example, fast tracked to getting a diagnosis.
Mindy Peterson: [00:21:56] So so, you know, on your website that snap the chime I is a screening tool, not a diagnostic test. It doesn’t provide a diagnosis, but it can screen them. And like you said, fast track the process so that they can get an official diagnosis and get going on some sort of treatment.
David Greenberg: [00:22:14] Mhm. Exactly.
Mindy Peterson: [00:22:15] And this AI component of Chime began as an academic pursuit at Cambridge University. Is that right.
David Greenberg: [00:22:23] Right. So it really built off of my PhD work which was looking at the links between music and personality. And it grew into after my PhD, I began the Musical Universe project, which was a more public engagement platform to get people engaged in music and science. And about 350,000 people took a variety of tests and quizzes and games. And it was from that that we were able to build off of it and bring about the next iteration and bring chime to fruition.
Mindy Peterson: [00:22:57] Let’s talk a little bit about the research that chime is involved in all over the website. It’s in your mission, your values, your activities, talking about making evidence based music therapy accessible to anyone, anywhere. Your values include rigorous clinical research, conducting cutting edge research. Tell us a little bit more about the research that Chime is engaged in, and who your research partners are, in addition to Cambridge.
David Greenberg: [00:23:24] Sure. Like you mentioned earlier, music therapy itself is a established profession, and it’s highly regulated in the U.S., in Canada, in the U.K. and Australia and other places around the world. Interestingly, though, there’s many people who don’t even know about music therapy or about the medical benefits of music or about sound health in general, the reason for that is, you know, there’s many reasons I can go into that of why many people aren’t aware of it. But one of those reasons is there’s already been an incredible rigorous research, but there’s an immense importance of continuing research in the field of music therapy and sound health. And thankfully, there’s many different organizations like the NIH, the NIH Sound Health Initiative, which is providing funding to further research into music therapy and sound health. And that’s our core that we want to provide music therapy and to provide music technology and care that is really evidence based. And to do that, we have to engage in rigorous research into science, and that’s a core value of ours. And so we are co-leading a music therapy trial in the U.K., a randomized controlled trial with Cambridge University and with also Anglia Ruskin University that is the first nationwide randomized controlled trial of the effectiveness of music therapy with autistic kids aged 7 to 11.
David Greenberg: [00:24:59] So this is a really very important study, because this is aimed at showing and testing whether or not music therapy will be able to be effective in improving social communication and general well-being with autistic kids. We have other research partners as well, because it really takes an international team of collaborators to pursue this area. And so with the musical universe data set that I mentioned before. We’ve been collaborating with teams at Columbia University, Stanford University, at UPenn, at the University of Chicago, working on this data set to really advance different discoveries about the links between music, the brain and society. And we’ve also had some industry collaborations, one with Spotify, where we looked at how different psychological and personality traits are linked to people’s Spotify listening habits. And we publish those results a year or two ago. And so all of this is really an enormous team effort to really help further our understanding of music and really establish an evidence basis for its use within music therapy and sound health and all around the world.
Mindy Peterson: [00:26:14] I know on your activities, our activities, that component of the website, it talks about training, the current and next generation of music therapists and telehealth and evidence based practices. You also talk about advocacy, raising global awareness about the benefits of music therapy. Is there an educational component to chime either for music therapists, but then also in terms of advocacy for music therapy?
David Greenberg: [00:26:42] There is for both. We’ve acquired a vast amount of knowledge of how to use different technologies, including telehealth platforms, including state of the art screenings, and we want to be able to share that knowledge with other music therapists so that they can be using that in their own practices and so that they can enhance and boost their own care. In addition to that, we have sites in the future on also having music therapists to provide training to clinical psychologists. When I was doing training within in clinical psychology, I was shocked at the amount of clinical psychologists who have musical backgrounds themselves and who were fascinated and wanted to use music within their practice, and some already were using music in different ways, either listening to it or playing it with their clients. And so I think that there’s an opportunity there for music therapists to educate and teach clinical psychologists. There’s also an opportunity in the reverse to that, where music therapists can help enhance the skills of clinical psychologists. Clinical psychologists can also enhance the skills of music therapists. And so we see that as an avenue for education in the future. And we also are deeply, deeply dedicated to educating the public. In fact, we are working right now on a podcast. We’re working on a blog to really up our game in terms of public engagement, because at the very, very start, when we first started, uh, talking today, you were mentioning about, um, music as entertainment.
David Greenberg: [00:28:11] And for, I would argue, for a couple thousand years, there’s been a notion that music is a form of entertainment. Last night I was, um, walking through Barnes and Noble and just surrounded by magazines or books that were very much about music as entertainment. Very flashy, very sexy, very, you know, eye catching. But there was nothing about music as a therapeutic agent or music as medicine. And there’s many reasons for that. Um, I think that not to be too critical, but I think that there’s a better job that we, as in the field of music therapy itself, can be doing to move music therapy beyond just the idea of entertainment and beyond the idea of Kumbaya, that it’s really rooted in science and has these health and medical applications. So we’re developing this podcast and blog and other efforts to be able to change the conversation, change the narrative around music. It’s a big undertaking because the vast world, when they think of music, they think of entertainment. But, um, it’s something that’s deeply important to us to change, to change that perception of what music is. Um.
Mindy Peterson: [00:29:26] I love some of the quotes and phrases on the website. One talks about, uh. It describes chime as a health tech company on a mission for all humanity to experience the deep benefits of sound health. And another quote our vision for the future of audio. We believe our research and innovation can lead to a cultural shift, whereby music is understood to be a sophisticated diagnostic and therapeutic tool, and not just a simple form of entertainment. Tell us a little bit about the costs involved in using chime AI chime therapy I know your values include access and affordability. Your activities tab talks about providing the best quality music therapy to clients around the world at an affordable cost. What are the typical costs to use chime services?
David Greenberg: [00:30:20] Our goal is to make music therapy and sound health affordable to all. And many of the services can be in reverse reimbursed by other means, either government funding grants or through insurance. Therapy sessions start at $99 for an hour session. Oftentimes, children and kids have a half hour session, which is $49. And the snap the screening measure to take that. Currently it’s $9.99, which is much lower than current screening measures cost. So, for example, um, the FcPS, which is used for anxiety and depression, is $30. And so our goal is to make it as affordable for as many people as possible. And again, you know, we’re one of our main activities that isn’t listed, but which we’re always doing behind the scenes, is trying to find ways in which to make the therapy cost free or at as little cost as possible for people. So that includes finding ways through government funding or insurance reimbursement to be able to pay for the sessions so that it’s a little or no cost to families.
Mindy Peterson: [00:31:31] Okay, so $9.99 is the cost for the Snap screening. Yes. Wow. And I’m guessing there’s no way because it’s available online and it’s just through the platform. You don’t need a live person administering it. Is that right?
David Greenberg: [00:31:50] Exactly.
Mindy Peterson: [00:31:51] Okay. So big, big difference from people waiting for months to get screened for one condition. Autism being compared to being able to go online anytime, day or night, any location, wherever in the world they might be and for less than $10, be able to get screened for 15 different conditions. And that list is constantly growing pretty amazing.
David Greenberg: [00:32:17] Exactly.
Mindy Peterson: [00:32:18] Wonderful. Well, this is so fascinating and so exciting. Where is the best place for listeners to go to learn more about chime to access snap the The Chime Eye screening tool and and just learn more about the research that’s going on.
David Greenberg: [00:32:35] So people can go to chime. Com and they’ll be able to access everything there. They’ll be able to access whether it’s telehealth music therapy sessions, they can book an appointment or they can sign up for snap and begin snap right away. Um, and if they want to participate in research too, they can also do that. Fabulous.
Mindy Peterson: [00:32:54] I’ll for sure have that link in the show notes, and I’ll also put the link to our previous conversation where you talked about what the music that you like says about your personality. That was such a fun conversation that we had back in sort of the early days of the podcast, really, I think it was episode 57, and we’re now on up in the up in the upper hundreds, so I’ll have a link to that. And also I’ll put some links to to some of the other episodes that we referenced in our conversation, like the one with Richard Casper. Is there anything else that you want to say before we close things out about time that we haven’t already covered?
David Greenberg: [00:33:34] Well, I just want to say that we are very collaborative and this is a very big team effort. Um, and we need to get as many researchers, get as many music therapists on board involved as possible. And I think just not just for chime. I think that all music therapists, all creative arts therapists, all researchers should be putting together and doing the best that they can to and they’re already doing the best that they can, but perhaps in slightly different ways to communicate the benefits of music therapy to, to all people.
Mindy Peterson: [00:34:09] Um, so yeah, I love collaboration, and it sounds like you’re extending an invitation to anyone in this field or tangentially involved in the field to reach out and and collaborate directly with the team at chime, and then also just to join in that advocacy effort in their own way, all of us as musicians and in whatever specific discipline of of music that we’re involved in, have sort of a responsibility to advocate for our discipline and and educate those around us about the power of music.
David Greenberg: [00:34:43] And there’s many ways that either the research we’re doing or the activities, the therapy or the tools that we have at Chime could be of benefit to others. And in some ways, maybe we have things that we’re not even thinking of or aware of. And so Chime is here to really help and to really help propel the future of music therapy and all the ways that we can. Um.
Mindy Peterson: [00:35:06] As you know, Doctor Greenberg, I ask all my guests to close out our conversation with a musical ending, a coda by sharing a song or story about a moment that music enhanced your life. I’m sure you have many, many, many of them. Is there one song or story that you can share with us? Today, as we close our conversation.
David Greenberg: [00:35:27] There’s a story that comes to mind. We’re talking about autism before and about how there’s a unique relationship between music and autism. Autistic people oftentimes have unique abilities musical abilities, unique perception, unique preferences when it comes to music. And there’s one experience that I had that always stands out for me, and being transformative in terms of my understanding and thinking about music in general. And this was probably about ten years ago. I was at a fundraising event for autism, and I was on a panel with Simon Baron-Cohen, with Adam Ockelford, who is a professor at Roehampton University and who is a teacher of an autistic musician named Derek Paravicini, who there’s Ted talks that they’ve done together. There’s many different YouTube videos and documentaries on Derek and Derek was doing a performance, and because I was on the panel, I was able to be at the event early and spend some time with Derek before the event started. And he was sitting at the piano and Derek’s autistic. He’s also blind and he also has very limited verbal ability. In fact, when he speaks, he he learned how to speak at the level that he does through listening to radio broadcasts. So he’s voice and pronunciation sounds like a radio broadcaster. We were he was sitting at the piano and he was playing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and his teacher, Professor Adam Ockelford, said, Derek, how do you why not play that in E flat? And Derek played it in E flat and he said, why don’t you play it in D flat? And Derek was just able to transpose it seamlessly. And then something unique happened. Um. Professor Oxford, said to Derek, why don’t you play the Sarah Cassidy version? Now, interestingly, I had been listening within those months to the Sarah Cassidy version, so I was very familiar with the subtle nuances that Sarah Cassidy did.
David Greenberg: [00:37:35] And I’m sure that many people listening to this don’t aren’t even aware of Sarah Cassidy’s version. But Derek, like a Rolodex in his memory, played Sarah Cassidy’s version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow flawlessly with all of the subtle nuances. Um, and I was just absolutely amazed. And I began to. It was almost as if Derek was bringing me into his world through music, and I was able to then communicate with him in that world in a really very beautiful way. A few moments after that, when we were waiting for the event to start, we were just sitting next to each other and we began singing different Charlie Parker jazz tunes. So I would start with the song ornithology and then he would go to anthropology, and I would then go to Donnelly like diddle diddle diddle diddle diddle diddle diddle diddle diddle diddle diddle diddle diddle diddle diddle. And then he would go. Doo doo doo doo ba da ba da da da da da da. And we’d go back and forth like this in this exchange. And sometimes people have a notion of autistic people as a disability. And the idea is how do we help autistic people? And that’s very true. But there’s also a component where autistic people can teach neurotypical people something very unique, um, and something special that they wouldn’t be able to experience otherwise. And in many ways, I was able to learn something I never knew about music before from Derek, and experience music in a completely new way that I hadn’t before through Derek, and I’m immensely grateful for that experience and immensely grateful to Derek for that.
Transcribed by Sonix.ai