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 and spotlight the resources you can use to enhance your life with music. Joining me today from Santa Monica, California, is Frank Fitzpatrick, author of the book Amplified: Unleash Your Potential Through the Power of Music. Frank is an award-winning Hollywood creative, international speaker, social entrepreneur, and wellness expert. He was Apple’s first Music and Health Specialist and is a leading visionary in the hearables tech revolution. Frank is passionate about creating innovative solutions at the intersection of human potential, entertainment, health and technology. And last but not least, Frank and I are both natives of the state of Michigan. Welcome to Enhance Life with Music, Frank.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:00:53] It’s great to be here, Mindy. I appreciate you having me on and I look forward to our conversation.
Mindy Peterson: [00:00:58] So am I. Today’s conversation was sparked by your book Amplified. The book description from your website explains that the book quote shows you how to tap into the power of music in your everyday life to awaken creativity, deepen your relationships, enhance your performance, and rewire your brain. End quote. So you have my full attention with a description like that. And as listeners can imagine, we could have a full episode on every single chapter in the book. But what I want to pick your brain about today is this thread that runs throughout the book, and you do a deeper dive into it in one section of the book, but I found this thread really intriguing. It’s this concept that as a culture, our basic understanding and view of music has shifted throughout history. It’s kind of morphed into a narrow and misinformed understanding that increasingly devalues music. It’s self-defeating and unsustainable for musicians and music education. You say in your book, quote, over the course of hundreds of years, our short term, profit driven societal structure has changed the way we see and value music. It has transformed music in the eyes of society from an integral component of what makes us human, to a simple form of entertainment and another commodity for sale, end quote. Can you unpack that for us and explain how you would characterize our society’s current value and valuation of music, and how that’s changed over the years, and why that’s a problem?
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:02:42] Okay. Well, first of all, I don’t want to be like, you know, the nihilist here and paint this really grim future. I, you know, my work is about creating a more positive future for people. So it’s how do we empower you through the positive side of, of music and, um, and maybe reframe some of our thinking around it that’s developed and is driving our operating systems or our subconscious frameworks. And yeah.
Mindy Peterson: [00:03:06] It’s another form of awareness.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:03:07] Yeah. Into, you know, into a way that maybe we can, uh, tap into it in a deeper way. So, you know, I guess I’ll start out with there’s a perspective. I kind of flip it on its head a little bit, and some people might embrace this from the science side. I have a lot of science in the book and a lot of scientists involved, but the is that, you know, I look at kind of what Beethoven said and kind of a bridge between what Beethoven, Howard Gardner, who was, you know, did the nine forms of intelligence ahead of Harvard for a while. Um, and I look at, uh, music, if music’s not something we do, it’s actually a form of higher intelligence. And, as Beethoven would say, understands us better than we understand it. Then, rather than trying to do music, why don’t we try to understand how music does or plays us, you know, switch the roles a little bit. So then we start to experience music in a different way, because music isn’t something we have to necessarily perform to experience. We have to be at a proficiency level to know we have to make a certain amount of money off of it for it to have value. Um, that changes a lot. And it also gives access to us in the deepest moments of our life.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:04:16] You know, when we need emotional support, psychological support, health support, um, when we’re alone, um, when we’re in difficult situations that music doesn’t judge us, you know, we judge ourselves or we get judge by how we do music, you know, and that and that. So you can almost think, I used to say I did a lot of work around the world, you know, with underserved cultures at war and children in these places. And it’s like, and I would say some of these kids, um, music’s the closest experience to unconditional love that they’ll ever know. Um, so it’s it’s the experience of music that’s always there for us, non-judging of us. And that when we learn to whether we do it through developing particular skill sets as a musician or performer, or whether we just do it to embrace it into our life, has the power to enhance the quality of our being in every different way, every way we want to. Um, yeah. And it doesn’t discriminate against anybody, you know. So so there’s something, uh, I just tried to flip that is, it’s, you know, it’s not what we do, how we do music, what we can do with music. It’s how music does, what music does with us, you know? Uh huh.
Mindy Peterson: [00:05:27] It was interesting. I think it was just this morning, I was on LinkedIn for a quick moment and saw a post by Anita Collins, and she was saying something about how she almost feels like we need to stop talking about the benefits of music, because it’s almost like music is the desert. And it’s just like, you know, if you have that, it’s nice. You’re some nice little benefits to it. But if you don’t have it, I mean, that’s fine too. You still have your main meal, right? And she’s like, no, it is the main meal. And so okay, so let’s go back. You talked about how our society has come to see music as entertainment and a commodity. And those are two aspects of music. But you talk in the book about the seven faces of Music. What are the seven faces of music?
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:06:19] Well, you know, I want to just start by, you know, again, entertainment is is a really an important aspect of music. Yeah, because entertainment brings us one of the greatest qualities of human experience, which is joy. So I’m not against music as a form of entertainment, and I’m not against being entertained. So I don’t want to like, you know, become the mad scientist here, um, who’s just mad, you know? And the science part’s okay. So that’s one piece. The seven faces of music I kind of came to. I did an early Ted talk in 2012 or something, and at the time, I was developing a program for the country of Brazil to put into elementary schools to help. Um, and again, I wanted to shift this relationship with music so that people would look at it differently as opposed to an academic curriculum or, you know, or all these other values. And so I said, well, you know, how would I do this? I’ve been in Hollywood a long time. How do we do this in Hollywood? Well, we come up with great characters. You know, we come up with very simple understanding of those characters. And what they do in our life, and then we build a relationship with those characters. And through the relationship with those characters, we build a relationship with ourselves and the aspect that they represent, the virtues that they represent.
Mindy Peterson: [00:07:37] So back to personification in seventh grade English.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:07:42] Right? So anyways, yeah, there you go. So and it carries all the way to Pixar. So, so um, you know, so I had done this Ted talk and I thought, okay, how do I make this simpler to an audience? And so I said, okay, what are the, you know, what are like seven areas of where music shows up in our life at a time when we need it, with or without us asking. Right. So music can show up as an entertainer, right? Music can show up as a teacher. We can learn things through music. You’re a teacher, you can teach math through music. You can teach all kinds of things through music. You can teach memory through music. You know, music shows up as a messenger, you know, brings messages to the world. So we look at the great, you know, the Bob Marley’s and the Fela Kuti or the John Lennon’s, you know, they were musical messengers. So music from them was as a messenger. Music shows up as a healer. So we can use music has lots of healing properties. So whether you’re have a broken heart or whether you have, you know, broken bones or you’re going through surgery or chemo or whatever the case may be, music can help you through all of these processes, you know? Yeah, a lot of time, especially for children. And this was framed a lot for younger people who develop an early introduction to the relationship with music is music can show up as a friend. So if you’re alone, music can make you feel not so alone. You can have artists that feel like they’re speaking to you. You can have a relationship with an instrument and create music and and have this connection with the spirit of music and receive that energy of music that, again, feels like a loving, intelligent, caring, ungrudging energy that’s very hard to find in the world. Um, where did I skip?
Mindy Peterson: [00:09:17] Oh, let’s see. So we have the entertainer. Your Friend, Healer. Messenger. I believe one was Dancer.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:09:28] Yes. The dancer. So, yes.
Mindy Peterson: [00:09:30] Is that what you mean when you’re talking about music as a commodity?
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:09:35] No, no, no. Absolutely not. So music is is, you know, dance is music in motion.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:09:40] So dance is music embodied. So when we embody music, it makes us move. It’s what happens to the brain. It’s what happens to the motor cortex. It’s what triggers. It’s connected to the emotional part of our brain. And it raises shifts our emotion, shifts our neurochemicals and triggers our motor skills. So if you have a piece of music that really moves you, quote unquote, you know, it’s hard not to tap your foot. Or if you’re a dancer, want to get up and dance. And so dance is just music in motion. We sometimes separate it, you know? Okay. And movement is very critical to our healing process.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:10:11] There’s a little story I tell in the book. I’ll just tell really quick because, okay. Because we were talking about just a moment again about this. Cultures or societies are going through strife or war or whatever the be the case. And Emmanuel Jau, who’s um, was originally from Darfur and a child soldier and then became a peace activist later and musical artist, and I was talking to him about growing up and how they got through with, like, having no food for weeks at a time and how they got through with all these different challenges that we don’t have in society. And he said to me, you know, when we didn’t have food, we filled our bellies with song and dance.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:10:45] And when we finally got food, we celebrated with song and dance. So everything in life and the survival and thriving in life was all about song and dance.
Mindy Peterson: [00:10:55] Wow. Well, let’s see, the seventh face, I believe, is Muse. And you have so much fascinating information in the book about how music is so integral to creativity and how that creativity is so integral to all fields, whether you’re an engineer, whether you’re a medical professional and a doctor, whether you are coming up with things to entertain your kids and activities to do.
Mindy Peterson: [00:11:25] Whether you’re fixing a car, you know, I mean that that’s really brilliant how you talk about that. And just like the the Music Intelligence Lab at Georgia Tech and some of their studies that they’ve come up with, really fascinating. And just one other thing I want to say about the face of messenger, the there’s a quote in your book, some stand, some of these, these musical messengers, some of them stand among the world’s great thought leaders and change makers and often have the potential to reach the ears, shift the minds, and open the hearts of more people than prominent political or religious figures. So all of those different faces are giving so much more of a robust image and well-rounded image of what music offers us beyond just a performance or a commodity. Talk just a little bit more about the role of capitalism in how this model becomes not sustainable financially, and how that impacts. The value that educators see on putting music in schools, because well what kind of financial capability do you have if you go into music? Just talk to us a little bit more about how that limited understanding of music and capitalism sort of dance together and impact this.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:12:45] Sure. And, you know, again, I’m not an anti-capitalist, I’m an entrepreneur. Solutions within capitalism that can embrace all of these properties, you know, and make them accessible to us in beautiful ways.
Mindy Peterson: [00:12:59] But at the same time, so many of us are saying, why is music still being seen as an extracurricular, and why is this not being valued in schools? Why is it just seen as like this philanthropic charity, you know, let’s give some money to the musicians, you know? Right. So having a greater understanding of the historical background of where we are right now, I think is really helpful.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:13:23] Sure. So I had to do this for myself because I was pretty frustrated. This was around 2012, and I was running a global nonprofit and trying to help shift, you know, understand what was happening, especially in the US, of music being pulled out of schools. It had been pretty much eliminated from healthcare as a viable modality. And I was, you know, I was a social entrepreneur. I was working with different governments, organizations and with some pretty smart people, and I and I just couldn’t buy the fact that there was some conspiracy theory, you know?
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:13:53] So I was out doing a little more homework, so I had to give them a talk. It was 2012 at NASA as part of the Singularity University to faculty and alumni. And, um, and it was on, you know, the subject of music and music and society and in the development of the human being. And so I um, so I had to get over this. I couldn’t just show up frustrated and, you know, complain a lot about, what are you guys, idiots? You know, come on, you know.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:14:21] Because, you know, there’s was really smart people in the groups, you know, um, you know, there’s a lot of smart people in government. There’s a lot of different definitely brilliant people in education and health care, deeply in their jobs because they deeply care. Right. And, you know, there’s people like, you know, Jeff Skoll, who’s running a lot of social impact work and, uh, Gates and, you know, and many other people who are doing very important work in the world for social impact, but none of them were including music or really supporting music or and I could so I had said, there has to be some sort of gap here. And their understanding is, you know, I can’t blame them because they’re too smart. And so I basically did it for my own sake, did a 500 year retrospective on the development of the understanding of the music. Um, I made it, like, one slide at the time for the talk, but, you know, but and, you know, if we go back far enough and I won’t give you all the points, but basically, if we go back to more of a community, tribal, small community structure, which we used to grow up and live. Um, everybody participated, used collectively and individually music and sound. So for every aspect from medicine to education to ceremony, spiritual practice to community gatherings, to some for child development, all of these different areas passing of life, transition of life, it was just all natural, very natural part, you know, that you would use like the elements, you know, air, water, you know, whatever you need. So it was a very natural thing. And then we started, we developed, you know, certain things.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:15:54] Like then there was the kings who would have the courts and they would have court musicians, and then they would have audiences. So suddenly there was people who became the performers, like the key performers and then the audiences. So there was a separation of those who could and those who couldn’t, and those whose role was to observe, those who could write. And there’s nothing wrong with having master musicians or any of that, but it starts, you know, so I’m not. But, you know, when people start to judge themselves around that, or they get judged or valued around that, or they value music itself around that, then it’s a very different, different piece. So and then we had the printing press come along and we could make printed music suddenly, and then we could print the music that should be printed and sell that in multiples. And then that music became the important music. And those people controlled who got to listen to and do what music, who controlled the printing presses. So and then later, you know, flash forward, we got recordings, and then recordings became some things where some people could capitalize upon music, and they would typically record a select level of people that they were thought were at a level or quality, and they might be have a higher level of mastery or something they thought they could sell a lot of. And then there would be the listeners and those who would pay for that experience. And more and more, we started to separate the performer and the and the listener as the two modalities. So music slowly. And then we develop different forms of healing and different forms of medicine and different forms of education and different sciences became the new dogmas.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:17:30] And then, you know, it became so all kind of shifted into and then science tried to control through certain ways education to others, government through others, religions, certain religions through others. Um, and so it all became kind of this who has the control? And everybody knew that music was a very powerful population control as well. So at this point, you’re you’re continuing to separate and then, you know, flash forward to recorded music, radio, pop stars, celebrities, television movies, you know, so and then and then people wanting to be those. Right. Mhm. And then the number one business in the music business actually became music education. And to sell music education you have to sell that. You’re going to get something that allows you to make a career and commoditize your skill set and what you create right. And then and then you have to be good enough to be in the top 3%, because the other 97% don’t make the cut for that. And then so people would study for years and years and try to be a classical first chair violinist and not make the cut. And so they’d go from five years old to, you know, 20 years old, and then they’d completely separate themselves from music because it was the only reason that they were doing it was to make this cut or, you know, to be a star or to be a first chair. And and they lost all their sense of connection to the greater purpose of what music could be and why it was in their life.
Mindy Peterson: [00:18:55] So we’ve really developed a very narrow slice of music and what it offers to us. And, and we’re not trying to get rid of or devalue that in any way. We want the both and. We want to continue to have that, but also say, hey, wait, look, what about all of these other the the health ramifications of music? So the educational value that music has to a developing child’s brain and, and all of these other things, the seven pieces that we touched on. And so it’s, it’s let’s, let’s bring back that, let’s bring back a more robust understanding of that.
Mindy Peterson: [00:19:37] Just for time’s sake, let’s sort of jump to some solutions because as you mentioned, we’re not doom and gloom. And you do bring up some really great solutions in the book. You say in the book, if we hope to create a future in which we can fully benefit from the use of music for education and the cultivation of a more creative, intelligent and compassionate nation, we must first shift our values around music itself. So tell us about some of the ways you see that the shift can happen.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:20:09] So there’s a number of ways and I’ll add just I don’t want to pull us over the cliff, but there is another. So there is another cycle at the end of this when music became digitized, the commodity value went to basically zero, right. The digital commodity and it goes exponential and it goes to the commodity. And then the and when the value in the marketplace shifts, the people that make decisions about where money goes into education and health care, they look at, you know, they have to have functioning members of society and they decide that that’s not a functioning member of society ingredient, and that they can’t make their money back to pay for the money they put into it. So, you know, it kind of. And the more we head down that road directly and as we get ten, 100 million songs last year, now it’s 200 million. Next year with AI, it’ll be 500 million, you know, you know, and we actually the more we push, push, push on that model and nothing else, then the more we devalue and the less likely we will be to have music back in health care and education and places that we need it. Because the more it gets devalued in society, in the, you know, in a commodity and even a performance space. Right? Anyways, I didn’t want to go further over the cliff, but I did.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:21:19] So, solutions. So solutions to me is, um, really shifting the perspective investing into since science is, you know, the validator investing a lot more money in the health side into really biology, biological metrics of how music and sound affect us at a cellular level. And we need a lot of that research. We’ve been, you know, you know, I love cognitive science, but it’s been kind of the dogma of science that, you know, go to the go to place. And now we’re moving into the biology. So that’s actually going to give us some really robust future because we’ll be able to actually it won’t just be thumbs up, thumbs down. I like this piece of music. It’ll be looking in real time. And, you know, in a closed loop system at your the way your body and full out holistic system are responding and over time to certain selections and certain input that goes into your ears. And we can get into the house of that if you want. But that’s gets a little more complicated. But we’re actually going to start seeing those in real. So that will shift the model over time. So the more we invest in that research, the more we invest into those models. And then the the other piece is and same with, you know, education. The thing to think about in education and music is in health, because I’m dealing with the Surgeon General’s office and the governor’s office now in California. They make the decisions ten years out. So the programming that we decide on this year that gets funded in a big funding cycle or something will lock down, you know, so the Stem movement is what, already like 20 years old, right? So getting Stem to shift is a lot of collective consciousness coming together demanding it, parents demanding it. Teachers…
Mindy Peterson: [00:23:01] Slow moving ship.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:23:03] Yeah. But you know and but you know enforce you know, if we all really kind of stand for a different model, then I think that enough voices speak and, you know, we can be heard, you know, so that’s a big part of it. I think shifting it in healthcare will shift it in education, because there is no education without well-being, you know. And that’s starting to surface, you know, with all the issues and health issues and mental health issues coming so much to the surface. So I think that health is kind of a leading trump card to play. It’s also an $11 trillion marketplace. So it’s someplace people pay attention to. Yeah. And then, you know, as parents and, you know, individuals to kind of understand this, to like step back and go, okay. Um. Yeah. How am I cutting myself off from this amazing resource? You know, this thing that, like, when I was a child, like it was nothing, moved me more, brought me more joy, brought me more happiness, helped me get through grief, help me. All these things were very natural until I was told otherwise. Or there was some other model I had to fit right and just really, really owning that and returning to it. And you know, so what, you didn’t make first chair for the Cleveland Orchestra. You know, that doesn’t mean that, you know, those 15 years of practicing violin were at waste, you know, find the joy back in it, or pick another instrument or or just do whatever, you know, don’t feel don’t judge yourself because music doesn’t judge you. So if we can remove the judgment and the guilt, that’s a big, big layer.
Mindy Peterson: [00:24:26] Yeah. I was just a judge for a music competition recently. It was for a scholarship. And part of the application was these high school students had to write an essay about what music meant to them. And this one student wrote about, I don’t remember how many times she was rejected for her application to a particular program. And I think it was like a pre-college, uh, high school program at Juilliard. And she just kept going back and back and back and applying and applying. And she said, I finally realized that this rejection wasn’t a failure, and that it didn’t mean that all of this time I spent preparing and practicing was a waste, because I realized there’s so much more that I’m getting out of this than just getting an acceptance to this program. And she eventually got accepted. But I was like, wow, how impressive to for somebody that age a teenager to be able to recognize that and recognize the value that it’s not just getting an acceptance letter and getting into this program, but there’s so much else that she’s getting out of these hours that she’s spending on. It was pretty impressive.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:25:41] Yeah, absolutely. And there’s, you know, there’s there’s low hanging fruit we can create, you know, in the in the book, I put a couple of exercises that people can reintroduce themselves to music or, you know, I promise anybody that if they’ve never meditated and or they’ve never played the piano, I can teach them to do both at the same time in 15 minutes. With with their eyes closed.
Mindy Peterson: [00:26:00] Well, and that reminds me, like, I just have to say this, uh, quote from Kelsey Grammer, that was from your section on music and spirituality. I don’t think I’ve ever heard this quote of his where he said, prayer is when you talk to God, meditation is when you’re listening. Playing the piano allows you to do both at the same time. And I was like, oh my goodness. Wow. How have I never heard that quote before? I love it.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:26:27] So a lot of times I’ll, you know, if not, you know, if I walk in and I’ll see, uh, you know, especially a young person or somebody struggling with playing the piano, I said, stop trying to play the piano. Let the piano play you. You know how to. Your fingers know what to do.
Mindy Peterson: [00:26:40] And that’s especially valuable when they do know the song and they’re just getting ready for, say, a performance and completely overanalyzing things.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:26:49] It’s like we don’t have to think about how we breathe the air. You know? Spirit breathes us, you know? So it’s like, you know.
Mindy Peterson: [00:26:57] Mhm. Yeah. Well you do such a good job of pointing out in the book and in our conversation too today that all sides agree that we want our schools to produce the best scientists and the most innovative technology and the most creative business leaders, the most conscious citizens of the future. So we agree about that. And you mentioned in the book the value that the experts bring when they give us the research that’s on math and science and psychology to make this argument of music’s value and developing the whole person and the super learning aspects and characteristics that music can have. So that is definitely something that we are seeing an explosion. I feel in this field of research, partly because of the technology that’s allowing us to see what’s happening in the brain, uh, these non invasive ways of technology, functional MRIs and things like that that are really are allowing a lot of this hard science and research to demonstrate the value that music brings to to the table. Absolutely. Um, and certainly those researchers bring so much value and substantiation to what we’re doing, those of us who are sort of in the choir, those of us who are musicians and music educators.
Mindy Peterson: [00:28:16] But those of us in the choir still have a really important role to play as advocates and educators. And those are two sides of the same coin. I think discerning what is going to be meaningful to different stakeholders and really speaking to those kind of finding the common ground that we have and starting there. There’s a concept called the curse of knowledge that Chip and Dan Heath have popularized in some of their books, and the idea of that term is that if I know something, I just assume other people know it, too. So those of us who are musicians and music educators just have this kind of wonderment, like like you mentioned earlier, what aren’t they getting? Like, how can they be so stupid? And you’re like, they’re not stupid. They’re they’re brilliant. Like, why do why brilliant.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:29:02] They just they, you know, after by the time you’ve gone through 500 years, you got like 707 generations plus. So you’ve basically rewired your operating system. So even if you want to connect the dots between the two pillars health, music, science, music, unless you’re experience it yourself, you you won’t. It’s just they’ll always be separate pillars. It’s just the way the brain is wired at this stage. Right. So it’s not necessarily their fault. You know, they mean well it’s just. And then if you also looked at some of those, most of those brilliant scientists who are doing the research and, you know, these and these leading coders and these Nobel Prize winners, you would see that most of them had music in their life as musical training. So it’s it’s, uh, so it is a whole person. And then the last piece I would just say is just emotional intelligence. I mean, if we haven’t learned how emotional intelligence trumps IQ for life satisfaction and in the last 20 years, you know, then we haven’t really learned very much. So, you know, in terms of accessing emotional intelligence, creativity, music, arts are such stronger gifts for connecting and building that up and self esteem than the fundamentals, Stem principles. You know, those help the brain a lot and get you jobs, but you might not be as happy in your life.
Mindy Peterson: [00:30:21] Your life and relationships.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:30:23] Right, in relationships.
Mindy Peterson: [00:30:25] Which are about 90% of happiness.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:30:27] Yeah, life is all about relationships. So. So yeah. So, you know, I think that all the music teachers, God bless them, you know, and um, and all the music therapists, God bless him for the work they’re doing. And, and a lot of us, you know, were raised in that mental framework. So we have to put ourselves in check as we’re offering to the next generation. Are we offering them a new framework, or are we just trying to buckle down on the framework that we were brought into?
Mindy Peterson: [00:30:50] Yeah, sure. Well, and we’ve completely glossed over so many of the benefits of music that you address in this book. I mean, you cover so much ground and it’s all so fascinating. And as you just alluded, you talk quite a bit about how many brilliant people down through history going back to Plato, have credited a lot of their success and fulfillment in life to their musical training, at least in part. And that includes Google co-founder Larry Page, Alan Greenspan, Steven Spielberg, Albert Einstein, a lot of the engineers and designers in Silicon Valley. So you do such a great job of pointing that out and and really going into much more detail on the incredible benefits that music brings to the developing child’s brain and it brings to education. Social emotional learning and on and on and on. You also have some great practical tips for people who do want to be part of the solution. You have ten ways to support music and education, and ways to just incorporate music into your own life, to be an example. And so I highly encourage people to get the book and read it. I just want to I just want to end with a couple of my favorite quotes from the book.
Mindy Peterson: [00:32:07] There are many, but one is: “By using music for your own learning, growth and evolution, you can become an exemplar. Don’t underestimate the value and ripple effect you can create in the world by doing so.” And then one other quote is: “Together we can make a difference. With your help, we can use music to redefine education and learning for our children. In the process, you will help rewrite their future and create a healthier, more compassionate and intelligent society for all of us to live in.” So great, great quotes to end on. As you know, 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 will have you close with a coda, but actually, real quick, I’m just going to give you one last opportunity to say anything else that you want listeners to really know about this book or this topic before you close us out with that song or story?
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:33:08] Well, most importantly, I want to thank you because, you know, it’s it’s it’s people like yourself who are giving voice to people who care about this. And there’s a lot of people who care who don’t get voice for this. And the more we do that, and I think that’s phenomenal. So I want to, you know, commend you for creating a platform to do just that. And and then, you know, I didn’t write the book for me. I wrote it as a way, you know, I’ve been doing this work for 40 years, and it’s something I, I wouldn’t be having this conversation. I’d be a dead kid on the streets of Detroit at 12 if music didn’t become my drug of choice. And that’s a true fact. And I decided then many, many years ago that this is what how I was going to dedicate my life to help people have a tool to find calm in the midst of chaos and to thrive in the face of challenge. And I have found, you know, there’s many modalities we can stack and integrate. But I find if you add music like a secret sauce to any of them, that they you can uplevel them, make them more engaging, create compliance if you want to, whatever you want to say and just, you know, have a much richer, fuller life and nobody’s excluded. And it’s fundamentally free. I hope people will share the information in the book. I hope it’s useful. I just had to have a way so I didn’t have to fly to every stage in every country to to tell a story.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:34:21] So I had to put it down so more people could have access. So that’s really somebody can’t afford it. They can send me a note, I’ll send them a free copy. You know, I mean, I’m not you know, it’s really, um, it’s, you know, it’s why I’m on the planet. So I appreciate that.
Mindy Peterson: [00:34:35] So beautifully put and Amplified is such a great title for the book. And I love how in the title you have in a different color the letters that spell l, i, f, e in the word Amplified. Right. You’re very concise. Well. Thank you. Well, what song or story do you have to close out our conversation with today?
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:34:59] Well, I guess I’ll also put a little plug because some people are listening to this on audio and they won’t have time to look at the subtext. So if you go to amplifiedbook.com, you’ll be able to get access to the book at all your stores or the audiobook, which has a phenomenal narrator.
Mindy Peterson: [00:35:15] Yeah, we’ll have all those links in the show notes for sure, but good point to verbally say that so that people have that in their ears.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:35:22] The song I chose, you asked me, you know, what kind of songs inspire me? So I grew up in the Motown era in Detroit, and it was the heyday of 70s rock and Motown music. So with Aretha, you know, Marvin Gaye, Ray Charles and, uh, Stevie Wonder and all, you know, and all the great rock bands of the era. And I’ve been exposed to many, many different kinds of music. So I could point to so many. And I’ve written in many scores and produced many records, and that’s been a big part of my career, you know, so, you know, and people used to ask me like, what’s the common thread? You do so many things with music. And I said, uh, I had to think about it, but I said, I grew up in Detroit and everything has to be very authentic and have a little bit of soul in it. So to me, soul music is really what I was raised and still am steeped in. And soul music is, you know what saved my life at 12 years old? You know, that’s what I was listening to Marvin Gaye when I decided to not to go the other way. And soul music is this bridge kind of between the spiritual music and kind of contemporary commercial music of R&B meets, you know, gospel. That’s how it came to be. So it was always so I’ve always tried to do music, like soul music that had deep intention in it, to uplift and transform the human spirit.
Frank Fitzpatrick: [00:36:34] Whether I did it through a film or whatever artists I was working with or whatever was the case. And so the song I chose. For you is when I wrote and produced and it got nominated for a Grammy, it was performed by Anthony Hamilton. It was a great contemporary soul artist, but it was written the assignment was it was the main title for this film with Sam Jackson and Isaac Hayes and Bernie Mac. And it was um, and the assignment was write a number one hit for Sam and Dave that came out in 1967 or 68. I don’t remember exactly. So I said, well, that’s in my bones. So I wrote this song. You know, I didn’t really have the it kind of came through me. I don’t write the music. It comes through me, you know, and it’s called soul music, and it’s very much, uh, you know, like, hopefully it’ll sound like something you think you heard from your parents from the 60s or early 70s. So it’s just, you know, that’s still my. And everything that I create. I try to make sure I infuse the intention and a real deep connection to my soul and my purpose, and make that available to other people through the beauty and the joy of music. So it’s kind of a fun little number.
Transcribed by Sonix.ai