Music Therapy Helps Develop Communication

Music Therapist Krystal Demaine, of Salem, Mass., left, claps along with student Tony Bacon, of Beverly, Mass., right, as Bacon's mother Susan Williams, center, looks on during a music lesson at Bacon's Beverly home, in this Wednesday, June 7, 2006 file photo. Demaine utilizes the music as a form of therapy to help autistic children, including Bacon, acquire and improve language skills. (AP Photo/Steven Senne) (Steven Senne - AP)

BEVERLY, Mass. -- Seventeen-year-old Tony Bacon sat at the parlor window seat, his eyes glued to the driveway. He settles into the same spot every Wednesday afternoon.

"What are you waiting for?" asked his mother, Susan Williams.

"Music therapy," he said, his words fast and slurred.

For the next 45 minutes, Tony, who has autism, and Krystal Demaine sit face-to-face in the sunroom. She plays guitar as he beats on a drum.

Demaine, a graduate of the music therapy program at Boston's Berklee College of Music, has been going to Tony's house for four years, using the Beatles' "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" for exercises in enunciation, volume and breath control. Beating along to "Blackbird" tests the teen's coordination and motor control.

It's part of a session known as music therapy, which is used to help people with various medical conditions develop everything from language skills to motor coordination. It can provide a drug-free way to regulate moods in people with depression or foster socialization in those with limited means of communication.

The first music therapy program in the country started at Michigan State University in 1944, according to Alan Solomon, former historian for the American Music Therapy Association and current dean at the Potsdam State University of New York's Crane School of Music.

He said it gained popularity in veterans' hospitals in World War II as doctors became interested in music's ability to heal soldiers with both physical and mental problems.

These days, Berklee's program is one of the largest among the 70 that have sprouted up around the country. In the upcoming school year, Berklee will have 100 students in the program.

Music therapists take advantage of the ways mind and body are stimulated when people listen to and make music to hone motor and brain functions, said Al Bumanis, spokesman for the American Music Therapy Association.

"Music impacts a person viscerally, physically, immediately and directly," said Suzanne Hanser, founder and chairwoman of Berklee's music therapy program. Its undergraduate program is one of 70 in the country.

Demaine, who graduated from the program in 2000, said a patient in music therapy works on many senses at once.