TME Tuesday: My Compendium

Right now, I am going through my therapeutic music experience compendium to find songs and TMEs to go with a specific theme. It is always an interesting experience to dive into the ideas that I have collected over the years. I do not have all of the ideas that I have been exposed to by being around other music therapists in digital form right now, but I do have all of the other ideas in paper form from my first interns before the time when everyone had a computer in their pockets.

I have thousands of therapeutic music experiences (TMEs - my preferred theme for what I do in sessions with my clients) in my database (which I like to call my compendium!). Many of them are mine in origin, but many of them are original works of other people. Those do not go into any of my publications because they are not my work - they belong to others. I've had compositions stolen by other music therapists claiming that they composed the songs that I wrote, so I do not do that to others. Those ideas can act as inspiration, but they cannot be put into my work. Period.

I have enjoyed collecting ideas, writing them up, and keeping them in my computer for all these years. I also enjoy sharing them with other music therapists and music therapy students. It is fun to figure out how to engage the attention of clients that I know and those that I do not know. I love designing experiences to make sense for those I serve.

Since I have stepped away from direct client services, I have a bit of time to go through TMEs and remind myself of songs long forgotten that still have value for future clients.

I used to tell my interns that there were no bad songs - just songs that might not fit for the moment. No bad ideas. Just not now ideas. This means that I have lots of things in my compendium that I have never used more than once. I have lots of TMEs that interns developed that I have never used. I also have tons that I use all the time - both my ideas and interns' ideas. My compendium helps me remember the source of all of those different ideas.

Along with my digital files, I have a database that has many of the TMEs in my list on it. It is not perfect or complete, but I keep working on it. I go through the folders on the computer with the database. The good thing is that the files are in alphabetical order on the computer so I can check things off as I see them on the database and add them when they are missing. It is tedious, but it is also rewarding to have things linked to the files so I can click on any title and find the entire TME.

I encourage others to keep ideas written down somewhere. It helps to have my database, arranged the way I process information the best, and at my fingertips all the time. When I feel like I'm in a rut, doing the same things over and over again, I can open my database and my folders to find all sorts of ideas. One day, I would love to cross-reference these files by goals, materials, and instruments, but that will be my next retirement project, I think.

So, do you collect ideas for sessions? Am I the only one who has this type of compendium? What does yours look like?? Do you have any of my TMEs in there?

These are the thoughts that go through my head early in the morning...