Sing A Song Sunday - Jack Sparrow

I am a soundtrack music junkie. The music for movies, television shows, and plays just draws me in and gets my attention wherever I am. I spent most of yesterday watching The Pirates of the Caribbean movies, so I have that music in my head this morning. Today's music selection is from one of my favorite composers, Hans Zimmer.

I chose a piece from The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest entitled Jack Sparrow. You can hear the piece here. I love this particular piece of music as it seems to embody the character of Jack Sparrow - oh, excuse me, Captain Jack Sparrow - in a way that exemplifies his swagger, ne'er do well attitude, and insouciance all through the music.

How to use this musical piece clinically? I'm afraid that most of my use for this type of recorded music is as a background figure for something else entirely. For example, I may be playing this piece when encouraging clients to move their extremities in a pattern - they may have props, they may not. This might work for an episode of make-believe with my clients, but not if they are familiar with the movie music. If they are familiar with the music, they will probably just remember Captain Jack and the movie plots rather than transferring details of their lives into the music. If they are unfamiliar with the music, there is a greater chance that we could do something along the lines of imaginary play or emotional discussion, but that is a skill that is often not easily communicated by my clients.

 Personally, I use music like this for relaxation, stimulation, and motivation. Recently, a life hack (#762, if you are interested) on Pinterest suggested that you listen to the Hans Zimmer channel on Pandora when studying as "Music has no distracting lyrics, and the scores are intended to motivate." I disagree with the last part of the statement - I'm not sure that the scores were composed to motivate people, but they are composed to direct your attention.

I will spend some time this week reviewing all of my soundtracks to make a personal playlist and to remind myself of the vast library of music that I have at my fingertips. It will be nice to be able to introduce some music other than Justin Bieber and Lady GaGa to my clients...

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