Just A Little Something for My Amusement





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Songwriting Sunday: Repetition

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One of the things that I find to be helpful with my client population (children, adolescents, and young adults with dual diagnoses) is repetition of phrases, lyrics, and music. As a result of 30+ years of working with this population in various iterations, I have found that my clients respond the most to songs with three repeated phrases to prime their responses with a different phrase to communicate the important part of the experience. DISCLAIMER: This is not a definite way to write music for clinical interactions. This is what seems to work well with my particular group of human beings. Don't go to your supervisors and tell them that I told you that this is the ONLY way to write music - It is NOT! You have to find what works for your clients and for their clinical goals. Since my clients respond well to this type of song, I tend to write songs in this format more than any other. What I have found is that my clients remember these songs more than the ones that I do in different f...
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Being An Internship Director: On Hiatus

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It has been long enough since I have had an intern that I am seriously feeling like I have little to say on the subject. At the same time, I am currently writing Chapter 5 of my general internship handbook, so I am able to write about being an intern and what types of things to think about during this important time in our professional development. It is a strange place to be in, and it is one that is a bit challenging for me. Right now, I have had three vacant internship positions since the beginning of the calendar year. I will have a vacant position next month and that will be an entire year of rejected offers. In the past nine months, I have offered positions to three applicants who have declined. It is interesting how people complain that there aren't enough internship programs, but programs like mine are empty. I guess there aren't enough internship programs that pay large stipends (which mine cannot) out there. I get it. It is interesting to me how we have moved from an ...
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Music Therapy Is Going Smoothly - This is Suspicious to Me

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I have today and tomorrow off for a medical procedure, so it is time to do some reflection to keep myself from going into an anxiety spiral. The next two days are going to be lots of "hurry up and wait" situations, so I have to spend some time engaged in distracting myself so I don't eat and so I take what I need to take when I need to take it. So, I am going to focus on what is happening in my music therapy space right now. This week is my music education focus week. I have a different focus for every week to help me organize and to give us all a starting point. Within those foci, I tend to vary my treatment to reflect what is happening with each group that comes into my space. I figure a session is a success if clients leave in a calm manner after their time with me, so I use that as my focus for treatment. I do what I feel I need to do to get clients to that point. There are times when I throw out my determined focus the moment the group enters the room. There are othe...
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