Austin Chapman was born profoundly deaf. Hearing aids helped some, but music -- its full range of pitches and tones -- remained indecipherable. As Chapman explains, "I've never understood it. My whole life I've seen hearing people make a fool of themselves singing their favorite song or gyrating on the dance floor. I've also seen hearing people moved to tears by a single song. That was the hardest thing for me to wrap my head around."
But earlier this month, that changed when Chapman got new hearing aids (Phonak's Naída S Premium).
Austin Chapman said:
The first thing I heard was my shoe scraping across the carpet; it startled me. I have never heard that before and out of ignorance, I assumed it was too quiet for anyone to hear.
I sat in the doctor's office frozen as a cacophony of sounds attacked me. The whir of the computer, the hum of the AC, the clacking of the keyboard, and when my best friend walked in I couldn't believe that he had a slight rasp to his voice. He joked that it was time to cut back on the cigarettes.
That night, a group of close friends jump-started my musical education by playing Mozart, Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, Sigur Ros, Radiohead, Elvis, and several other popular legends of music.
Being able to hear the music for the first time ever was unreal.
When Mozart's Lacrimosa came on, I was blown away by the beauty of it. At one point of the song, it sounded like angels singing and I suddenly realized that this was the first time I was able to appreciate music. Tears rolled down my face and I tried to hide it. But when I looked over I saw that there wasn't a dry eye in the car.
Following that experience, Chapman did what any smart Internet-connected 23-year-old* with a question for a crowd would do: He turned to Reddit, asking, "I can hear music for the first time ever, what should I listen to?"
The response was tremendous, running more than 14,000 comments and garnering the attention of Spotify, which gave him six months of free membership and a 13-hour playlist that covers a huge range of music. In the Reddit conversation, bands like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin figure in prominently, as do classical composers such as Beethoven (side note: can you imagine listening to this for the first time?). Overall, Chapman said to me over email that Beethoven's Ninth was the top most recommended piece.
There's more music suggested in those comments than it seems possible to consume in a lifetime. Chapman says he's going with the recommendation of one GiraffeKiller: "This is like introducing an Alien to the music of Earth. I wouldn't know where to start. Once you're through your kick on Classical, I might start with music from the 50's and progress through each decade. You can really see the growth of modern music like that." Except he's going to start earlier -- way earlier -- with Guillaume de Machaut's Agnus Dei which dates to the 14th century.