TME Tuesday: The Generic TMEs - the Ones We All Know

I make no secret of the fact that I make my interns start a therapeutic music experience (TME) compendium as a part of their time with me. My database and card boxes have done me well over the years (as well as done them well), so I find that the acts of writing things down and thinking them through are valuable to developing music therapists as well as to seasoned therapists. My interns have an assignment of writing down 75 TMEs to present to me at the end of their fourth month of internship. Twenty-five of those have to be original songs - things that the intern has written all of the music for - and the remaining fifty have to be complete ideas but can come from anywhere. Most of my interns also include what I call the "generic" TMEs, the ones we all know about and use in music therapy practice but that do not really have a clear source.

You know these types of TMEs - musical chairs...drawing to music...musical mad-libs...sing a longs...hot potato...playing to specific words...the list goes on and on.

How do you write up a TME when the game/song/idea is something that everyone knows and just does? Can you use this as a TME in a music therapy intervention?

I believe that you can...and I do this on a regular basis. I both write up these generic TMEs and use them as music therapy interventions.

Now, I cannot take credit for the game musical chairs because I did not invent it, but I can parse out all of the therapeutic benefits that my clients may receive through participating in the group activity. I can write a task analysis to form the intervention. I can adapt the original game to best challenge and support the clients that I know and will be encouraging throughout the interaction. For source materials, I use phrases such as "traditional American children's game" or "learned from ____ at camp" or original source material if I can find it online.

I see no reason why musical chairs can't be used in a music therapy group session if the goals of the clients match the intended benefits of the game. When my administrators ask me questions about my TMEs, I can spout off all the benefits to this simple game in music therapy terminology. Can other people run this game outside of music therapy? You bet they can, but their intent is often different than mine inside of the music therapy session. (By the way, after my LONG discussion with one administrator about how blowing bubbles fit into music therapy treatment for specific clients, I do not have these types of conversations very often. We will see if I have to start over with our new batch of administrators...) So, is musical chairs solely a therapeutic music experience? Not at all! I am not uniquely qualified to run musical chairs games with my clients. Anyone and everyone can set up that sort of game, but I am uniquely qualified to use music to challenge and support my clients' individual and group goals in a way that the average party planner may not be aware of at all.

I enjoy writing up these familiar games and activities into music therapy experiences. I always get much more out of the games once I have looked at them through my music therapy lens. Who knew that playing musical chairs helped us work with spatial coordination, vestibular input, sustained and divided attention, social interaction, game theory, sportsmanship, proprioceptive input, number concepts, body identification and coordination, gross motor coordination, competition, and so much more? These games and activities have the added benefit of being familiar to many of the clients that I work with, so I can make adaptations to fit my clientele without having to reexplain the entire game. For example, due to the requirements for personal space for some of my clients, we use spots instead of chairs. Chairs offer too many opportunities for "accidentally" touching peers and tend to tip over when run into full speed, so we use spots on the floor instead. My students understand how to play the game with limited lecturing from me.

I encourage music therapists to view these traditional or familiar games, ideas, and activities through their music therapy lens. There are so many opportunities for music therapy experiences available within, so think about them with your music therapy perspective and write them down!