In Search of a Sunday Series...

Here I sit, on Sunday morning at 5:04 am, staring at my computer screen, searching for an idea of some sort of theme that I can sustain for several weeks in some sort of series. I usually do something on Sundays, and I have enjoyed some of the things that I've written about. The last one was a Research Synthesis Sunday which turned out to be more chore than useful. I sort of discarded the idea about the time that all this COVID-19 stuff came to my door. I've also done Just a Song Sundays, Song Switch Sundays, Song Conversion Sundays, Supplemental Sundays, Song Lyric Sundays, and Sing a Song Sundays (these are the labels to search if you are interested in seeing some of my past Sunday thoughts).

I want to do something new for this day, so I am brainstorming something that I want to do. I thoroughly enjoyed the Sing a Song Sundays - I enjoy analyzing music into various therapeutic elements to see how I would use these pieces for music therapy. I did not really sustain the Song Switch Sundays long enough to get into what I originally envisioned for that topic - how to adapt a song to make it into a different engagement for client and therapist. That may be a topic to revisit.

If you haven't noticed by reading all the titles that I listed above, I REALLY like alliteration, so there has to be some sort of "s" word involved in the title. Silly, I know, but completely my deal!!

So, Song Switch Sunday seems to be the way into a series for the moment.

The original post, written in December 2014, was a way for me to expand upon my therapeutic music experience ideas into more of the adaptation/extension thoughts that I challenge myself to develop when I am envisioning ideas for therapeutic interactions with my clients.

The intended format was to present a therapeutic music experience on Tuesday (which was my pattern at the time, and then I got really upset when people started getting snarky over how everything in the music therapy world should be given away for free, and I stopped sharing so readily) and then take it through my song chart process and talk about how the music could be shaped and altered to work on or support additional goals and transform the music into something that had multiple uses in the milieu. .,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,(Bella-cat wanted to add some punctuation here - I guess she wants me to pause...)

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(Okay, Boo-Belle, that's all the pausing that I'm going to do right now.)

So, it's important to start with a therapeutic music experience (TME) that includes some sort of set music - rather than an improvisation TME so that the format of the music can be adapted through my way of thinking about music and all the elements included therein.

PLEASE NOTE that what I talk about is the way I have evolved into thinking about music as a therapeutic medium. It is based on significant amounts of reading, research (done by myself and by lots of others in the world out there), and 27 years of clinical practice, mentoring, and thinking about all of this stuff all the time! This makes sense to me, so I enjoy sharing it with others. It makes sense to some other folks out there as well, so I continue to talk about these concepts whenever I can!!

So, first you take a piece of music. Second, you analyze that music, thinking about all the elements that are present. My list includes melody, harmony, rhythm, meter, form, lyrics, timbre, dynamics, style/genre, tempo, and therapeutic use. I arrange these things into a graphic organizer that I like. Here's an example of one...

As you can see, this particular song offers many options for a music therapist to adapt the music to fit particular clients. The purpose of these posts, though, is to take the options available here and examine them a bit more in depth. I would take this song, learn it (of course), and then play a bit with changing elements. What happens when you shift the mode from minor to major? How does the music change? What happens when you change the meter from 4/4 to 3/4? How does the feel of the music switch when you change things? When you change the mode, do the lyrics still fit? What happens if you substitute one chord with another?

Hmmm. This may need to have a video link to really demonstrate it. Are you all ready to watch me do some recordings on early Sunday mornings? They will NOT be perfect, and they will be raw, but the only real way to demonstrate these things is to perform the pieces. I wonder if this would be a copyright infringement? Better stick to pieces that are mine or are in the public domain until I've figured it all out...

Time to head to my paper planning system to hash all this out. I think I'll start with a list of music that I can share without fear of recrimination, and then move forward from there. Next week, I will share one of the songs that I've been singing since my internship - Wake Up Body. Be prepared for messy hair, cracking voices, and the occasional camera-hogging cat view...

See you next week!