Back To Basics - Again and Again and Again

It's that time of year - time to get back to basics.

"Basics," you may ask? "Yep," I reply wearily, "basics."

This is the time of year when staff members, clients, and, oh, music therapists get restless and need some focus on what is really important during music therapy.

We've had lots of changes in the past three months. We've all moved (some of us SEVERAL times) from our temporary locations into the newly renovated old school building. Classroom groups have had lots of changes lately. Kids are leaving and arriving daily, so classroom climates are changing daily. There is no clear hierarchy of student relationships, and, by the time students start to know where they stand in the pecking order, a new student arrives and throws off the entire order yet again. This confusion and difficulty with knowing how to act with peers transfers into the music therapy session. It's my job to try to provide some regularity in music therapy while still assessing the new kids and promoting group cohesion and appropriate social awareness.

In addition to what the students are bringing to the session, I am bringing lots of my stuff into the session as well. A good therapist understands that it is difficult to separate personal self from professional self, but that therapist attempts to separate those selves when in the music therapy setting. But, being human, the good therapist also recognizes that both of those selves affect what happens in the session. Here's my confession - I have been less able to engage my clients in therapeutic music experiences just lately. I think this is because I am overextended, overwhelmed, and over focused on things that are not part of music therapy treatment.

So, it's time to get back to basics.

For me, the most basic and most therapeutic element of music is tempo. Others may comment that that is not their element of choice, but it is mine. Each group has a tempo at which they function best. Sometimes the tempo is related to motor entrainment, sometimes it's oral motor entrainment, sometimes it's just plain old musical preference related, but there is a tempo for each group.  The trick is finding that tempo.

When you are attempting to get a group of people entrained to a steady beat, it is pretty easy to see who doesn't have the same tempo as others. I do this with body percussion often. We start a beat pattern - patsch patsch clap rest, repeat - and I can tell who can keep up and who cannot. I then adjust the tempo for the person(s) who cannot keep up to see where their tempo is in the range of possibilities. If the rest are truly entrained to the external beat, they will adjust to the new tempo. If not, then you shift again.

So, for this week, I'll be doing as much as I can to work on finding the tempo of each group that I work with in music therapy (still in classrooms, but getting closer to having a music therapy room - I am starting to move things into cabinets!!). We'll be grounding as much as we can into a steady beat. We will be finding our groove as a group. Back to basics.

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