Parents flock to new baby CD by Thomas Schoenberger

"Schoenberger effect" composer gains popularity with hypnotic tunes for the crib and cradle set.

Andy Demsky, Special to The Chronicle Friday, February 21, 2003

One night in 1982, Thomas Schoenberger heard a chilling noise outside the window of his Berkeley apartment - the sounds of a woman screaming and struggling to get away from an attacker.

"When I went outside, I thought it was a rape," he says.

Armed only with the invincibility of youth, he leaped into the middle of the fracas and almost immediately felt a sensation like getting slammed in the head with a suitcase full of hammers.

When he attempted to help the woman, the guy walloped Schoenberger with a heavy instrument. He never saw it coming, so he literally doesn't know what hit him.

He woke up in a hospital half an hour later, and spent 10 days undergoing treatment for a severe head injury. He emerged with a sensitivity to light and heard "weird vibrations." Certain sounds gave him headaches. Schoenberger, now 42 years old, still suffers from migraines, sleeplessness and other symptoms almost too bizarre to be believed, such as classical music playing constantly in his head.

"There are lots of ways into the music business," says this boyish Napa composer, who still bears a Harry Potter-like scar near his hairline. "Getting brutally attacked on a street corner isn't one I'd suggest."

Before the incident, Schoenberger played in a band covering New Wave groups like the Dead Kennedys. Today, as a result of the fallout from his injury, he is a prolific composer - he estimates that he has written nearly 4,000 pieces of music and claims that he can write four double-piano sonatas a night.

Now his attention is focused on creating award-winning music CDs for the crib and cradle set. His second effort, called "The Ultimate Baby CD," is a lively collection of sonatas, waltzes and concerti that has sold more than 10, 000 copies in Northern California - much of it through word of mouth. The CD is poised to hit the market nationally in outlets such as QVC and Wal-Mart.

Schoenberger believes the blow to his skull 20 years ago changed the wiring in his brain. It started with math.

"After I got out of the hospital, I had terrible insomnia, and I would lay in bed at night and math problems would run in my head. For hours it'd be 264 times 37 equals 9,768. One hundred twenty-two times 427 equals 52,094," he said.

Perhaps most startling was that he got the answers right.

Besides the obsession with numbers came debilitating headaches, which he sought treatment for. After medication failed, the first sign of relief came in an unexpected form.

"I noticed that when the migraines got really bad, listening to certain kinds of music alleviated this red ball of pain in my head - Haydn, Mozart, the music of the 18th century," he says. "That's when I got interested in the effect of music on the architecture of the mind."

Science is practically part of Schoenberger's genetic structure. His father, Theodore, is a psychiatrist, and an uncle is a cardiologist and former president of the American Heart Association. His brother is a microbiologist with articles in journals such as Nature and Science to his credit. With help and encouragement from family members, Schoenberger spent years poring over research on the effects of music on neural pathways and brain development and became convinced of its efficacy.

In the early 1990s, research emerged that indicated that children seemed to score better on certain tests after listening to Mozart. The media and parents around the world latched on to this so-called Mozart Effect as a way of raising children's IQs.

Schoenberger shakes his head. "Of course there was a backlash. They bastardized the science. The real truth of the original research is still valid - the rhythms and melodies of the 18th century have a positive effect on neural pathways."

Meanwhile, the nightly hamster-wheel of math drills was gradually replaced - with music.

"I hear music constantly. It's like a spigot I can't turn off," he says, adding that he can hold about 40 minutes of music in his head, storing it to write down later.

He sleeps only four hours a night, spending the rest of the nocturnal hours engaged in a process that sounds more like transcribing music than composing it.

The obsession with math, music and the mind channeled itself toward music for infants with the birth of his son, Wolfgang, in 2000. "When my wife was four months pregnant, I wrote the first half of the first CD, which was eventually called ÔMusic for Infants.' Then I wrote the second half when he was four months old, so I could get his reactions."

He produced the first CD in three days, writing and recording on a multitrack keyboard in his living room between midnight and 3 a.m.

The idea of creating a CD for a wider market than his own family came when he gave a few recorded songs to a friend with a newborn.

"She came back and said, This is great stuff; my baby loves this.' Later, I got the same reaction from another friend with an infant. They said their kids were soothed and exhibited a lot of interest and pleasure at the sound of the music," Schoenberger said.

He now has scores of testimonials ranging from a Napa woman who has given numerous copies to friends to Hollywood film producer Richard Suckle, who e- mailed to say, "It is always the very first baby gift we give to all of our friends, and now with the excitement of my wife and I expecting our first child, we've been listening to ÔThe Ultimate Baby CD' for ourselves."

The first big recommendation came last year when the Dr. Toy Web site (www.drtoy.org) named the CD one of its "Best Products of 2002." Dr. Toy is children's toy expert Dr. Stevanne Auerbach.

"There's music here for every mood and season," Auerbach says. "Lots of music for children is too loud, too jarring. This is soothing and lifting and helps create a stimulating environment."

Auerbach is not interested in the Mozart Effect, saying she's much more keen on creating home environments full of love and learning between children and parents.

Schoenberger says, "I don't say that listening to this music will raise your baby's IQ. But I do believe it helps create an environment where that can happen - the rhythms and harmonies of 18th century music offer stimulus during a very, very important time in brain development, in which trillions of neural connections are being made."

The difference between his music and a CD composed by, say, Mozart, is that Schoenberger's tunes are written specifically for the attention span of an infant. "Playing a 30- to 40-minute classical piece is too much. It's overstimulation," he says.

Schoenberger describes the songs on his CD as two-minute journeys. "I try to create micro-environments of mood, try to explore a whole palate of emotion. "

Parents tell him they can share the enjoyment of the CD with their kids, rather than grit their teeth through another performance of Chicken Dance Elmo.

"I have reservations about lots of the music out there for children," he says. "Most of it is either narcotic or manic. And it drives parents crazy. They become as purple as the dinosaur singing it."

Dr. Christine Loffler-Barry, a pediatrician with offices in Napa and St. Helena, enjoys the CD so much that she listens to it with her two children, ages 3 and 6. She also sells the CDs in her offices.

"I don't sell it with the pretense that it's going to raise a baby's intelligence. But the music is soothing and calming. It certainly promotes a balanced environment for a baby and promotes quality time with parents and children," says Loffler-Barry. "It's especially nice in the car when kids are sometimes bored or hyper."

Loffler-Barry, who believes that classical music such as this offers developmental benefits, turns the CD on in her car. As the music plays, she tells her children the story of the man who wrote the music for his own little boy.

Next up for the composer is the introduction of his baby CD to a national audience. The music has created enough buzz to be noticed by Media Corp Worldwide, which signed him to a national distribution deal in December. Schoenberger has just completed an infomercial that is the start of a national rollout for "The Ultimate Baby CD." The CD has also landed a featured review in Parenting Magazine, due out in March 2003. In the meantime, the CD is sold at Napa's Queen of the Valley Hospital.

Schoenberger has high hopes that his music, which has been dubbed as offering "the Schoenberger effect," by Internet fans, will enter the lives of more babies. He already has enough material recorded for 25 more CDs.

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BABY MUSIC
For information on Thomas Schoenberger and his music, visit www.intelibaby.com or www.media-corp.com.