Thoughtful Thursday: Music Therapy 101 - Return to the Basics
I am already exhausted.
So, what do you do when groups are full of hyper-emotional kids? You go back to the very basics of musicking.
For the next several months, my therapeutic focus will be emotional catharsis and safe expression. We will do some of the things that people do during holiday seasons, but there will be no Halloween songs in my music therapy room this week. Instead, we are using the drum beat as an entrainment and attention tool. Drums work so much more efficiently than guitars, but the temptation to touch the drum is SO much bigger than the guitar. We are heading back into simplifying the ways we interact to provide a larger foundation of emotional support and stability to what we do in the music therapy room.
I am able to do this for a couple of reasons. The first is that I have survived 25 of these winter month seasons at my facility. I know what is coming (at least, what has arrived in non-pandemic years), and I know the types of things that kids do when they are excited about something... or apprehensive about something. The second is that I am currently the only music therapist at my facility - I am between interns at the moment, so I am the only one strategizing. Last year, we closed down due to COVID and did not work directly with students from Thanksgiving break through New Year's. I am hoping that we will actually be together during that time this year. I think we will, but we will see.
My go-to's when I realize that we are getting too distracted by things are rhythm and tempo. Every clinical decision that I make is influenced by those two musical elements. I put strong rhythmic components into all interactions - a continuous beat going on to support client attention during transitions, use of body percussion to center myself into a rhythmic pattern, and use of percussion instruments to help my clients get their bodies into rhythmic patterns while attending to an external stimulus.
The other element (and, in my experience, the most important one of all) is tempo. I slow things down significantly during this time of the year. My students respond better to things presented at slower tempi than other populations. So, I have to remind myself to look for attention behaviors, and signs of entrainment. I then fiddle around with the tempo of what I am presenting to engage my clients in their tempo ranges rather than my own. This is one of the most difficult concepts to teach to my interns. Music can be experienced better when presented with enough time to process the different elements. Faster music is not always better for my clients. I can present the same information at a slower tempo and get more attention and responses from clients than I can if I sing the same music four times at a faster tempo. So, my rule of thumb is always to slow down!
This week, I have been using a drum as my centering stimulus. As clients have been entering the music therapy room, I have been drumming a quiet pattern on the gathering drum. (I have a recorded pattern that I use later, so that recording is the basis for my tempo and pattern during the opening TME.) I then start to chant or sing (depending on the group) about being in music and some of the expectations. No matter what happens with clients, the rhythm pattern stays predictable, and the tempo is as consistent as my human brain and body can make it. We continue to chant/sing until group members seem to be attending to the music. Then, the words change to either inform clients what is coming next or to indicate that it is time to share emotional states to the group. After that time, I turn on the rhythmic pattern to allow the beat to remain consistent while I get the next materials ready. The beat always goes on. That's essential!
Once that beat is firmly established and everyone is attending to me, I can take the group through all sorts of things. Some of my groups are making hypotheses about materials on the drum head. Some of them are playing along with hand-held rhythm instruments. Some of us are just singing and chanting about our feelings. We stick with the same rhythmic pattern throughout the session - a foundational pattern that allows us to relax and pay attention to what is going on.
We are NOT doing anything Halloween-ish in the music therapy room this week. My students are getting enough change in their schedules and expectations due to the upcoming holiday, and I just don't like feeding into the changes. My clients often do not do well with changes in their expectations or schedules, so I make the decision to not participate in changing music therapy for different holidays. We also have some students who do not celebrate Halloween for religious reasons. It is easier on my brain to just keep those things out of the music therapy room than it is to try to remember who needs to hear "harvest" references rather than "Halloween" references. It may be a bit of a selfish thing, but I am trying to conserve my own brain cells, so Halloween is out.
I tend to have this same policy for all holidays in the music therapy room with the exception of the Winter Sing. I am not sure that we are going to do one of these this year. Last year, I was getting ready to do a virtual sing, but we went into isolation so it didn't happen. Maybe a virtual sing would be a thing to do this year. Hm. I need to ponder the logistics of that.
Return to the basics - focus on what is most important for your clients to experience and grow, and then focus on that. Only that. Use music to support that experience and growth. Use the elements of music that makes music such a beneficial tool for experience and growth. Focus on the clients in front of you rather than on pushing a theme - if it wasn't for the clients, we would not have jobs. There you go.
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