Episode 30 - Music therapy, Swedish Standards and Clinical Improvisation
Recorded in Edinburgh, this episode explores how music can be clinical, personal and social all at once. After waxing lyrical about The Jazz Bar, Steve sits down during the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival to talk music therapy, Swedish standards and real-time improvisation in healthcare settings. This episode of On the Origin of the Pieces looks at how music moves from the bandstand to the bedside — and back again.
Music therapy in practice
Music therapy in practice: Steve and guest saxophonist/music therapist Kassandra e’Silva discuss working in hospitals and the community — from dementia wards to family sessions — and how listening comes before playing. Projects connect with NHS Lothian initiatives and Music for Dementia’s wider movement to bring music into care.
What clinical improvisation asks of us
Clinical improvisation doesn’t mean ‘anything goes’. The conversation gets granular about constraints, routines, and how to respond to breath, movement and memory in the room. It’s music as relationship — and as gentle provocation.
Swedish standards & an Edinburgh frame
On Swedish standards and the Edinburgh jazz scene: the pair swap tunes and talk about why certain melodies travel so well — and how local venues like The Jazz Bar help create the conditions for risk, listening and growth.
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Full Transcript
Verbatim transcript from the episode, reflowed for readability. No wording changes have been made.
Hello, my name is Steve Pretty. I'm a musician, composer and performer from London, and welcome to my podcast, Steve Pretty On The Origin of the Pieces. This is the show that helps you to hear, understand and enjoy music in new ways. Hello, Musically Curious Folks. It's lovely to be back in your ears and your eyes if you're tuning in on Spotify or on YouTube. Yeah, I've had a fantastic few weeks of all sorts of musical endeavors, very interesting and fun musical endeavors. I hope you guys are well as well, and perhaps have been enjoying some live music. And this is the summer over here in the UK, and of course, top of the world, the Northern Hemisphere. And so I think if you're out enjoying some of my music festivals, I hope you've had fun. And let me know what you've seen and what you recommend. I'm always open to new recommendations. Yeah, I've done all sorts of fun stuff. I was at Allsoy Festival where I think I did a total of about seven or eight different gigs, all very different as well. I did a live podcast show, and I played with the band Molotov Jukebox, who I've been playing with for the last few years, who are fantastic. I did a live score to the film Nosferatu, the original horror film from 1922, which was really, really interesting, the first time I've done that, and I'm sure I'll talk about that at some point in the near future. And I did a conch bath, an hour long kind of meditative conch session with the shells and electronics, which I really, really enjoyed. And again, more to come on that front as well. I think I'm gonna be uploading some bits from both of these to my Patreon. So if you go to my Patreon, if you go to originofthepieces.com, you can find my Patreon on there, or you can search for Steve Pretty On The Origin of the Pieces on Patreon. And you can join for nothing. And you just sort of sign up to the mailing list and get a few extra bits and bobs. Or if you sign, if you join for one pound or five pounds or anything you want to give, then you get all sorts of extra bonus bits and a warm feeling for supporting the show. Anyway, yeah, so I was doing that. I'm gonna be popping those up on the Patreon. I have done all sorts of other stuff, like the Ocean Songs project with the National Maritime Museum, which was a really interesting project, where we wrote an album of songs about the ocean and performed at the Maritime Museum and at First Light Festival. Yeah, all manner of things. And it's been an absolute delight. And I'm off to Latitude Festival shortly to be doing some more bits and bobs of podcasting stuff and music related things there. So maybe I'll see some of you there. If you're there, do come and say hello to me. I'm doing a few other bits and bobs over the summer about the podcast as well. But today, I'm actually going to run an interview that I did just in the last week or so. I've mentioned quite a lot that I've got all this stuff backed up from probably the last year or so of interviews. I've got loads and loads of interviews in the queue, but since it was on my mind, I wanted to run an interview on this episode that I did last week at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival, just while it was on my mind. I had this great few days up in Edinburgh. Such a wonderful city and such an incredible jazz scene, actually, and before I get into the interview, I just wanted to take a few seconds to just talk about the Edinburgh jazz scene. In particular, a bar called the Jazz Bar in Edinburgh. It's just called the Jazz Bar, and of course, it does exactly that. It's a bar that plays jazz, and I've been going to Edinburgh for about 20 years, and it's been going that whole time. It used to be on North Bridge, for those of you who know Edinburgh, and there was a big fire in the early 2000s, and so sadly, the original club burnt down. But then the founder of the club, a man called Bill Kyle, who I'm a huge fan of, and consider a very influential person in my life. He moved the club just around the corner, and it's on Chamber Street in Edinburgh. Beautiful jazz club in the classic style, downstairs basement club with a small stage and a really good PA and a wonderful bar serving all sorts of delicious drinks and single morts and all of the fun stuff. But it's a bar that has been really, I think of as pretty much a one venue music scene. It's a jazz scene. I mean, obviously there's other jazz going on in Edinburgh as well, but really the Jazz Bar is, to my mind, a real hub. And that certainly seems to be the case for lots of the musicians in Edinburgh. It's not just me saying that. And Bill Kyle, who I mentioned is the guy who set this up. There's something, he sadly died a few years ago, but he set it up as this real kind of nexus of music. And he used to get, and still does, they've continued his work getting young musicians in, meeting there, and then bands form out of this, kind of, melting pot of musical ideas, and go on to great things. And in fact, that was the reason I was at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival this year, was as the guest of my friend, Nicole Cassandra Smit, who I wrote a tune with, and it's on the last Hackney Colliery Band album, it's a tune called Resounding, I'll put a link in the show notes. And that is, she's a fantastic singer, but we met basically through, essentially through The Jazz Bar. We did a blues show at the Fringe for several years together and stayed in touch. But this, that is just one example of the countless collaborations and beautiful musical meetings of mine that have happened in the Jazz Bar over the years. And there are gigs still, I think it's slightly less busy than it used to be, just because it's following the trends of the country where people are sadly going out less, spending less money in bars and things. But certainly for a long time, they had, during the Fringe Festival in particular, they would have sometimes four, five gigs a day. So I remember when I used to often play there till three, four in the morning and then have to get up the next morning to do a family show or something. So it was not getting very much sleep, but there were gigs running from sort of 10 a.m. right through till four or five in the morning, most days, which is quite something. And a lot of those gigs, some of them, it only cost a few quid to get in. And there's musicians, all the musicians on the stage are paid, not very much, it's a small club. But, and the door fees aren't very much, but Bill was always really, really good about paying people there and then, being everyone understanding what the deal was, and just setting up incredibly well so that there's just this real, as I say, kind of nexus of musical activity. So if you're in Edinburgh, the Fringe is coming up, the festival, of course, the International Festival in the Fringe, and all the other festivals that happen in Edinburgh, the Tattoo and everything else, that happens over August. Do please take a trip down to the Jazz Bar, because I guarantee you will see some absolutely world-class musicians there. So yeah, just wanted to give a bit of a shout out to Bill, and the importance of people like Bill in the economy and the scene for not just jazz, but for any more niche musical genre, really, that requires these small venues for people to develop their craft. You know, having music in big concert halls or big arenas or stadiums, you know, that's great, but really people really, really need to develop their craft, particularly in areas like jazz, but I would argue in lots of other ways as well, rock bands and so on. So it's often an individual or a small group of individuals that create these scenes and create the environment to nurture musicians and to create the next generation of music. And so I think it's really important that we acknowledge people like Bill RAP in doing that. So yeah, thank you, Bill. It's meant a lot to me and you continue to be a big inspiration and a shout out to the Edinburgh Jazz Bar. Now, speaking of Edinburgh, as I say, my interview today is with a fantastic musician and also music therapist. And that's what I'm talking to her about in her interview. Her name is Kassandra Louise Isilva. And I was up there in Edinburgh playing in Nicole Smit's band, of which Kasey, I should say, is a member. And yeah, we really hit it off. We had a lovely time. But also, I've wanted since this show started to talk to a music therapist. And so we managed to grab a few minutes backstage at the Jazz Festival. So here we are backstage in the Spiegel tent at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival 2025. Hello. Hello. We're about to do a gig. We're backstage at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival doing a brilliant gig with Nicole Smit, which should be really fun. And we're going on quite soon. So we've got a quick chat. But we were talking to us that we only met last night. Would you mind introducing yourself and what you do? Sure. So my name is Kassandra. I'm a music therapist for the NHS Lothian up here in Scotland. And I work with older people and older people mental health. And the reason I wanted to chat was, I mean, I've wanted to have a music therapist on the show for basically since I set it up. Because I just think there's something, we talk a lot in the show about the different uses of music, whether it's for ritual or for entertainment or for dancing. But we haven't really got into the kind of therapeutic use of it. Can you just explain what music therapy is, I guess? Sure. So music therapy, the way that I use it and understand it, is the use of music and all of its parts to connect with another person for specific purpose, for specific therapeutic purpose. Mostly it's about using music to be with another person, allowing them to be there themselves through music with you and removing some of the stressors or the inadequacies of words to vocalize what it is that's going on for a person, to help them emote without the pressure of naming it in the first instance. So that ties in a lot with a lot of stuff that I've mentioned many times in this podcast before, which is the fact that music, for me, one of the great things about it is that it allows you to express yourself in ways that words aren't always adequate to do, and that human emotions are complicated, and it's not as simple as just happy or sad, or it's often things that fall through the cracks of those words that we have. So can you just talk a little bit more about that? So for a lot of the people that I work with, some of the things that have occurred in their lives or are currently occurring in their lives, are really traumatic for lack of a better word, or hugely complicated experiences, potentially with their family, potentially with just unexpected trauma, or in my case right now with dementia. And so what happens is that those things are really difficult to talk about. And so often what I find is that if you just allow the space to play music together or have a conversation about music in the first instance, I use improvisation. So I'm an clinical improvisation. So you make music together that's new and that's current and that's very present. So for some people who've developed, say, schizophrenia because of genetics or trauma, something as simple as playing music that is made now with another person here that's reflective of this exact moment, it's super present, super grounding. And that can be a revolutionary thing for that person because so often they're not here and now. They're like consumed by somewhere else or something else or other stimuli or, yeah, things like that. And in dementia, where people are literally losing their words, music therapy enables them to connect to the feeling part of you and you can be together musically in that way. But another amazing thing that music does in dementia is it activates independently all the different parts of a person's brain. Because when we hear music, we are processing it through many, many, many firing synapses. So one part of the brain is thinking about the lyrics, another part of the brain is thinking about the movement, another part is interpreting rhythm, another part is hearing, is all about the feeling that you get, the joy or the sadness, the emotion that it evokes, and yet another part is maybe responding with memories. So the nostalgia of a song, for example. Those things are all happening independently of each other. It's not like skittles that you knock one over and they all go. They're all lighting up independently. So in a brain of someone with symptoms or any of the dementias actually where those synapses are no longer connecting and they're not firing together, what music does aside from allowing you to be with the person, so that psychological well-being you get just from being with someone, it actually activates the brain in a way that is cohesive, that doesn't require connections specifically by distinct synapses. Do you know what I mean? So it tricks the brain into acting as a whole organism once more, which is why you see those videos of people talking after they've listened to music for some time with another person because their speech center has been stimulated because of the music in a novel way. And then for that short time after, it's as if the brain is still connected and it's, you're able to talk for a bit and be more here and grounded. It's so fascinating that, and again the show is called Origin of the Pieces about the evolution of music and why it evolved. And I talk quite a lot about how the fact we don't really know, but the fact that it lights up so many areas of the brain like that and can make all these connections, I think is a real insight into some of the reasons it might exist in the first place. Because that is for, I mean, that obviously is happening in our brains that are well as well, obviously, so it happens to all of us. And it's what makes me think, and I said this to you last night, this is what makes me really believe that music is so innate. Like it's, I think our ability to understand it is held alongside our ability to breathe. Like it's that organic, it's that non-thinking, you know? Like we do not have to understand anything. Speech, babies don't understand speech. You need to know absolutely nothing about a civilized human existence to appreciate music, which we know because infants who are days old will respond to music and so will people with dementia. You're talking about babies and today we had a rehearsal today for this show tonight and you have a six-month-old baby, right? I do, yeah. And you were wearing a baby, your daughter in a sling throughout the rehearsal, which is amazing. Yeah, yeah. I did a little bit when my kids were young, but you did the whole rehearsal, it was fantastic. That was my first time. Yeah, it was great. She did brilliantly, didn't she? She did super great, yeah. And do you see links with your daughter and your kids and your work? Am I right in thinking you're working with people at both ends of their life, very young and very old? Yeah, it's great. When I was studying, we learned about pre-verbal communication, and we base a lot of how we connect with another person from that psychology. So in my style of music therapy, I will respond musically to anything that you're doing. So if you raise your arm, even if you didn't mean to, I might play a glissando up or if you blink, if all you can do is blink, I'll maybe staccato each time you blink. And just if you have a foot spasm, I'll maybe hold a tambourine there so that you can feel that connection, and then you hear that, and then I'm singing along with that and creating a soundscape that is reactive, and that over time, you become aware you're responsible for it and we're together in it. And that's all based on pre-verbal communication. So we studied a lot of, like, sort of parent-infant dyadic interactions and how that goes. So when and then I had my own kids, I noticed I was so much more in tune again with my very, very old patients, much older patients with dementia. And in some way, it was like I was, because of the regression that occurs, it was kind of like I was able to hold them more gently even than I was before. And just being able to see that sort of, that they were a child in need of nurturing and in need of that sort of, yeah, connection. Quite an intimate connection. I'm sure it is, yeah, yeah. But that's the, because music can be incredibly intimate, kind of, and because it kind of shortcuts emotions and goes straight to the heart of things rather than needing to try and describe them. Yeah. Well, as you said earlier, when you were saying on this show, you talk a lot about the uses of music and music therapy. There's a music therapist called Katrina McFerrin. She's based in Australia and she's done a lot of work. She works a lot with adolescents and teens. And she's done a lot of work in uses of music. And how we use it, because it is a resource like any other, and it can be like anything used maladaptively. Like we can be using it to reinforce bad feeling, to ruminate, to not move on from a particular event. We just play the same really... It keeps us in a moment. I'm sure you've experienced that where like you'll just, you need to play that song and that song will always make you sad because it reminds you of this time. And she's done a lot of work thinking about like, how can we use that? But then enhance our understanding when we're doing it of how we're using music, why we're using it in this specific way so that it doesn't harm us. So that we don't use music to harm us in that way, but we're using it thoughtfully, consciously. Yeah, so it's a very interesting approach that they've been working on and written about. Yeah, using music almost is a destructive thing, that's interesting. Yeah. Because you're also a fantastic sax player and singer, which is what we're doing tonight. Yeah. And you improvise, of course, as a jazz musician. What are the links between improvising with your patients and as a jazz musician? So, improvising with my patients is different. I'm playing a different instrument. I rarely use the sax because it's good. There have been times I use a clarinet because it's a little bit easier to just pick and put down, and the sound of a clarinet is the timbre is just. So beautiful and warm and wooden, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So it's good. Also, you're trying to improvise in a lot of styles. So sometimes you'll extemporize in maybe someone who really enjoys classical music. So you'll improvise in that kind of style, someone who really enjoys, like someone who loves Elton John. And then you're just sort of doing that vibe on the piano. So you have to be quite versatile as a musician. Yes. So there are different schools of thought. So if you're a music-centered music therapist, then you must be quite versatile as a musician. If you're more psychodynamically-informed, I straddle those. What does psychodynamic mean? That means that it doesn't necessarily, the aesthetic value of the music, the oral value of it, is not necessarily as important as the connection that you're playing together. So it doesn't have to sound like anything particularly tuneful as long as you're in it together. That's okay. And I agree with that. But I also think that there's real value in having it sound nice and having that person be like, oh, I'm making this nice sound. But also then deliberately, if it needs to be discordant, if it needs to not sound nice, allowing for that, but doing it with skill. Yes. Yeah. So what it's done for me personally as a musician is through the course and studying and just playing with so many different people with no sickness, there's no skills required to participate in music therapy. And you don't also have to have dementia or schizophrenia to get music therapy either. It can be for anyone. But it's made me understand really in a way that I thought I did, but now really do, that everyone's music is valid. And so that's allowed me to understand that my music, even in a completely different field, like here there's jazz that I'm going to play, it's valid. Whatever comes out, whatever I'm playing, that's what I'm feeling. That's how it sounds for me today, there, at the thing. And that's super valid. It doesn't have to be anything. It doesn't have to make all the jazzers go hmmm. If it makes me feel like that's the true representation of my moment, then that's done the job. So that's great. That must be very liberating. Because I think a lot of us suffer from, oh, I didn't do that, I didn't play that really. I do, but I try and remember this, you know? I mean, I try to as well, but it must be more present for you, I guess. It can be, you know, like anything. You're like, remember? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, just at the back of your mind. Sometimes, sometimes. Rhythm and melody, I'm always interested in rhythm. I always talk a lot about when I'm running masterclasses, whatever, I always talk about the focus on rhythm. Because I think we should focus on rhythm more. Often, particularly when you're playing jazz or classical music, people talk about the harmony. And of course, people think of tunes as what music is. But for me, rhythm is really at the core of a lot of it. Is that the case in music therapy as well? 100%. A lot of the time, what you need to offer at the beginning, we call it a holding beat. There are many different ways to contain and offer whatever is being brought to you. And one of them is just a steady, very understandable, very supportive beat that people can tether to. So that no matter what else is going on, you've got this. The same can be true of offering a repetitive rhythm or an ostinato, something that people can recognize and that holds a person, that keeps them safe in whatever the music is going to be. So yeah, rhythm is super important. Well, we've got to go play, getting a rhythm. But maybe we can grab another five minutes at interval. And then, but yeah, that's brilliant. Thanks. Let's have a good gig. Thank you. So yes, we had to dash off to go and play a set. And I thought just for this little interlude, I would play a little bit of that set. So here is a tune from Nicole and the rest of the band. I'm going to play a couple of little excerpts. The first is a Swedish re-work of a jazz standard. Nicole is Swedish by birth and she likes to sing in Swedish sometimes. And so this is this beautiful song. I hope you enjoy it. Well, it's called Saktar vi går igen om skål. And I'll give you the, the imagery. It's about a couple and they're wandering around Stockholm really late at night, like 2 a.m. in the morning and they're very in love and you know, everything is just beautiful when you're in love, supposedly. And so they're, you know, stealing a kiss here and there. So that's the vibe for this song. So we're back. Slightly warmer. Looser. Looser. Yeah. It's a fun first set, right? Yeah, really fun. Really fun. Really fun. It's this beautiful Spiegel tent which maybe I can- Show you the back of it. It's the backstage, a glimpse behind the musicians' cloth. We've had a lovely show here at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival. We've got one more set to go. I thought we'd just finish off by talking about a couple of the other bits. We're talking about the role of rhythm for how important that is. How does that manifest? Do you take instruments in when you work with people? Yeah. The way that it works is- Great question. I will go in with usually a harmonic instrument. By which you mean like a- Like a guitar or a piano or a ukulele. Usually, I have all three. Actually, I'm quite proud that I have adopted a piano in each of the wards that I work, so there is enough right in each of them. Yeah. There's just something really nice about having a piano and that it's there. It's there. Piano, they can access it whenever they want. A real acoustic instrument. Digital instruments are fantastic these days. They're really, really good, but there's just something about the resonance of it in the room. 100 percent. Digital instruments can work great in a setting like this when you're, it's all being amplified, but in an acoustic room. When you have a sound engineer, we don't have that in the hospital. Of course. Yeah. No, but you're right. Like I was saying about the timbre of the clarinet, the same is true of all these acoustic instruments. So we'll go in with those and then a collection or a selection of hand-hold percussive instruments. And some like, you know, xylophones or metallophones, both tuned and untuned percussion, egg shakers. Some are adapted so that they're easier to hold. But there's no wrong way to play the instrument. So if someone is using it in an inventive way, or like not the usual, you let that play out and you allow it. And you see how that goes and how satisfying it is for them to make that sound. And yeah, and so, yeah, so we supply the instruments and we bring them in and people will use them. So children will use them readily. Older people will use them more readily. Improvising to, there's this quote from my studies that's coming to me. Just improvising for a sort of a non-impaired adult can often be like quite a confusing or it's an anathema. Like, you know, you want me to do what? You want me to do how? But you sort of warm, that's where rhythm comes in. That's where beat comes in because you're like, this is something tangible, recognizable that you can tell that you just have a go at this. People will also use their voice. Yeah, but I mean, the thing I always say about when I'm teaching people to improvise, even people who can't really play an instrument or whatever, is that we're improvising all the time. This conversation is improvised, it's not scripted. You're improvising all the time with what's around you. It's just that you just don't have to apply that with some sort of technique, even very basic technique like shaking a thing. So it's really interesting because I was a music teacher before. So I worked in a forensic music therapy for quite some time, and it's called forensic music therapy because you're working with the mentally disordered offenders. So people who are otherwise in full grasp of their capacity, like their cognition and everything like that, you know, so unlike dementia, for example, or a learning disability. People will not access the music as readily unless it's something recognizable, unless it's something that brings them in. Songs are very good for that. People want to learn. There's this aspect where they want to learn something. They want to come away with some sort of skill. So they understand that what you're offering is not music lessons, but they are unable to divorce themselves from that idea of what is good music and how can I be proficient. So there's this really interesting line that you have to walk when you're in an environment like that where you want people to engage. There's this block that they have because they have this lifelong developed idea about what is good music, what is worth listening to, what is valid as I was saying before. And that's quite a significant block to have come, a block that people with dementia don't have or children don't have necessarily. And so yeah, so I find that sometimes in my work, it is useful to go, okay, I'm going to teach you how to do this so that we can get over this barrier. Yeah, get over the hurdle, yeah. But then if you think psychologically about the benefits of acquiring a new skill, of becoming better at something, of attaining that level of proficiency in something that you were not proficient in before, there is huge psychological benefits to that. So it can't be completely separated from your therapeutic outcomes. Like if learning the instrument is something that's like the person wants, then as a music therapist I can, I think my approach allows for that. Allows for, okay, let's learn a bit of this. But at the same time, let's think about you and how we're relating, and how we're relating through the music. I noticed that you were just like, for example, I'll be improvising with someone, someone who had quite profound schizophrenia. And improvising with them, they wanted to play the piano. So they would always play up at the top, and I played the bottom, because I wanted to ground them. I wanted to play the sort of portal, slow portal movements, rhythmic actives, just really grounding the music to support whatever they were doing. Because what they were doing was offering me just all of their fingers like this, just the wall of sound. And I was shaping it and playing around it so that it sounded cohesive, that we were doing that together. But in the moment, how it felt, how we were relating, was there was this huge barrier between us. He was, this was this, this was what he was offering. And it was almost impermeable because it was just this wall of sound. And I thought how guarded this person is and how slow our process was to allow me to offer this, to make the music with so that even in the way that we were relating musically, there's so much to be learned about how we relate non-musically. And that's a really fascinating, so that's sort of psychological aspect, which is very important. And obviously in the work that we do, when you're working, say, not in dementia, because you can offer psychologically informed music therapy and you're helping the staff understand what's going on for a patient. But it's not necessarily that you're helping the patient. It's far along in the dementia. But in work with adults like that, the way that you make music together, the way that you relate musically, actually can tell you a lot about how they're relating to people in all of their relationships. One thing I wanted to ask was what is the reason and the value of participatory music rather than just taking in a CD player or an MP3 player or whatever? And sort of active music making versus like receptors. Yeah, actively making music rather than just listening to it. There's benefits to both. I wouldn't write off one or the other. There's lots of studies that have shown that active music making actually does a lot for your well-being. But because you're engaged, you're sort of, it's a multi-sensory, multi-factory engagement, you know. You're listening, you're playing, you're moving, you're singing, you're using more of your senses and therefore you're more present and you're more, you've got more in it, do you know. But there is a huge, there's lots and lots of ways that have been developed. It's called receptive music therapy. When you're using pre-recorded music or if you're playing live but pre-composed music potentially or pre-composed music just as part of a group, so yeah. And then there's a whole school of thought, music therapy called Bonnie Guided Imagery and Music, which is like a whole other thing where they create a playlist basically, and then guide you through it with using different imagery for a specific purpose and for specific. So there are loads of different types of music therapy and music therapists who become really good at using those types. I'm sort of a jack of all trades, but mostly an improvisational one. But I use a lot of pre-composed music. But sometimes listening to music, like just having a listening session, can be a really valuable way of helping people show who they are a bit, because a lot of people demonstrate their identity through music as well, especially teenagers, that we all do, actually. I had a bry the other day, which is like a barbecue, yeah, yeah. And I put a playlist on. And it was a playlist of like golden oldies, which I love. And then I was like, this is not the vibe. And then I was like, these people want the other side of me. So then I put on my other, like my hip playlist, and then people were vibing much more. And I was just like, I've just casually done a little bit of music therapy here to like change the vibe. I suppose in a sense that means, in a sense, in a sense, all music is sort of therapy of some sort I suppose. Yeah, in that really like low, we would call that low intensity, low intensity music therapy. It's not asking anything of anyone, you're just like creating an ambience. But even a gig like the one tonight, in a sense, you know, that's therapeutic for both us as players and hopefully the audience. Definitely. I feel a lot better than I did before the set. Yes, me too, me too, me too. And that we also danced backstage, that I love to do with it. We did, that was good fun. Movement. Movement is another thing. Yeah, they were obviously inextricably linked. We've got to get back on. But I'm going to ask you one more thing, which is what I ask almost everyone I speak to, which is what is the point of music? What is the point of music? Well, it's very easy for me to answer, because as I told you already, I think it's innate. I think it is core human. Like we cannot human without music. It is like that, infants understand that minor third, like that everyone sings to an infant in that interval. Like you'll check yourself, even though like the taunts, na na na na na na na. All around the world, like, well, Western world, you know. But yeah, I think it's like, it's integral. It's innate. It's core. So I think we can't not music. We can't not music. And I like the, I like you using music as a verb. So that's the music, you know, because, because I think I'm a great believer in that as well. Audiences are sort of music-ing when they're, when they're listening and we're obviously making music and we're music-ing when we do that. Yeah. So we're music-ing together. Yeah. I use music as a verb. We do in our profession. Well, good. And I think it's, yeah, I think it makes it sort of sounds a bit strange to start with, but I think it does make sense because it is a, it is an experience both as the performer and the listener, I think, and it is the sort of synergy of those two things that makes it what it is. Yeah. And the thing I like about my answer is that it doesn't, it doesn't presuppose any specific purpose for music for any one person. It allows for anyone to music in exactly the way that they do. And that's the point of it, really. It's just you can't not. Even people who don't like music, so this is just a little again in the in the dementia work. People will be like, oh, I don't like music. I don't like music, but they'll potentially love football. You play their football chance. Yeah, of course. People who like watch the match of the day, that theme tune for match of the day comes on and they are just galvanized by it. So people think that they don't like music, but music signifies people's lives in ways they're not even conscious of because it's so innate. One of the things that I want to do, I've been in talks with some football clubs to try and go. I'm not into football at all, but I want to go into a game and record the football chance. Amazing. Yeah. It's the same reason. It is. It's a hair raising. Yeah, I get goosebumps. Yeah, exactly. And it's a mass singing event, which I'm quite interested in. Anyway, we're going to go back and play. Thanks so much. That's really lovely. Have you got anything that you want to plug or anything you want to refer people to, if they want to find out more? Yeah. So there's a Music for Dementia website that I developed. It's called Music and Dementia. If you look on the NHS Lothian website, it's public so anyone can look at it. And it will just give people ideas of how to use music with their loved one who has dementia, teach you a little bit about the brain and music, and just give you ways of connecting with someone maybe who has lost faith in your ability to connect with a loved one. And there's loads of following resources from there, but I'm quite proud of it. But it's also good not just for people with dementia, it might help you. It's got some resources for playlists that might help you with your own mental health as well. So go have a look. Great. You have to give me the link and I'll put it in the show. Yeah, I will. Lovely. All right. Let's go back on stage. Okay. Thanks so much. Thank you. So, my thanks once again to Kassandra Luizia Silva for that really interesting chat about music therapy. Something I'd like to do in the future is to go along to a music therapy session. So, I'm sure we'll be revisiting this at some stage over the coming months and years, because I find the idea of music therapy really fascinating, and it's not something I've really experienced for a long time. I did a little bit when I was a teenager. I was over in Poland and working with some learning disabled people over there, which I really loved at the time, but that was a long time ago, so I'm sure things have moved on greatly since then. So, it was really interesting to get that insight. And I really like that idea of music being therapy sort of almost all the time. There's obviously specific clinical music therapy, the likes of which Casey does, but then there's also just the idea that we use music as therapy day in, day out, whether we're playing it or whether we're an audience or whether we're just listening on headphones or at home. So yeah, really interesting ideas. I'd love to know what you think about this, if you've got any views on music therapy. Speaking about hearing from you guys, please do drop me a line if you've got any feedback or you wanna make any comments. Also, just a reminder, I've sort of slightly parked this for the last few weeks because I've been so busy with other projects, but just a reminder that we have this new segment that's gonna come up on the show as the year progresses, which is called Clip and Mix, where you're gonna send me some little things you might have recorded on your phone, little videos maybe, or little audio files, and you can send them to podcast.stevepretty.com. And I will turn them into a little track and I will kind of narrate how I do that as I do it to just explain the process of turning any sound, it could be anything random. The other day I was in a hotel and I was playing around with some road works outside. It woke me up early, it's very annoying. But I recorded them and I'm sort of planning to turn those into a bit of a track as a demonstration of this. So it can really be anything from a squeaky gate to if you've got a kid who's, you know, strumming a ukulele or a guitar or something, and then we can explore some different ways of finding music within those little clips of sound. So yes, podcast at stevepretty.com for the clip and mix feature. Also, for those of you asking, I have very much not forgotten the other sections that I do in this show, one of which is of course the genre tombola, and I've got lots of stuff to come on the genre tombola. I've got to talk about tonnass, the flamenco genre and many other things. So I haven't forgotten that. It has just been an unusually busy and slightly hectic and hairy few months with one thing and another. I've been, there's lots of stuff I can't really talk about at the moment, but I've been doing various pitches for big composing gigs, and I've been doing a lot of live stuff that I've mentioned, and I've had various family things going on and what have you. But I'm really liking how sort of nimble I'm able to be with this show now, where I'm just doing one thing at a time. I do miss the format where I was doing two or three things per episode, that kind of magazine format. But the fact that I can just kind of get an interview done, have a little chat to you on the camera here, and then get the episode out does make it a lot easier to keep things rolling in with some sort of regularity. So thanks for bearing with all the changes. But these features have not been forgotten. They are coming back. I'm going to spend quite a lot of time over the summer preparing some of this stuff so that we can really hit the ground running in the autumn. Might take a little bit of a break over August while I get some of this stuff rolling. But yes, we are progressing. Once again, a shout out for the Patreon. If you go to originofthepieces.com and that can link you to the Patreon or you can search on patreon.com and for Origin of the Pieces. And once again, anything from zero pounds per month to five pounds or even more if you can afford it will help to support the show, keep the show independent, keep it hopefully interesting and engaging and allow me to spend the time that I do on it, which is a lot of time that I love to invest in it. But yes, some cash is helpful. As you can imagine, it takes quite a lot of putting together. So if you go to originofthepieces.com, there's also a mailing list there you can sign up for, which is really, really helpful. I'm gonna be dropping some extra goodies there, some ticket offers and some thoughts on the latest shows and some other, maybe some other recommendations and suggestions over the coming months. But meanwhile, my thank you once again to Casey for that lovely interview that we did in Edinburgh and to Nicole Smit for the use of her tracks from the gig that we did up at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival. And of course, to Hackney Colliery Band and Angelique Kidjo for the theme song, which I wrote with Angelique. And we're gonna be back very soon. I think I'm probably gonna do one more episode in July and then maybe take a few weeks off to get all of those outstanding interviews edited and tracks made for the genre tombola and everything else. And then hit the ground running again, hopefully, in September. So, meanwhile, thank you for listening. Stay musically curious and I'll speak to you soon. Bye!