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 can make our lives better and spotlight the resources you can use to enhance your life with music. My guest today is joining me from Santa Monica, California. David Sonenshein is a neuroscientist, musician, filmmaker, sound designer, and educator. There are a million different topics I would love to interview David about, but today we’re talking about his work with IQsonics, researching and developing music and audio for brain health. Specifically, we’re talking about IQsonics’ flagship program, Sing and Speak 4 Kids. It’s a music based game to help young children with speech delays. Welcome to Enhance Life with Music, david.
David Sonnenschein: [00:00:49] Hey, thanks so much. Great to be here.
Mindy Peterson: [00:00:51] Great to have you here. Speech delays I know are very common with young children. One of my kids needed speech therapy during preschool years, and I know it’s so important for kindergarten readiness. That kiddos have a certain level of fluency. But I know that’s not the only demographic that sing and speak for kids is for. It’s also designed for kiddos with down syndrome. Those who are on the autism spectrum. Dual language learners. Tell us more about who this music language program is for.
David Sonnenschein: [00:01:23] Well, absolutely. It’s the age range of developmentally normal. Kids would be 2 to 8 years old. We’ve had 12 year olds. 30 year olds use it who may be also with intellectual disabilities. So it’s associated really with what stage are they at both socially, intellectually and also specifically with their speech language development? So we’re working with kids that have any shade of delay and honestly, ones who are neurotypical, who develop normally. Love playing the game so really can help any kid. We had one kid who was and probably will never speak and uses sign language, so we even work with with that, uh, end of the spectrum of speech language development.
Mindy Peterson: [00:02:14] Well, and I hadn’t realized that you use this with older kids and even adults who are sort of young at heart. You know, they’re in that developmental, you know, age of 2 to 7 developmentally. But I think you’ve also had kiddos use this who are as young as 18 months. Is that right?
David Sonnenschein: [00:02:33] Well, yes. That’s, uh, usually earlier than we get to know that they have a speech delay. If they’re not speaking by 18 months. Most often the parents, you know, are wondering what’s going on, but. But they may not have gone in for any diagnosis. They may not be seeking a solution or treatment or anything like that by the time they get to two years, uh, if they’re not speaking, it’s usually a red flag, but a pediatrician specializing in this area has said yes, it is appropriate for those at 18 months. And we’re not talking. I just want to be clear. We’re not talking the normal screen time of watching TV or cartoons or or music videos. Uh, we are talking about a shared experience with a facilitator who may be a teacher, clinician or parent or even sibling so that it’s really a social activity that’s going on, not something that is a babysitter.
Mindy Peterson: [00:03:31] Yeah. So tell us more about the interface. I know it’s it’s something that’s accessed online computer or mobile device. It’s kind of like a gamified type of format. But tell us more about the user experience and the interface, what it’s like.
David Sonnenschein: [00:03:44] Yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, we have two users. We have the facilitator who is either the teacher or the parent usually who will be registering, logging in, doing all the technical stuff of getting it online. Uh, when.
Mindy Peterson: [00:03:59] You say teacher, this could be like a speech language pathologist to write.
David Sonnenschein: [00:04:03] Any, any type of, of, uh, professional. We call them just professionals. That could be ABA speech language pathologists, music therapists. We’ve had all kinds of people. Anybody who’s really with a child who has speech delay and can use this program, it’s simple enough for parents to use. So we have currently a basic and a premium model, which I can go into in more detail. The professionals usually using the premium for the pre and post assessments and tracking progress, etc. um, parents may just want to play the game. So we have two available. So that’s really what it is. It is an online game. Uh, we’re just launching now as a mobile app on both Google Play and Apple Store, and it’s online and any other device, a tablet or Laptop and you could just log in and play. Just like any game, you get a menu and get to select a song to play, and it goes through a five levels of gameplay with each song starting with singing with the person that’s on screen and the professional singer accompanied by a musical instrument like a guitar or piano. And along with that are the target words that appear with images on the screen as they’re being sung. So there’s an association. We have six lyric lines with six target words at the end of each line, and so the image comes up at the end, and then the next level of the game is the same, except we remove the musical instrument.
David Sonnenschein: [00:05:41] So it’s singing a cappella, and the child is prompted to sing along, not just with what’s on screen, but sing along with the parent or the teacher or A clinician. So it’s a group activity. And firing the neurons for everybody visually and tactilely and sonically is a big part of this. And once they are getting along with this and starting to do it, because music is really a key to opening up their their minds, then they go into the next layers of the game where the singer drops off the last word and the child fills it in. So we’re using the memory as they’re going through, and it’s just like when we learned a, b, c, d, e f, you know what that’s going to be. So we all learned it. Yeah. A lot of us are just music is natural for learning anything. We use Gestalt perceptual principles like the law of completion that actually fills in in the child’s and anybody’s brain. What’s missing if they’ve been trained enough to hear it and see it, then they start to fill it in. So it’s a memory kind of thing. Then we go from singing to natural speaking with the same lines. Same images are being rotated to different images of that particular word. So. So it’s not fixated on one particular image but generalizing.
Mindy Peterson: [00:07:12] Okay.
David Sonnenschein: [00:07:13] And and then the final stage is where the picture of that word is displayed. And they’re asked what is this or what are they doing. Whatever’s on screen for them to be prompted to say the word, then conversationally, just in a question response.
Mindy Peterson: [00:07:33] Okay. So it’s kind of transferring those skills that they’ve developed into a conversational context.
David Sonnenschein: [00:07:40] Exactly.
Mindy Peterson: [00:07:41] Because the goal is really to not need this game anymore, but to be able to speak without it.
David Sonnenschein: [00:07:47] Yeah. So music is a scaffolding that is gradually faded through these five stages, and the game itself is scaffolding. That one left behind. They are now able to speak in natural environments with their friends and family.
Mindy Peterson: [00:08:01] Okay, talk to us more about the different contexts that sing and speak for kids can be used. I know we’ve talked about using it at home with parents at school. We talked about speech language pathologists. So clinic. Yeah. So talk to us about some of those different contexts.
David Sonnenschein: [00:08:17] Sure. The professional would work normally in a clinic one on one in school the teacher might be one on one or with a group. So we can do both with the group. We just can’t track progress of any individual child because we’re not identifying who’s speaking and when they’re going to the next level. But the group factor is sometimes a very positive thing where they can chime in and kind of encourage each other, in fact. And it’s a fun group activity in that way. And then we can do it also at home. And in home we can do it with the parent, grandparent and even siblings. And siblings are really important in some families, because the older siblings are more the caregivers even than the parents who may be off working all day. Yeah, and we are also able to do it virtually. So we have actually used where the screen can be controlled either by the clinician who may be at a distance, like on a zoom call and share screen, and then the child is responding just as they would if it was their own screen, or the parent can do it on their screen and share that screen with the clinician who can accompany. So either the parent or the teacher would be doing the controls. And so we’ve done all these tests and we make it available in any condition possible and recently have taken it offline as well. So you don’t have to have an internet connection while you’re playing.
Mindy Peterson: [00:09:48] Oh, okay. So that would make it more readily available to use in a car ride when you’re going shuttling your kids back and forth to either their activities or like their siblings lessons and activities, and they’re just sort of stuck in the car, or you’re on a road trip going to grandma’s for the summer or, you know, whatever.
David Sonnenschein: [00:10:09] Exactly. And we’ve been asked a lot of it has been with user feedback as we’ve been developing this. We ask everybody, what do you need? Is there difficulty you’re having with some part of it? And we make it as frictionless as possible so that you just turn it on and it works.
Mindy Peterson: [00:10:27] Okay. So those are lots of different environments that can be used in. And when you’re talking about using it with a SLP speech language pathologist or teacher professional, it can be used during the session with the kiddo. Or it can be used at home like in between therapy sessions to sort of increase the results that you’re getting.
David Sonnenschein: [00:10:51] It’s exactly the idea that it’s repetition is key to learning and anything. And so the more they get that and also in varied environments, it’s helpful because there’s more generalization. And yeah going with it next is we’re actually personalizing it to the individual child more with a feature called make your own song. So then it could be part of their own environment. Let’s say they have a teddy bear or a, you know, some object or some activity in the house that’s particular to them that can be become part of the song lyrics.
Mindy Peterson: [00:11:29] Love it. Yeah. That’s great. Well, there’s so many thoughts that I have as you’re talking about this one. I’m just thinking about my own experience with my son when he was in speech therapy and that situation. Uh, again, lots of thoughts there. One is that I just basically took him to his therapy sessions. He actually got bussed there. There was a bus. It was through the school district. So the bus would come pick him up, take him there, bring him home. So it was very convenient and he loved it, but I really had no clue what they were doing with him. Whereas if he had something like this to do in between sessions, it would really kind of loop me in a little bit more to see what he’s doing and just have a more of an awareness of what he’s working on. The other thought that I had is he had an older sister, and like a lot of big sisters, she was very nurturing and she would have loved to do this with him. She loved to play school. I could see her just being really helpful in his therapy. By doing this with him and really getting into it and feeling like she was really contributing, because she really would have been contributing by doing this with him.
David Sonnenschein: [00:12:44] Yeah. You’ve hit on super important points. The success of this is not just engaging the child or just getting the results of the child using the program. It’s the success of all the people that are in support of this child. And you gave two really, really good examples. And so over the years, we’ve just been listening carefully like, what do people want? I’m talking about the parents, the siblings, the teachers, the clinicians. Where are they going to engage? And we’re gamifying it actually more for them now. It’s been gamified for the child to have fun with lots of fun sounds and little animation rewards and and all that is built for them. And we’re building up the whole infrastructure around. So it’s gamified, it’s rewarding. It’s engaging. Like other programs like Duolingo, for example, or Fitbit are very popular engagements for adults With gamification.
Mindy Peterson: [00:13:44] Yeah. The other thought that I’m having, too, is this could be really helpful for early intervention. Like be before your child even necessarily qualifies for help. So back again to the example of my son. When he started talking, I was just like, man, I do not understand a thing this poor kid is saying. Fortunately, I did have the older daughter and she was literally our translator. Like for some reason she could understand him and she would relay to us. He said blah, blah, blah, and he’d just be beaming like, somebody knows what I’m talking about. And so when I, when I first had him evaluated for speech therapy, they were like, yeah, you know, I kind of see what you’re talking about. But he doesn’t really quite qualify yet. And if you still can’t understand him and say six months or whatever the magic timetable was at that time, you know, call us back, we’ll evaluate him again. So the time came and I called him back. I’m like, I still can’t understand anything. So they came back and at that point he did qualify. But I’m thinking that’s like six months or nine months or whatever it was that if we could have gotten him started on something like this, you know, maybe we would have been able to shorten the time frame where it would have been less frustrating for him and for me as a parent, because we’d be able to understand him sooner.
David Sonnenschein: [00:15:04] Oh, I’m going to use that quote you just said, because we have a grant proposal based on exactly that demand, where there’s a waitlist to get diagnosed or assessed, and it can go from three months to a year. Uh, we’re working with Children’s Hospital of Orange County to actually fill that gap of that in-between time with our program. Sing and speak for kids. And there’s a Thompson Autism Center that really recognizes systemically what you just described. And so we’re we’re writing to get funding to do a large clinical trial to show the effectiveness. We’ve already done a small clinical trial must point out that we are already an evidence based practice. It’s just large hospitals, like large clinical trials, and that costs a lot of money to run a trial. But nonetheless, it’s already working that way and we’ve already tested it. They just wanted more numbers.
Mindy Peterson: [00:16:02] And so much more affordable, too, for these systems to have families working with your app or your program here, rather than having one on one sessions with an SLP, which is great, but if they don’t quite qualify or there’s a waitlist to get into an SLP or there’s affordability issues, or there’s just not an SLP in their area, you know, some rural areas just are underserved and don’t have access to that.
David Sonnenschein: [00:16:29] It’s exactly our marketing copy. We have actually covered every one of those areas and say we have this issue, this problem, and we’re solving it with this program. And all of what you just said is exactly what we’ve been aiming at. And we’re finding success in all of those areas. So I hope that the listeners here will go aha. And recognize, oh, this, this might serve this particular case or this client or this school district, because we really are ready to share this. And we’re just launching as we speak. We’re launching the newest version with the basic and the premium models. So the basic is just the gameplay. Most parents are just going to play the game as it is, and it’s a lot of fun. And the kids learn. Most professionals are going to want to do pre and post assessment, which is built in along with progress tracking of basically everything in terms of how many words they’re they’re learning, what songs they’re playing. Do they finish the song? All of that. And how long are they in the game and sharing the account Information with the parent and the professional. So all that’s in the premium model.
Mindy Peterson: [00:17:42] Okay.
David Sonnenschein: [00:17:43] And and so they’re both available. We’ll have the enterprise model as it were the same program but for licensing for larger institutions like let’s say for a semester or, or a large group of kids will be able to reduce the price per head on that for them.
Mindy Peterson: [00:18:01] Okay. Well, and for parents who are listening to this and thinking, uh, I kind of liked your idea of putting your kid on a bus, and he just goes off to speech therapy and comes home later, like, I don’t know if I have time to do this myself. I think for the parent to do this with a child, they only need ten minutes a day.
David Sonnenschein: [00:18:20] That’s what we’ve already tested clinically. To see that just that much makes a really, really big difference. Besides, it’s a game. If you’re going to want to play anything with your kid, read a story or sing a piece of of your favorite songs. Uh, you know, doing something that’s maybe around the house, like tidying up and having the kid lift things or doing gardening. It’s another activity for them to get focused on and enjoy. And most kids really like music. And in particular, kids with autism generally have an affection and an attraction to music, as do normal kids where they lack in speech language production. They overcome it when they’re singing. And this is a phenomenon that goes down into the neurological aspects of what’s happening, which is the music lights up the brain in so many different centers for rhythm, for melody, for harmony. And the idea of what we call mirror neurons is how we all learn how to speak. The first word usually is mama, mama, mama. And then we start pointing at things and those words become first enunciated by the parent or the loved one. And then the child begins to repeat them. And so we learn language by what is known as echolalia, which is the phenomenon of being in a conversation with somebody. But that other person just repeats back. Well, a lot of kids with autism have echolalia. They know how to repeat back, but it’s not a regular conversation. We’re not engaging like, how are you feeling? They don’t answer the question. They say, how are you feeling? And we actually learn how to sing. All of us learn how to sing with echolalia. We’re just repeating what what we’re hearing. And so that taps into another aspect of how their brains are wired around sound and music and language. So we go with it. We go with the flow. And so their echolalia is, is actually what we’re tapping into at the beginning of the the whole game, each song, and gradually we’re moving. As I was saying earlier to them, spontaneously answering a question semantic question, which is not echolalia anymore. This is conversation.
Mindy Peterson: [00:20:50] Well, and I love that you have that neuroscience background. So you can and I and I want to get into some more of like the, the evidence base, the clinical testing, the science behind this. Before I do that, just a couple of things I want to make sure I don’t forget to point out is, um, one, like I was saying with my son, I didn’t really know much about what was going on with his speech therapy because it was being it was happening off site. I wasn’t around for it. And so I like that aspect of sing and Speak for kids, that the parents do have some concept of what’s going on with their kids, speech therapy, what they’re learning, how they’re doing it, um, seeing milestone accomplishments, things like that. But one thing I want to point out is when you and I were talking offline, you had mentioned that in certain cultures there is a perception that parents should not get involved and they should leave the teaching to the teachers. And it’s almost rude to get involved in any way, and that this really provides a way around that. It’s a way for for parents to get involved and understand what their child is learning and how they’re learning it, without feeling like they’re intruding in any way.
David Sonnenschein: [00:21:59] Yeah, it’s so you could call it reframing, basically a cultural mindset of what’s proper or what’s rude or what’s embarrassing may not be the same for all cultures. So in this particular case, if we’re looking at specifically Latino families who have a sense that the teacher should be the one to teach, not the parents, they’re very strong in having fun with their kids, um, doing group activities. They sing together. They go to church together. They they’ll have lots of parties together. And the meals are all together. So we basically encourage it to be seen as a family activity, a fun, a game, and it’s just another game and they get to and everybody’s got a cell phone. Now that you don’t have to convince them to use a cell phone, um, everybody’s got a cell phone. Uh, and getting it offline is helping to, uh, let them use it at any time as well. So they just say, hey, let’s play the jogo. You know, we’re playing the game now, and everybody sits down and just has fun. Yeah. So it’s not a teaching moment.
Mindy Peterson: [00:23:11] Yeah. Well and I love about that too is just the multigenerational aspect. I have a mother who has a traumatic brain injury from a car accident that she was in, and I could totally picture her really getting into doing this with her grandkids and it benefiting both of them. And so I think that could be really cool. If you have a grandparent or a great grandparent, maybe with dementia. This could be something that maybe it’s not, you know, the primary therapy for the dementia grandma, but it’s still helping and it’s still something she can engage in with her grandchild.
David Sonnenschein: [00:23:46] So I love that. I would love if you can try that out and report back. I’d love to hear how that goes, because that is many people have asked me, hey, can we use it with our grandparents? You know, they’re having trouble with their speech aphasia or dementia or Alzheimer’s and different aspects of diagnosis. But basically they’re having a hard time to talk and say, can you use music? And the answer is absolutely yes. And I’ll say that one of the things that is different for the older people is that they have a memory that can be reawakened if it’s music from their youth in particular. That’s the period when they got really The attached and in sync with music. And if you play the music that was in their teens and 20s that they really liked and bonded with all their socializing and dancing and activities, it’s like waking them up in a way that’s much more than just music, per se. It’s it’s a whole reawakening the circuitry.
Mindy Peterson: [00:24:50] Have you seen that documentary Alive inside?
David Sonnenschein: [00:24:54] Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. Yeah. Oliver sacks. Yeah, the scientist there and I studied many of his writings, and I never got to meet him, but he really is one of my mentors. Yeah, he’s an amazing, amazing person and researcher.
Mindy Peterson: [00:25:11] Yeah. Well, one other thing I want to point out before we talk about some of the science behind this product, is you alluded to the fact that the specialists, the professional who’s working with this does get data tracking. There’s the shared data and progress reports that they get The learning that the child is engaged in is tracked in real time. And then it’s the the data is formatted into graphs and things that can be shared between professionals and parents. So really practical helpful information there. Um, any other comments that you want to make about that? Before we talk about some of the science behind.
David Sonnenschein: [00:25:47] And even even for the basic model, without going into details on our song menu, you can immediately see each song. How far are they gone in that song? So you can say, oh, we never did this one. It’ll be clear that that’s a new one. Or if it’s all green. Oh, we’ve already completed that one. If it’s a like a little blue bar and they got halfway through. So it’s an indication of where you might want to go next. And, and just easy data just to see right on the, the menu itself.
Mindy Peterson: [00:26:15] Sure. Well this is an evidence based clinically tested program. It’s has federal funding. There’s outcomes published in peer reviewed journals. Tell us a little bit about the science behind it and why. Music. What is it about music that facilitates success in this application to speech?
David Sonnenschein: [00:26:35] Yeah, yeah. Well, we were speaking a little bit just a couple minutes ago about specifically for autism, where some of the programmed actions and game levels and all that attend to, like for example, the echolalia, um, and the, the scaffolding of music to natural speech. So I’ll go back a little bit, uh, with how this program got developed. I had been working on a previous game for Stem learners, older learners, that was called Three Deaf Mice. And it was really a fun game about a rock and roll band.
Mindy Peterson: [00:27:12] And so not Three Blind Mice.
David Sonnenschein: [00:27:16] Exactly. They were rock and roll band. Their their ears had gotten blasted out because the music was so loud. And the assignment is that you, the player, the student has to find the sounds for them in the game like a treasure hunt and make them into the songs. So along the way, there’s all sorts of Stem curriculum that’s going on with the math and the and the engineering and the the biology and all the different levels that you can teach different things inside of a game atmosphere, and it’s a lot of fun. It’s all about music. So somebody was looking at this and they said, you know, this would be really good for kids with autism. I think that they’re going to learn a lot. It’s going to help them in many ways, the way you’re developing this. And so I started researching what had already been done in terms of clinical research around music and autism and speech and things. And I found this paper written by Doctor Hyun Lim, who’s now our director of science, and she’d done already a clinical trial with 50 kids with autism, comparing in a two week period. Songs that she had composed specifically with a protocol called Developmental Speech Language Training through music, which is known as a neurologic music therapy that’s been inside of that particular system that music therapists have been working with, studying and developing over the last 20 some odd years. So she had done this and showed really amazing results. I contacted her and said, you know, I think this would really work well in an online game. You want to work with me? And so we’ve been working together for ten years now, and the game then developed out of that protocol, and we added reward systems and on screen singers and whole thing. But basically those five steps that I described is the protocol from that music therapy.
Mindy Peterson: [00:29:18] Okay. Those are the five different levels that you go through in And each game. Right. Okay.
David Sonnenschein: [00:29:23] So so with that clinical trial done, I had the confidence that we had something that was really working. And then I, I worked on building this out of my own funds and my own sweat labor. And everybody was on deferred salaries until we got this thing up and running. And then I got a grant from the Department of Education to do a clinical trial that was, uh, showing, first of all, uh, there was significant improvement with the use of the game. We did what’s called an in-person control, where every child got tested on three songs with 18 words total for how well were their speech. And language is two different parameters. They were only trained on two out of the three randomly. And then there was a post assessment on all three songs, so they were their own controls in the study, and it showed significance that when they were trained in our system, they improved. Now they represented a broad range of types of kids autism, down syndrome, stuttering, and also English language learners who had no kind of disability but simply had not learned English in their home environment. And so we showed improvement in all of those. And we also tested for whether the environment and intervention, as it were facilitated by the teacher, would make any difference versus by the parent. So we did three groups. We did teacher facilitated, parent facilitated, and a third group where they were both facilitating.
Mindy Peterson: [00:31:10] Okay.
David Sonnenschein: [00:31:10] So that they got that kind of much more repetition in that way. Yeah. We found that all three groups showed improvement. Movement. So that gave us like the thumbs up that this is really good in all these environments, and it’s working for the specific outcome that we wanted. That was then published in a peer reviewed journal called Child Language Therapy and Teaching. And so that’s now given us like the evidence based practice. So we can go out and get contracts with people like the California Department of Developmental Services, which we’re working with specifically here in Los Angeles. And we’re expanding now throughout the state. And we work with teachers and and clinicians and parents and all all of those through that study, we have been funded for other development and studies. And we’ll be developing our new feature, Make Your Own Song, out of another grant that we just got. And that’s going to augment then the effectiveness and engagement of this program.
Mindy Peterson: [00:32:20] Yeah. Where are things currently on getting a code for insurance reimbursement purposes?
David Sonnenschein: [00:32:28] If you’re a client of the California Regional Centers, you qualify for getting it for free. Uh, we are looking into getting a CPT code for general insurance anywhere. And right now for autism, there’s a very specific pathway through ABA therapy, uh, applied behavioral analysis. It’s one area that’s very specific for treating autism. And we’re looking to get it build inside of that rather than creating a new CPT code. That’s that’s one of the things we’re working on right now.
Mindy Peterson: [00:33:08] Okay. You mentioned a premium level. Is that the level that’s available for institutions like clinics where there’s multi multi-user licensing available. Explain. Explain what the different tiers are.
David Sonnenschein: [00:33:22] Well, the basic tier is the game itself and access to all of the songs and words and the fun of playing it and choosing and also seeing how far you’ve gone. And the premium will add a section before you start playing any song. It will give the option to do a pre-assessment of the child’s level of speech language for each individual word. So we have a scoring. We’d show the picture of that word and have a four scale scoring of no response. Incorrect. It’s a correct meaning, but it’s not pronounced properly. And then correct pronunciation and usage. So we have these four scores that then can be tracked after each gameplay of the whole song. We can see. Are they doing any better now? And we can do that throughout the life of the the program. They can do it the same day or three months later so we can track the progress over time. Along with that, we can also track which songs they’re playing, which words they’re they’re getting, to what level they’re getting to in the song, how many minutes they played for the last week or month. So there’s a lot of different areas of data that we can provide. And that’s usually what the professional will want to see, just to kind of know how are they doing? Yeah. Should we change something. Should we add something or take something away? Should we point out something important to the parent that might be useful for them to do at home, for example? So there’s a lot of possibilities to use the data in different ways.
Mindy Peterson: [00:35:03] Okay. Basic level: $9.99 a month; $19.99 a month for the premium level. Is that right?
David Sonnenschein: [00:35:10] Correct. And as and if we have a large Institution, we’ll do it either by semester, by the year, or by the quantity of students or clients that they may have.
Mindy Peterson: [00:35:22] Okay. And yeah, and let’s see on your website it said you can try it for free for seven days. Where is it available? It’s available throughout the US. And tell us about where you are in making this available globally.
David Sonnenschein: [00:35:36] And technically we could make it available, but we are wanting to make sure about the legal aspects about the privacy and security internationally, uh, about any kind of monetary exchange that might be necessary to, to deal with. But we’re getting ready to launch, first of all, in places like UK, Canada, India, all the English speaking countries, it’s very ready to go. We’ve been looking at countries like Korea as well to launch it as an English as a second language teaching device. A game they also have kids with autism, but we don’t have a program with the Korean being learned yet, and that’s one of our goals in the next couple of years is to make it multilingual. So our first one will be in Spanish, where the kids are singing in Spanish. Right now they’re all singing English.
Mindy Peterson: [00:36:36] So there’s and you do have the The Parent Guide available now in Spanish, right?
David Sonnenschein: [00:36:42] Correct. And and super important because here in the US, particularly in California, up to 50% of our families are Spanish speaking.
Mindy Peterson: [00:36:50] Sure.
David Sonnenschein: [00:36:51] So we the training for whether they’re their parents or anybody is available in both Spanish and English. The actual singing and learning the song words and all is currently in English, but we are definitely on the map to make it multilingual and multicultural so that the the avatar singing on screen could also be chosen to be, let’s say, ethnically similar to the family that’s playing it.
Mindy Peterson: [00:37:19] Sure. Yeah. Representative of wherever they are and the family that’s using it. Yeah. Great. Well, and I think you do have some English speakers in international countries like UK, Australia using this now. And if somebody is really anxious to get their hands on it, they can email you on your website and see if they can be sort of manually added. Right?
David Sonnenschein: [00:37:41] Yeah. That’s how we would do it. Yeah. Okay. Um, in the in the back side of the the program, we can add a manual white listing. We call it. Okay. And we’re particularly interested in having professionals who could actually use it and help us integrate into the whole system of their country. Of course, we want to offer to everybody. And and parents often are the ones that have the biggest need. They want it and they would like it now because we were talking about it. This is critical in a child’s development not to wait. So we’re hoping that we can eliminate any barriers and make it frictionless for everybody to use it as quickly as possible. So any suggestions from those who want to use it in other countries, how we can do that for their country? That’s also exciting to learn. For our sake?
Mindy Peterson: [00:38:34] Sure. Well, it seems like such a fabulous program. I was really excited to learn about it, and I really wished it was around 20 years ago when my when my kids were were young. Because I would have loved to have used this. I think it would have been really hugely helpful for our family. So love what you’re doing. Is there anything else that you want to make sure listeners know before we close things up with Coda? Anything else that you want to just make sure the audience knows?
David Sonnenschein: [00:39:03] You can try it for free. Just give it a go. And if you think it’s interesting and fun. And you have any further questions? Just email me and we’ll talk about whatever might be a special case for you. And certainly if you have a larger organization and you’d like to implement, I absolutely want to help develop it for for the schools and clinics and larger institutions to be able to serve lots more people. Our goal is to serve the millions of kids all over the world who could benefit from this. So that’s that’s what we’re at.
Mindy Peterson: [00:39:38] Yeah. Well, we’ll have all the links in the show notes, of course, of the website and the email to contact if people want to either be added manually because they’re not in the US, but they speak English, or if they have input as they’re using it. Um, David, 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. Do you have a song or story that you can share with us in closing today.
David Sonnenschein: [00:40:08] Sure. Um, I’ve been a classical clarinetist my whole life. Started very young. I was in three symphony orchestras by the time I was 15, and it just kept on in my life, even though I wasn’t going to perform in that way. I started to play in unusual places. That brought out some really different aspects of the music itself, but by energy, I began playing in drum circles that are used often for either ritual ceremonial use or for healing circles, and they’re very energetic and very loud. And nobody I’d ever heard had played with a clarinetist before. And I figured, why not? So I started learning how the clarinet can be actually a percussion instrument. And that opened me up to what is percussion. It’s it’s rhythm. Its beats. So I began playing the clarinet in a rhythmic fashion, as opposed to a melodic fashion, which would be like singing on top of the the drums. That’s certainly fun and beautiful, but if I’m becoming one with the drummers, I go into it as a rhythm. So I learned how to play the clarinet as a rhythm instrument, which was really interesting. And then I started playing didgeridoo, which is a drone instrument that can be played actually with with drummers, but it comes from Australia to Aboriginal instrument. And I started learning how to play that instrument, and then came back to the clarinet and began playing it like a drone instrument. So holding long tones, long notes for very significant energetic healing purposes. And this developed into attending Ecstatic dance events, which were usually done with DJs with recorded music. But after a while I got invited to play clarinet with this as well, which engaged me not just in playing music, but actually dancing while I’m playing music with the dancers. So yeah, it became real well for all of us. And I feel really.
Mindy Peterson: [00:42:32] Really good about engaging all areas of the brain.
David Sonnenschein: [00:42:36] For me, it’s like this kind of exploration, and I’m improvising on top of something that somebody else is playing. So I’m playing with the musicians and I’m playing with the dancers and I’m moving my body. It’s it’s very engaging and I love it. It’s something that, uh, I call it prompting the muse. The muse is, uh, for me, coming through in many different forms. And that’s one of the examples.
Transcribed by Sonix.ai