Throwback Sunday: Visuals That Help Me Figure Out What I Am Doing With Clients - From the Archives

I am not really in the mood to be writing a therapeutic music experience today, so here is another one of my resources. I think better when I have a visual aid rather than just words, so I use one of my programs to make visuals for concepts that I find either difficult or very important. This is one of the important ones.
musictxandme.blogspot.com; musictherapyworks.com
How I figure out how to use songs. Copyright by Mary Jane Landaker, MME, MT-BC. All rights reserved.

I'm often asked where I get my ideas for therapeutic music experiences. This is a decision tree that demonstrates where I get some of my ideas. It starts with a song. Any song.

When I find a song that I want to use for therapy for some reason or another, I go through a process of looking at the lyrics and thinking about my client. Thinking about both of these things helps me to decide what to do next with the song as a therapeutic music experience. Just so you know, my thoughts about the song don't stop there. I take the song through another form of decision tree. Here's an example...
musictxandme.blogspot.com; musictherapyworks.com
The Land of Silly - TME development system copyright by Mary Jane Landaker, MME, MT-BC. All rights reserved.


Once I've gone through these two steps, I have a pretty good handle on how I could use the song for therapy. Then, I start back into my brainstorming process and take the song through the decision trees again. The nice thing about this process is that it never really ends. I write down ideas and keep revising them and adding to them for as long as I use the song. This process works for me, and I hope it makes sense for someone else out there as well.

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