Just a Song Sunday: The Importance of a Playlist
For as long as I have had the means to do so, I have made playlists. Now, when I started, it was taping the radio onto a cassette tape, but now I can curate playlists from various sources to match every mood that I bring and that represents every client that comes to music therapy. It is an ongoing project, to be sure, but it is wonderful to have all sorts of songs at my literal fingertips. The power contained in playlists is not something that should be underestimated.
In fact, one of my music therapy heroes (total fangirl here!), Jennifer Buchanan, has a book all about the power of playlists. It's called Wellness, Well Played: The Power of a Playlist and discusses how playlists enhance our lives. I love Jennifer - she is a dynamic music therapist from Canada who is just a wonderful human being - I'm not sure that I have actually personally interacted with her outside of online conferences, but I enjoy her writing and her personality. If you don't know her, then look her up because I find her thoughts on music therapy businesses is logical and accessible for me. (Do I sound like a fan?? BECAUSE I AM!)
Being a vintage music therapist, I have CDs that contain my favorite songs from various eras and epochs of my life. I still enjoy making CDs of my favorites to use when I am driving (which I have done much less of lately), so I often put together playlists on my computer for just that task.
(Why CDs? you may ask? Well - I don't like using my data for a music service when I have an extensive music collection, so I still make CDs. I also have several sets of blank CDs and a computer that allows me to make CDs, so I do it!)
There is just something nostalgic about CDs for me, but what is most important for this post is the music that goes onto each blank CD.
In my music therapy clinic, each group had their own playlist. Any song that clients liked would go on the list as long as it met our community guidelines. We only removed songs from the playlist when no one in the group wanted it on the list. If even one person indicated that they liked the song, it remained. I also had different playlists for my individual clients. On those lists, any song was allowed - even those that did not match our community guidelines. We would listen to those songs using headphones, if needed. Each playlist offered a snapshot of musical influences and preferences of both the clients involved and of myself as well.
While I curated lists for each of my groups, I also kept one for myself. Occasionally, I would crank up MJL's Favorites playlist to fill up the space and to reinforce my own music preferences and emotional needs in the time. I don't listen to much music outside of the music therapy space, so listening to music is important to me. I don't like searching for music, but when I have many songs on a list, I can easily search and skip pieces that do not match my emotional and sensory states.
Now that I am not in the clinical space, I am finding that I enjoy listening to my CDs again, but I am still not reaching for music to fill my sound environment.
It is time to get back into making CDs, and this time around, I want to make CDs for myself based on tempo. There are times when I need faster music and times when I need slower music. Curating my extensive music library based on tempo is something I haven't done before. I anticipate that it will lead me into some very interesting playlists.
When music therapists hear my playlists, they have no issues with the switches in genres, attitudes, performances, themes, and all that. People who live outside of this small subset of humanity often react more strongly to the music I choose for myself, responding to Sibelius followed by A-ha followed by Aerosmith followed by Star Wars themes followed by Grover's Greatest Hits. For some reason, they find the changes between songs a bit more jarring than I do. For me, the main criterion for any song included on my playlist is that I love it. I don't select things based on themes or other elements of the music itself - I go straight to the emotion when I select songs. Other people do not like what I like, but my playlists are not for them - they are for me and me alone!
I need to take out my copy of Wellness, Well Played and read it again. It is time to dive back into what brought me here in the first place - the music part of this blog's title - and submerge myself back in what I love.
(By the way, I unpacked my father's cornet last week - it was mine as well, and I am ready to start playing the cornet again - ah, the joys of retirement!)
What is on your playlists? Do you have one just for you? What's on it??
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