“When Meds Fail: A Case For Music Therapy”
1.The main theme of the speech is that music therapy is important in all phases of life and can help everyone in some way. He does a good job at explaining how he thought that music and medicines were a “fork” in the road instead of an intersection.
He made some great points, such as pointing out that we are all rhythmic, through our heart beats, breathing patterns, and sleeping cycles. Using these examples, he really connected with the audience to show how connected people are to music. After this, he talks about how music is a connecting bond, and it works because he had already established how we can all connect to music.
The main focus towards the end of his speech is that music effects people from the beginning of a person’s life. His desire to have the crowd sing a song at the end was ineffective because they not only didn’t know the song, but now also know that it’s the song he sang to his daughter as she died. I see where he was going with the usage of song, but it was more uncomfortable and sad than a good ending.
2. He starts the presentation by singing — no explanation, no words said before he begins singing a song that no one knows the story behind or the meaning to. Then he explains the story behind the song and his usage of song as an introduction becomes much more effective almost immediately. I am fairly sure that during a speech, you would absolutely never start off by singing, especially for the lengthy amount of time (around a minute) that he does in this Ted Talk. However, for a presentation, you can really do anything to catch the audience’s attention, and the singing feels more appropriate than it would if used in a speech. This shows that a speech is a bit more formal than a presentation. Because he used more pictures and personal stories, I would say that this learns more towards presentation.
