Songwriting Sunday: Write Five Challenge

Happy Break for me, folks!!

I took a week off from blogging - just because - last week. I have a week ahead of me to rest and work and make plans before heading back to work for our extended school year and an intern interview! Yep, that's right. As soon as I announced that I thought I would close things down, I got an applicant who finished all of my requirements and wants a place in the new year. So, that person is coming up for an interview on day 1 of our summer session - with a new schedule... oh well.

That is not the topic for today, though. Today's topic is songwriting, and it is time for me to get some of that going again.

I have a weekly reminder set on my work email to remind me to select a topic for my therapeutic music experience (TME) challenge. Here's what that is. I want my interns to complete five TMEs each week for the first four months of their internships. Sixteen weeks times five TMEs equals 80 TMEs for their file - I require 75 TMEs with 25 of them being original melodies. They can copy and paste things from my TME files. They can use things that they have already composed and used or things from other creators in their files. There are lots of ways to get TMEs for the files, but my recent interns have not been able to do this task. So, I am evaluating whether it is possible to write five TMEs per week.

In order to make this something interesting for me, I have made a box filled with little scraps of paper with descriptions as to which TMEs I will work on during the week. There are about 30 cards with tings on them like "motor planning" or "sequencing" or "thematic." The plan is to draw a card on Mondays and then make five TMEs for my file each week.

Now, you may have noticed that I said "TMEs" NOT "songs." That's purposeful because I don't think that songwriting is needed for every TME idea that I have - in fact, if there is a song out there that is perfect for my TME idea, there is no reason not to use it! Today, though, is all about songwriting, so let's see how that will work with this particular challenge...

I do not have a particular requirement for how many TMEs I will compose music for as I seek to make this challenge work for me. I am more focused on writing TMEs rather than composition, but I know myself, and composition will be happening. So, composing original songs to support my TMEs will happen. It always does.

So, for example, I might grab a card that encourages me to find 5 new to me TMEs for communication development (common goal for my clients), and then I will search through my TME database for ideas that I already have to help me figure out what I still need to address. I will look through my resources and design as many TMEs as I can with the work of others (ALWAYS giving them the proper attributions and respecting their copyrights, of course). Once I have exhausted those resources already available to me, I will compose original songs for the rest of the TMEs that I need to finish.

Songwriting kit at the ready, off I go into my new challenge for this summer. Will I have 35 new to me TMEs in my file at the end of our seven week extended school year? Who knows, but I will try. That's what matters!

Progress, not perfection.

In the meantime, I am going to set up a TME template for a new edition of sing about songs. It is time to get back into what I love more than anything else - coming up with new ways to reach clinical goals using music as the avenue.

I feel like I am on the verge of something new in my music therapy journey, and I am ready for the next part. Here we go!