Music Therapy Is Going Smoothly - This is Suspicious to Me
This week is my music education focus week. I have a different focus for every week to help me organize and to give us all a starting point. Within those foci, I tend to vary my treatment to reflect what is happening with each group that comes into my space. I figure a session is a success if clients leave in a calm manner after their time with me, so I use that as my focus for treatment. I do what I feel I need to do to get clients to that point. There are times when I throw out my determined focus the moment the group enters the room. There are other times when my clients take the therapeutic music experiences (TMEs - what I call what I do with clients during the session) beyond what I have envisioned. (I love those moments more than any others - the point where the clients take the tools that I offer but no longer need me to find their therapeutic benefit to the music we create together.)
This week's focus has been on notation. Most of my students have been in traditional music education classes in the past. Many of them have not had great experiences in those classes, and they do not have good concepts about music itself. So, we work on the very basic elements of what music is and how music is arranged. I have figured out how to make rhythms understandable to my clients (rhythm wheels or rhythm pizzas as my current group of clients like to call them), but notation and the staff have eluded me. I think I have figured them out now - things are starting to be a bit more natural in how they interpret music. I am still waiting the "A-ha" moment - that moment when I know that my clients understand something in a deep way.
So, to get to notation as a concept, we have been watching short videos and then making our own rhythms. Some groups are using small hand-held percussion instruments, others are using a gathering drum with me. We are using icons to select different notes. We are talking about math (keeping it within the 4/4 time signature), and we are playing new music together. Has it worked? The real test will be next month when we combine the staff with the rhythm elements.
Things have been relatively calm in the music therapy room at my facility these days. My students tend to be emotionally labile and prone to physical aggression when agitated. We have had very few issues in the music therapy room lately - that will change now that I've noticed it, but for the moment, at least, it is true. I am hearing stories of situations happening in other places that are not happening in music therapy. My clients seem to be comfortable with my expectations, responses, and themes so they are not acting the same way in music therapy.
Again, I just cursed myself, but I am wallowing right now.
Next week is center week. We will be listening to music from musicians born in October and reviewing some of the concepts that we have examined over the past three weeks - we will be doing something sensory, something game oriented, and something just because. We are going to make an all-school note collage using sandpaper and crayons. We are going to do some musical symbol matching (if I can find the cards). The last center is going to be a movement game or pattern to go with the notation work that we did this week.
After next week, we have another almost full week of October, so we are going to explore some old technology. I think I am going to take in my records, tape player, and CD player as well as my old iPod to show my students some of the things that I have experienced that they have not. One of my favorite tricks is to play records without a record player, but I have one of those as well. We are going to explore other ways we get to hear music besides using our streaming services. If I feel like getting really fancy, I will do my best to figure out something for demonstrating how music was placed on each of these different formats, but who knows if I will feel fancy.
Happy Thursday, all!
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