Oh Crud, It's TME Tuesday

Usually, Tuesdays are my easiest post days. I simply pull out something from my TME file and copy it into the post and, voila! I am finished. During summer, however, I am all off my regular schedule due to changes in my work schedules and the abundance of sunshine and all the darn pollen out there, so I get a bit discombobulated when it comes to having my plans finished up.

I think I may take a bit of a TME Tuesday hiatus this summer - I will try to focus on things like writing TMEs or coming up with ideas - or, I may just do TMEs, who knows, but since it has been a bit of a surprise to me that Tuesday comes around every week, it seems for the best.

Of course, that means generating material for these "not necessarily TME Tuesdays." This may be more difficult than I originally thought.

So, since I've made this decision this morning, I guess I'll go with it.

Today's topic? Hmmm.


I firmly believe that every music therapist who works with clients should have a bag of tricks, a TME file, a list of ideas, songs, and interventions written down somewhere. I don't think that my way is the best way to write these down, but it is the best way for me. I make my poor interns do my way until they graduate, and then they can do what works best for them.

I also firmly believe that any music therapy intervention, activity, application, or experience (or whatever else we decide to call it) has to be firmly rooted in music in order to be considered music therapy. If the speech pathologist down the hallway can sing the song as I write it down and get all of my goals and objectives covered, then why in the world would my facility want to pay us both? So, my TMEs must be firmly rooted in the music and how we, the members of the therapeutic triad, interact with and in and through that music.

Now, I do write songs for learning. I design file folder kits for any one who is interested in using them. When I use them in a music therapy session, I am using the elements of music and shaping the music and the session and the TME to the clients who are present in the moment, not just singing the song. 

I've had co-workers notice this fact and share it with me. "He doesn't respond the same way when I sing that song to him." I admit that I get a bit smug about that and allow myself a moment of celebration at a later time, away from the person. In the moment itself, I talk to them about the difference between music and music therapy as I see it in their circumstance. Inside my head, my music therapy advocate voice is yelling, "Yeeeessss! They understand the benefit of a well-trained therapist within a musical environment!!!"

I have a specific format that I use to write my therapeutic music experiences. That format has adapted over time, deepened, become more over the years, but the basic idea and many of the elements have remained the same since I first started my TME file. I think that this format works well for me because it makes sense of why and how I can use a specific piece of music to work on specific treatment goals. Writing everything down into my format helps me understand how I could use the music with my clients. The more I write, the more I process the ideas and make them something that is available to my clients when the situation calls for those ideas.

I am working on some TME projects and will be spending some time writing new things - I already have several new songs that are awaiting transcription and formal writing into the TME file. I'm not sure if I'll get those done at any time soon - I seem to be spending more time involved in sleeping lately (typical for me during the summer months) - but I'll get to them in time. Until then, I'll just continue to natter on.

Happy Tuesday, all.