Auditory Processing Disorder with Gregory Chase: Part 2

Hosts Krista Jadro and Hannah Mayo welcome back Gregory Chase for part two of an in-depth discussion on Auditory Processing Disorder (APD)—what it is, how it manifests in children and adults, and the surprising ways it can impact learning in and out of the piano studio. Greg shares his personal journey of discovery through his son’s experience, the diagnostic process, and how music, especially when grounded in Music Learning Theory (MLT), plays a pivotal role in remediation.

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Transcript

Krista: Welcome to Keys to Music Learning. I'm Krista Jadro of Music Learning Academy. 

Hannah: And I'm Hannah Mayo of Mayo Piano.

Krista: Join us as we discuss common goals and challenges in the piano studio and offer research-based ideas and solutions to guide every one of your students to reach their full musical potential with audition. 

Hannah: We are back with part two of our talk with Gregory Chase on auditory processing disorders. Please enjoy.

And so, what kinds of activities or tools or techniques have you found that are most effective in helping students with APD succeed in those music classes?

Gregory: Yeah, like I said, I'll probably, I'm going to miss some as I go through here, just because it has now become just so much a part of my everyday teaching, and just the natural flow of the lessons. But a few that come to mind…the biggest thing is how we give instructions. And depending on what you're doing, and then also with preparatory audiation stages, right, with the early childhood music, often there are very little instructions given, but rather we have the modeling that we do, which is huge.

So, we really need to use very simple one-step directions. We need to speak at a slower rate and clearly. Volume, speaking louder, doesn't necessarily help, okay?

It's the clarity and being slower. And it really gives the student's brain time for the ear and the brain to communicate with each other. I mean, I remember once when my son was, I mean, he wasn't even in school yet, and I rattled off all these things that we were going to do in the afternoon.

And I mean, and this is before I knew that he had APD. And he goes, what? What dad?

And so, then I went through every one, I said, we're going to have lunch, we're going to clean up. Yeah. Then we're going to do this.

We're going to do this. We're going to do this. And, and I listed everything slowly and very clearly and he goes, yeah, let's do that.

And so, the first time it's just like, what? All he heard was noise.

But once I was able to break things down in a very simple one-step instruction, yeah. And take a look, take a look at Music Moves and take a look at the Exploration/Creativity/Improvisation, activities, you know, the duple meter project. You have one direction per line and you put a check mark, right?

Well, that's perfect. As I said, what we do is just pedagogically sound no matter who you're teaching. So, we give that one instruction at a time.

Even when we're doing LSAs (Learning Sequence Activities), what do we do? We sing the resting tone, right? Or we will sing the first pitch or this time you're going to sing the whole tonal pattern, and we do each of those individually one at a time as we go through.

Movement activities. We don't give more than one movement at a time, right? We give them one movement that they want to do.

And so again, that is huge. Staying on the topic of movement, I mean, movement-based activities really help a child’s brain become a whole brain. Research is showing this and that the movement works the left and the right hemisphere of the brain, which we talked about in previous podcasts with that.

And the movement also helps the brain from the bottom to the top and from the back to the front. And so, these areas also improve the expressive language, retention, comprehension, emotional grounding, reasoning, and critical thinking. What more could you ask for to have happen with your students?

Another one is to really allow transition time from one activity to the other. And I know that this isn't only just with APD, but it's with a lot of neurodivergences. So again, just offering those clear instructions of what we're doing from here to there, to allow that auditory processing to take place.

To aid students who are deficient in speech and noise. So, while we're singing a song or a folk song, I will sing it first by itself, and then I'll start to play the chord roots to accompany as I'm singing. So, I'm adding in an extra noise.

Then I build that to being full chords that we're doing. Then from there, then I'll start to add an accompaniment pattern. And the accompaniment pattern increases in activity, you know, so it may just be a macro/microbeat pattern that I will give or an alternating pattern, something very simple, but there's movement happening. And then I will work up to Alberti bass or in a syncopated pattern. So again, that is happening over periods of weeks while I'm doing that. 

With my students, even in our early childhood music classes, a colleague and I teach these classes together at a local conservatory.

So, we've started to incorporate the singing of chord roots of a functional harmony while the other person is singing the melody or the song. And then this can always be transferred over to playing on a barred instrument so that even there's something that we can always be doing and conducting to help the class. Even if we're by ourselves, you can play on a barred instrument if you have, or even chord roots if you want on the piano, but get the students to start listening to more than just one line to develop that speech and noise is really what we're doing.

Again, it's important that as we teach these early childhood music classes, what are we doing? We're developing their understanding of music and we're developing these neural pathways that are related to music and to language because we learn music like we learn a language. So, there's that crossover.

So even though I do the singing or playing of chord roots to help develop the students with their speech and noise, it's beneficial for them, for all students. So, I do that with all my students. As I mentioned before, our brain is looking for patterns, both visually, auditorily.

Again, what do we do in our MLT based lessons? We're singing of tonal patterns, chanting rhythm patterns, singing and playing melodic patterns. So, I do this again with all my students, even with those that are APD.

As we talked about that three-gap detection test that they have, that temporal resolution where my son was required to indicate whether one or two tones were heard. Well, as you'd mentioned, what do we do with our tonal patterns? We have that gap between the pitches, you know, when we sing them.

So, we sing the pattern separated. And then earlier I had mentioned the retention, the retention issue that can happen. So again, when it comes to playing music on the piano, rather than learning it by phrase or half song at a time, we will break it down.

So, we may break it down into one melodic pattern at a time rather than the half phrase or the whole phrase, you know. So, we'll end up taking it at a slower pace as well. I usually don't do it at the tempo that I would normally do it.

And that's one thing that I love about MLT. When students learn pieces, they actually learn them pretty well up to tempo. You know, it's not this slow plodding along because they see it as the whole, you know. And so, they end up playing it at tempo. With my APD students, I will slow it down a little bit more.

Playing with the middle finger that we do, again, that really aids the students, yeah, in seeing and knowing which keys are played so that they can see it, so that they can hear it. We do the same and different game, right? We do that all the time in our lessons.

And so, we'll sing and play one section and then the next section and the students will tell us, is it the same or is it different? So that's why I said earlier, you know, I felt that there really is a marriage between my studies of MLT at Buffalo, neuroscience, and APD. I mean, they all just really support. They interweave with one another just so beautifully.

Hannah: I have a quick follow-up to that. And I'm curious, do you notice more of a strength in rhythm or tonal, or does it just vary from student to student? Is there any difference in how they're processing tonal and rhythm?

Gregory: No, it'll vary. Because, again, you don't know. I have some students that the rhythm is strong and they really like the rhythm, whereas others, they will all of a sudden sing the V-I, the dominant and tonic notes.

I will hear them, and just like in preparatory audition, a lot of times after we sing, a child, an infant, may make a sound. Like I have a five-year-old that I'm working with right now, and he comes twice a week. He's just an angel, nonverbal, no speaking at all.

And so, he comes twice a week for 30 minutes, and after singing a song, sometimes he will make a sound, and it's very interesting to see that it's on the dominant of what we just did. And so I go, that's preparatory audition where children will do that.

So, there's just, again, what are they doing? I mean, they haven't really learned that sound process with APD. There's still that processing that's being developed, and that is going on. And so, so much of what I see in our early music childhood classes, I also see in my auditory processing disorder students. Yeah.

Krista: Can you talk a little bit more about these classes that you offer for students and children with auditory processing disorder?

Gregory: Yeah, it's just a referral that has come from the audiologist, because she knows that her remediation, her software remediation process, and it happens over a certain amount of time, and you need to have, where she does kind of much of the same things, I think, as the testing is done, but in the remediation process to try and get like the gap narrow, and trying to get the ears listening together. And so, there's a whole computer program that they do. The child goes, like my son went into the booth.

They're about 20 minutes in length. They're short, and they're intense. And so even with the visual, it was the same thing. 20 minutes, it was five days a week for four months. It was brutal to try and get them, because it gets harder and harder as it goes along. And so sometimes they just don't want to put in that kind of energy.

With that remediation, if it's not going to work for a child or a young child, then she actually recommends that they come to me for lessons. Yeah, and so I will often do what I'm doing is more of the early childhood, the preparatory audition activities that we do. And so, if I get the report and I know specifics, then again, I can kind of hone things in a little bit better.

Krista: And what are the responses of the parents of the children that you're teaching?

Gregory: Good, usually, yeah, yeah.

Krista: They see the value in their time with you.

Gregory: Yeah, and I mean, even Nina Kraus talks about the importance of music. She has done absolutely incredible amount of research on this. And she said, it's not like music is going to replace all these other things, but you want to do it as well as. Make it as part of the process.

So even with this five-year-old that I have, I mean, he's in speech, he's in speech therapy. He's also in behavioral therapy. This is part of his regime to help him along the way and to help him with the process.

Now, what would be great is if I could get together with those other, the other ones that are working with him. Ideally, that would be great so that we can then form. That's in the ideal world.

Krista: And I think we know the answer to this already, but how important is patience and understanding when working with students who experience auditory processing difficulties?

Gregory: Yeah, I'm in one-word answers today, instrumental. Again, no pun intended, but I think the more that we inform ourselves about anything, whether it's APD, ADHD, autism, you name it, the more that we understand what is happening with our student, the more that we understand what is happening, the more we'll have the patience. And the more that we have the patience, the more we can meet our students.

Yeah. And where they are with the learning. Again, one of the beautiful things about the principles of MLT, and that is meet your child where the child is at.

Have a child-centered lesson rather than a teacher-centered lesson. And you have to do that when working with children and APD. Not only does understanding provide patience for your APD students, but it will be for all your students that it will help you.

And so, I even have a student, again, with the exploration, creativity, and improvisation activities, I have one student where it asks you to, let's say, create a rhythm pattern in duple meter four-macrobeat. So, a lot of times I will ask her, we'll read it, and then she sits there. And at first, because she was a transfer student, I thought, is she waiting for me to give her the pattern or what's going on?

And I thought, I'm just going to wait and see if she asks for it, because sometimes students will say, well, can you give me one? But about 10 or 15 seconds later, she has one, and she creates it. And it's beautiful in what she does.

So, I mean, again, I haven't taken that learning opportunity away from her. I mean, as far as I know, she's not APD. It's just she is thinking.

But because I know with APD, we need to allow that time to happen. I was willing to sit there patiently to see what would happen and what would respond. You know, again, thinking of our preparatory audition stages, purposeful silence.

Well, that is also very important when it comes to APD. And so, why do we have the purposeful silence in preparatory audition? So, the processing can take place, right?

And if we think of it, that's really the same thing that we're doing with APD. You have to allow those moments. You have to allow time for them to be able to process the information.

So, again, these are just, I still think, they're just pedagogically sound, you know? It's just really good teaching to be able to do this. And I think that's why MLT just works so well, yeah, with auditory processing disorder.

Krista: I'm glad you mentioned purposeful silence, because there is so much in the lesson plans for a Keyboard Games book, for all the Music Moves, for Piano books. And you often hear, well, how am I going to get it all in one lesson? That even I, sometimes I feel like, I feel almost rushed.

Like, oh, but I have to get to this and this and this. But that silence is so important, not only for our students with APD, but for all of our students to process what we're doing in class. 

Hannah: Yeah, I think a lot of these principles are for everyone, not just necessarily for APD.

Because there is something happening in all of our brains that requires time to fully process. And while it might not take quite as long, just the act of stopping and waiting is valuable for any music student. 

Hannah: What practical strategies can parents or educators use to support individuals with APD just in regular daily life? We've talked a lot about music, but what else can we do non-musically to support these kids?

Gregory: Yeah, I mean, physical accommodations really to improve the listening environment. I mean, in the school setting, in the classroom setting, I mean, they have FM microphones or remote microphone systems where teachers will amplify their voices. My wife has one in her classroom.

She teaches music, but she has it so that she doesn't have to strain her voice for one thing. When she's speaking. But I mean, these systems really emphasize the speaker's voice over the background noise.

And so, it just really makes the voice clear. Yeah, so that a child can understand what is being said. And I know the audiologist is that when she said she often writes this as a recommendation, and then she ended up getting into trouble with the school board because they said, we can't afford that, you know, type of thing, which is just so bad, but it was just a recommendation.

But it really does help. Yeah, with them trying to reduce any background noise, you know, that's happening in the school. I know my son in grade four, the teacher would always be playing the radio.

So, the radio was always going on in the background, which was probably not the best for him. Just because it was, again, it's that speech and noise, that sound and noise that is happening. Individual therapies, which usually the audiologist will recommend.

These can be computer programs. There's lots that are out there that are geared to children with APD, some of them, they're apps on iPads and stuff.

And so, an audiologist would be able to recommend those to you. And then even as I had said before, even like Nina Kraus had said, you know, just don't have just music, but it's going to be part of your regime. So again, speech language therapy, you can take a look at counseling.

You know, if you feel that your child is depressed or anxious, art therapy, music therapy, you know, will help build self-esteem. Again, occupational therapy will help and it'll help with the sensory issues or the auditory timing concerns that'll happen. At home, things that parents can do.

Again, reduce that background noise whenever possible. Have your child look at you when you speak to them. And so, this will help your child, gives them the visual cue clues to help fill in the gaps of the missing speech information.

Use strategies like chunking, you know, which means giving your child simple verbal directions, which we talked about. Less words. Yeah.

Or a key word to remember and fewer steps. I remember going, my mom sending me up. This is way back in the dark ages where you were able to go to the corner store and buy milk or butter for your mom.

And so, mom would ask me to do that. And then she would say, now, what are you buying? When you get there, what are you getting?

Milk. But then when I got to the corner store, did I remember that it was milk? I would come home with butter.

So, I mean, try and get those key words. I remember one time saying, I can't remember what she asked. Can you phone her?

And just ask mom. It was a small town. Everybody knew each other.

But I remember that happening. After that, I really tried to remember milk or butter. And I repeat it to myself over and over as I go to the store.

Speak slightly slower, which I've talked about with a clear voice. Don't think louder. Louder doesn't always help.

Also, you could ask your child to repeat the directions back to you. To make sure that they understand. Do you understand what I'm saying? And then get them to say it. 

For directions to be completed later, such things as writing notes, keeping a chart list, calendars, those types of visuals. Many kids with APD find using closed caption on TV and computer programs helpful.

Yeah. And it's not uncommon in our house that the closed caption is on. Yours too? Yeah, yeah. Because I know one time, I took it off when we were watching. And my son said, I actually prefer to have that on.

You know, and if I'm watching anything with accents. So, my British soap opera that I watch, because there's accents in there, a lot of times I have the subtitles on. Yeah.

Krista: Greg, all the time, my house, I cannot watch anything without subtitles anymore. Even Luci. Luci likes to have the subtitles on too.

And if they're not on, she'll turn them on. And I just went to a friend's house on Friday for like a movie night. And I had to ask them to turn the subtitles on.

Because I just, I don't know if it's like a focus thing. I just can't, I can't understand what they're saying sometimes. So yeah, subtitles, they're a big help.

And I was going to add too, you know, having an autistic child. And we don't typically say to look at us, but what really works for us is body. So, I'll say, oh, Nico, body to mommy.

So that if he's looking at a book, he doesn't feel like he has to look up at me. He can turn, he could just turn his body to me, but keep looking at the book. So, because I know that he is hearing me, even if he's looking at something.

So, you know, that's just another language thing that people can use. And I've also had to employ in our house that there is no talking or giving directions to somebody from another room. Because if you're not in the same room, I cannot process anything that you say.

If you are not in the same room as me, or if we're giving directions to the kids, and I'm guilty of it, sometimes yelling, you know, to Luci, come here and do this, this and this and this. And it's just not fair to her or to anybody who's in the other room. But especially if they're neurodivergent or if they have APD, you know, being in the same room has been very helpful to our family.

Hannah: And this is all echoed in, you know, behavioral therapy experts and educators who are really interested in neuroscience as the pathway to better communication and connection between children and their adults. And they're saying that you must be within arm's reach before you try to tell a child to do anything. And to use minimal language and one thing at a time. All of this is echoed.

Gregory: Yeah. It's just pedagogically sound. It just is.

Hannah: It just is. Yeah.

Krista: And Greg, we're interested to know what research you have come across that supports the learning of music and the remediation of auditory processing.

Gregory: Yeah, there's lots. And there's more all the time, which is really neat. I mean, speech perception can really be improved by artificially slowing down speech sounds.

So, while this is being reiterated by researchers, it was suggested that singing forms a natural way of slowing down and highlighting speech sounds. So, singing with words will aid perception. And I do feel that sometimes this is looked down upon in the MLT community, is that using words, you know, and I think if you use words all the time, yes, it is.

But I think there's a time and a place for it. And so, there are times where I think you do want to be using words because it's going to help students. It also gives them a better understanding.

It helps them in understanding phrases and breathing. It helps them to understand form. And so, in cases of working with students who have APD, sing a lot with words because it's going to aid their speech perception.

And so just know why you are doing something with words or why you are not, you know, just not randomly doing it. But everything has a purpose. And I think if you know the purpose. So that's definitely one that I've taken away from that. 

The auditory sensitivity can be increased by music listening and music making. So, since music making requires very accurate auditory and motor timing skills, this in turn aids in that remediation in these specific areas.

Researchers found that music lessons have a positive effect on reading skills of poor students. Yeah, and they found that a program of musical activities impacted rapid temporal processing skills, meaning the skills to distinguish between sounds that happen very close together in time, which is crucial for understanding speech and also crucial for spelling, you know, with those blended sounds. So, it also develops the phonological skills and the spelling skills in dyslexic children.

So, one of the best things parents can do for their child is to enroll them in music lessons. Researchers, again, recommend remediation based on rhythm, and that music may offer benefits to APD and dyslexic. And so, I really like this quote, dyslexic brain is in tune, but out of time.

And so, if you think of that with APD, that's exactly what it is. It's just it's out of time with what's happening. So, since it's already known that the pitch tasks in language are development and are enhanced with music trainings, researchers suggest that this could be the same with the rhythm and the timing activities.

So, movement activities, the dancing, you know, again, train the brain in regard to the temporal structure of what is happening. I've got more. That might be enough for you.

Due to the deficiency in temporal processing and phonological awareness, it is clear that children with APD have a lower subcortical representation of timbre. And so, this in turn affects the speech sounds of the phonemes, the different sounds that we have in language. So, through training, musicians increase their timbre discrimination depending on what age the musical training begins.

So, the earlier that it is, what are you doing? You're developing those neural connections that are happening. So again, just a strong soapbox advocate for early childhood music, like every child should I think should be enrolled in music.

And I really do wonder if we would see less and less and less of some of these neurodivergences taking place because we have started to create some of those neural pathways for them. Soapbox, sorry. I’ll get off.

Hannah: We love it when you soapbox.

Gregory: You're kind.

Hannah: That's how we learn. 

We also need to learn what are some of the common misconceptions about APD that you might want to address.

Gregory: Yeah, I think I said before, you know, APD is really development dyslexia. So, if you're wanting to look up information about APD, do that, but also look up developmental dyslexia. And because, again, we think that it's a visual processing disorder, but it's not.

It's often an auditory processing disorder. And again, Nina Kraus, she talks about developmental dyslexia, and you're very quickly into her research where you will realize, oh, okay, yeah, this is auditory processing. Researchers have found that 5 to 7% of school-aged children are affected by reading disorders.

And so, these impairments correspond with the neural encoding, you know, deficits in the auditory system, such as speech and noise. And so, both are predictors for reading and spelling development. I think remediation of auditory processing disorder is accomplished through retraining the neural pathways, again, that neuroplasticity that we've been talking about with that.

And I would really want to stress, APD has nothing to do with intelligence. And I think, I'm hoping that we're getting to the age, and I'm hoping that I'm from a different age, where disorder meant not highly intelligent. And I'm hoping that those two words are never spoken in the same sentence.

And so auditory processing disorder has nothing to do with intelligence. It's to do with processing. I mean, my son, like I said, is diagnosed with APD.

I mean, in grade 10, his average in high school was 97%. This year in grade 12, in his first semester, his average was 94 point something. So, it's just simply a processing disorder, meaning that sound takes a longer path for the ear to bring.

Yeah. And I mean, remediation makes a huge difference. Yeah, it's not something that can be cured.

So don't think you're going to cure it. But it's something that can be lessened, yeah, through remedial work.

Krista: And how can raising awareness about APD in music education foster a more inclusive learning environment for our students?

Gregory:I think probably the realization that APD is part of our daily life, and we come across it all the time with people. You will ask them a question, and they'll give you an answer, which is totally obscure to what you had asked. You know, and I know that I have been guilty of that.

And in my family, sometimes we joke about it with the answer. And then I say, oh, what did you ask? And I mean, just like the commercials that we saw in the UK, I felt they depict that better.

They realize that it's part of everyday life. Neuroscience understands the importance that music has on learning. But it's not just in learning music, but it's in learning everything, and that it creates a whole brain.

And I think some countries are further ahead of this than others. A few years ago, I was privileged to be actually on a world Zoom meeting. So, I was invited by the audiologist that I partner with here in Regina, and it was on a presentation by an audiologist in Australia.

And she was sharing how she was using music to help not only children, but even adults with APD. And I have to say, it was probably a good thing that I didn't realize who all these people were on the Zoom meeting until after the Zoom meeting, because it was really the top audiologists of the world, like from Canada, the US, UK, Germany, Europe, Australia, just all over. And so many who had already developed these tests who had done this massive research.

But what really struck me at the end of the presentation was just a kind of informal conversation that was happening and how they were saying, but how can we get this testing and this training done earlier? Because people have to pay for it. We need to get into the schools.

We need this to happen at a much earlier age. We need to have access to these children much earlier in order to be able to do it. And so globally, it's really a problem of funding, you know, of getting the children earlier.

And I thought, this parallels so much with conversations that I've had with colleagues on music. How can we get music into the schools earlier or the private lessons, that sort of thing? So, I mean, to go back to the original question, I think there needs to be more awareness of APD and the implications that music has on its remediation.

And then it really comes to educating the powers that be who make the decision. When it comes to schools, it's not the teachers. It's really the parents who have the power.

They're the taxpayers. They're the ones who are funding education. And so, as music educators, we can really advocate all we want, but it's really the parents who have the power who can advocate for the programming in our schools and our daily lives.

Hannah:And what advice would you give? Maybe there's been sprinklings of advice all over the place in our talk today. But if you had to maybe list the top three bits of advice that you could give music teachers who suspect that one of their students has APD but hasn't been formally diagnosed, what would those pieces of advice be?

Gregory:Can I reduce it to one?

Hannah:Even better.

Gregory:Implement the principles of music learning theory.

Hannah:Oh, there it is.

Gregory: It is pedagogically sound. You can't lose. You cannot lose.

Hannah:Yeah, and maybe slow down. Use MLT and slow yourself down. I love that. Great answer, Greg. That was easy.

Gregory:Shortest answer of the whole day, I think.

Krista:And Greg, before we go, is there anything else that you'd like to share about the connection between APD, auditory testing, and music education?

Gregory:I think if you happen to test students' music aptitude, you know, using one of Gordon's tests, and the student scores low, as we all know, it still may be very worthwhile for the child to study music. I mean, APD, it will affect the aptitude tests that you do, because Gordon's tests aren't really designed for neurodivergences. And so, you just be aware that if someone is scoring low, is there something else in play?

Is it aptitude, or is there something else that is in play that we don't know about? So, I think that's just something really important to remember. If I have a student who has APD, I don't even bother doing the music aptitude tests with them, because I know it's not going to be accurate.

Yeah, or any other kind of neurodivergence. I don't bother with the aptitude tests. So, that would be something that would be neat to do, is to be able to develop an aptitude test that would, but there's just so many different parameters.

And I mean, like, if you know one autistic child, you know one autistic child. You know that person's autism. And so, I think that's with so many other things that happen as well.

The other thing would be that there's still so much that we don't understand about the brain and why music has such a strong impact on learning and the brain, but research continues. And I just really hope that one day we will have that full understanding. And when that happens, I think we'll see music education rise to the status that it deserves.

Hannah:I know that was supposed to be the last question, but I have one more question about these, we'll call them music assessment tests. They're basically listening for differences in pitch or differences in rhythm. Not Gordon's music aptitude test, but the ones that came before.

And I wonder if a student had APD, it would affect their score, right? 

Gregory: Yeah. It could affect their score.

Hannah: Yeah. And so, there are schools, at least from where I am and probably other places, there are schools that use these tests to either admit or not admit students into special music programs. You do an audition, you take some sort of written test, and then you have to do this listening test. And I bring it up because I recently had a student who did the test with me and did aces and then went into the testing situation and did three out of four phenomenally, and then kind of bombed the fourth part.

And I don't know that that's a symptom of APD, but it's just making me think about how all these kids, if they want the special music program, if they want the special training, they have to go through this testing process. And how probably a lot of those kids that take that test, maybe not a lot, but probably one or two, probably have APD. And what are we doing?

What are we doing?

Gregory: Yeah, testing—okay, soapbox moment. Testing can be abused. And even Gordon's aptitude tests have been abused.

And I think as an educator, we are responsible for how we are using these tests. And we have to use them responsibly. And we have to have an understanding of their purpose and why we're using them.

And I think the U.S. is highly into the testing more so than what Canada is. But of course, there's always the threats, because whatever happens south of the border comes north of the border, I have found in education. And so, there is always the threat.

Some of these tests are being used, and not just in music, but in other things, are being used in order to decide what the teacher's salary is going to be for the year, you know. And so there has been threats of that happening in Canada in some of the education as well. So again, that's not the purpose of those tests.

I mean, any purpose for assessment is to inform the teacher of where the student is at, where the student is at. And it shouldn't be, in my opinion, it should never reflect on whether you take them or not. It's this is giving me the foundation of where the child is at, and I can build from there.

Hannah:Well, Greg, thank you so much. This has been really enlightening. I feel smarter.

I always feel smarter after I listen to you talk. 

Krista: Well, Hannah, Greg has been on three years in a row. So, we should probably just plan to have him back next year.

Hannah: The annual Gregory Chase interview. We have lots to talk about. I'm sure we can keep this going, Greg, for years and years and years.

Gregory: Yeah, yeah, there's always, yeah. And it's just, it's the beauty of studying music and just, you know, and research. It's just, there's always, there's always something, yeah.

Hannah:Being open to what that research has to teach us. I think that's kind of probably the most important part of it. 

Krista: So Greg, you are a member of our Facebook group, which is Introduction to Audiation-Based Piano Instruction and Music Moves for Piano.

So, if people have any questions, you are a top commenter, always offering your expertise and knowledge. But how can other listeners just get in touch with you if they have questions? I know if you would like to mention you have a website, too, with reading and writing music notation.

Gregory:Yeah, and you can even just email me, yeah, just at gregorykchase@gmail.com if you want to put that in the show notes underneath. Yeah, they're definitely able to do that, get ahold of me that way. Yeah.

And websites, if you want to listen to my websites, there's a number of different ones. Yeah.

And we even have one, and there's a video to go along with it about music for your brain. retraining your brain, how to hear. And so, it's part of our early childhood music program that we have, which is called Music Moves for Kids. And I did ask Marilyn if she was okay.

That was long ago, many years ago, when I asked her, would you be opposed if we were to use this name? Because I just thought it's very close to Music Moves for Piano, and she said no, she didn't have a problem. So, yeah.

Krista: Wonderful. So, we'll be sure to put those on our show notes.

Gregory: Sure.

Krista: Well, thank you so much again, Gregory. This has been a pleasure, and we really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today.

Gregory:Yeah, you're welcome. Anytime.

Krista:Thanks so much, everyone, and we'll see you soon.