Songwriting Sunday

It is almost the end of the semester at my job. I am getting ready for almost two weeks off from working in the school within a psychiatric residential treatment facility, and I am also thinking deeply about what I want to do next year in all areas of my life. This post is about my work role as music therapist in my particular job.

I do group music therapy for all students at our facility. All students have to attend 60 minutes of music therapy per week as part of their educational programming, so there are some clients who are not interested at all in anything that I have to say, do, or offer. This can be somewhat disheartening, but there is a challenge in figuring out how to engage these clients.

So, what does this have to do with songwriting on a Sunday?

I am tired of many of the songs that I have been using lately. I am on a search for new songs to learn, adapt, and share. Now, this isn't client-focused. Many of my clients come for less than a year with us, so they find all of the things that I present to be new to them. This is completely for me and my long-term clients who have lived at our facility or attended our day school program for more than one year. I am getting bored, so I know that they are getting a bit bored as well.

I try to only share my original songs on my social media and website pages, but I use so many other songs. These songs belong to my interns and my colleagues as well as songs from different references sources. I give credit to the original composers and songwriters and lyricists, but I also feel like I am able to adapt music to make it relevant to my clients as needed. Adapting the work of others does not mean that the song is now mine to share with the world - it just means that I continue to give credit where credit is due.

I have a collection of vintage music education books that are wonderful for inspiring new ideas. I look for songs to learn on social media. I think about my clients' goals and then adapt elements of the songs to fit what we are working on during sessions. I then learn the new versions and present them to my clients.

I can usually tell pretty quickly whether the songs work or not, but I never get rid of or delete a TME from my repertoire. Just because this group of clients didn't respond the way I thought they would doesn't mean that the TME is wrong. It just means that those clients didn't respond the way I thought they would. The next group might love the song and request it for many years to come. It is always interesting to see how things work with each combination of people that come to group therapy with me.

So, this break, I am going to strive to develop some new songs to start using in my sessions in 2025. There you go. I hope some of them are original compositions, but there is nothing wrong with an adaptation if it supports my clients.

Happy Songwriting!