Riverside County Office of Education
Murietta Office
24980 Las Brisas Road
Murrieta, California 92562
Vince Madison
Firefly Records
PO Box 345
Westminster, CO 80036
Dear Mr. Madison,
It was a pleasure discussing music as a theraputic medium within special education settings. I understand your interest in my research as it directly involved the music you composed and sell under the Firefly Records label. The following is a general overview of an informal study that I conducted and shared with graduate students at the University of San Diego, National University and several other schools of higher learning.
During the first semester of the 2005/2006 school year over 30 CDs of music were chosen to be played as background music for a middle school Special Day Class (SDC) for children who have Emotional Disturbance (ED). The plan was to randomly select a music CD each morning before school and play it on volume level 2 before the students arrived. After a CD was played on the class stereo for the first half of the school day (8:15 AM to 12:15 PM) it was placed away from the others. I then planned to put a second CD on and play it during the second half of the class using the same procedures. It didn't go as planned.
The genre selected was either light classical, soft rock, or soft instrumental pieces. The typical response from students, which would usually occur within the first 15 minutes of class, was one of protest and uneasiness. The students, whose ages range from 12 to 15 years old, and were male, would make derogatory comments such as, "that music sucks" or "that music is annoying." I had to skip a few days of research because the students actively listened for the music.
About the fifteenth day of experimenting with different music, I played the CD titled Autumn Road by Vince Madison. To the staff's surprise no students commented about the music. The CD played continuously until lunch without notice. I kept the CD playing for the remainder of the day and no student reactions were noted. Staff also reported fewer incidents of bad behavior for the day and commented how much THEY enjoyed the music.
The next day I played the same CD, Autumn Road , and had the same response. I found two more CDs you composed, Paradise Found and Dreamland , and played them both the same day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Both CDs got the same non-response from the ED students and the SDC, as a whole, had fewer incidents of unwanted behaviors.
The next few days I experimented with different CDs to determine if the students were truly unaware of your music playing or if they simply became compliant to listening to what I selected. The results were baffling. For unknown reasons the ED populationin my class seemed to be unaware of your music playing, I tried playing the closest resemblance to your music, which were "mood" or "light piano instrumentals" and not one played for over 20 minutes before a student asked to turn it off.
I had several conversations with graduate students and staff regarding my findings. My peers agree that outside of being pleasant music to listen to, your style of music seems to have a strong theraputic value to children who are easily distracted by any other type of "soft music." At this point I suggest a formal study to be conducted to determine why your music has this effect on this group.
Thank you for allowing me to use my findings,
Todd Barrowcliff, M.Ed.
Vail Ranch Middle School
Temecula, CA 92592
