A Playlist for the Sound-Sensitive

by Kristina Chew · 2009-01-11 15:28:00 UTC
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I was looking over readers' suggestions for books and blogs (thank you; please keep any suggestions coming) and it occurred to me that, while we have a list of videos, we've no list for another medium that gets a lot of literal "play" around here: music.

Charlie's always been inclined to music. I've often figured out how he's feeling based on the song or melody he's singing (when he was younger, "Frère Jacques" meant he was getting agitated) and I've also figured out some of his less well-articulated words based on the pitch and intonation of his voice. Jim's been singing to Charlie and whistling since his earliest earliest days. Charlie can play the piano and read music (and read it better than he can read words), and I've been, slowly, teaching him to play cello (he used to have teachers for both instruments, and we're looking). We used to play CDs constantly in the car and the summer of '06 it was Jimi Hendrix; summer of '07 was the Ramones. Since Charlie's become strikingly sound-sensitive this past year and a half, we haven't been playing CDs.

Last night, Jim turned on a DVD about a very good friend who was an artist (he painted this). Our friend started playing saxophone towards the end of his life; the soundtrack on the film was mostly music, the things he'd listened to. What Jim told me was a 1950s funk/hard bop track was playing as the film opened: Charlie sung it for the rest of the evening.

I've been thinking about putting together a playlist of songs or musicians or compositions that appeal to Charlie or that seem, for lack of a better phrase or concept, "sound-sensitivity-friendly." Charlie seems to prefer jazz and blues and instrumentals including Sugarcane Harris who played jazz violin and, for awhile, John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme." Charlie has made it clear to me that the type of music I listen to (singers in an emotional vein) is not his preference, so I keep my CDs to myself. Charlie's not been interested in an iPod in the past, but maybe using noise-canceling headphones instead of those little white earbuds might be more appealing.

What would you put on a playlist of the ""sound-sensitivity-friendly," soothing/calming/pleasurable sort?

Saxophone image by TrevorParker.

Kristina Chew
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