music, therapy, and me

I have a difficult relationship with technology. iThings and I do not speak the same language, so I avoid them like the plague. I have an iPod because Apple took over the mp3 market and it was easier to just give into the Apple thing than it was to try to navigate the world of Zune and other mp3 technology. As long as I don't antagonize it, the iPod does what I need it to do - keeps me entertained. I do not have many smart speakers around me - just the one in my Kindle Fire - and I am fine with not knowing things immediately. I am resisting the world of instant gratification and the need to always get information instantaneously. I have a terrible success rate with Bluetooth things. My Dad got me a BB-8 robot many years ago that has never connected with my Bluetooth stuff. I FINALLY figured out how to work my speakers with my laptop, and I also can get my phone hooked up into my car system. I tell you this because I have a new toy to share with some of my clients next week - a Drop...

Yesterday was my birthday, and I have some birthday money to spend on something frivolous and completely unnecessary. Some people don't like money or gift cards for special occasions, but I really enjoy getting some extra "found" cash to spend. I saved my birthday money from last year, and I got a surprise refund check from my gas card, so I have about $400 that I can use to do something fun. There is something fun about all the possibilities that are available to me with a bit of cash to spend. I recently received an Oriental Trading Catalog that has lots of things to buy, but most of those things are for school - that's not something for birthday money. I need new underwear - for some reason, every single one of my bras decided to break this week - but underwear isn't fun - it's a necessary item, so that comes from my household monies. I could always invest in new instruments, but that is also work-related. I don't want to spend this money on somethi...

CAUTION: If you are a fan of Apple products, I would suggest that you just skip this post altogether. I am frustrated and am taking out my frustration through digital yelling (AKA CAPITAL LETTERS) and being VERY negative about Apple iThings. If you like iThings, please, do us both a favor and skip this post! I have an intense dislike for all things Apple. It's strange that this should be so, since my first ever interaction with a computer was with an Apple IIe, but it is. It has always been this way. For some reason, I do not think like an Apple product. I never have, and I never will. I know, I know - there are very vocal music therapists out there who will never give up their Apple products, and that is just FINE with me. My intense dislike comes from the fact that I personally cannot interact with an Apple thing without something messing up and making my blood pressure go through the roof! In case you haven't noticed, I am struggling with my iPod at the moment. I had ...

I have written before about my difficulty with all things "i" - iPods, iTunes, iPads - but yesterday, I managed to break out of my iThing difficulty and lead straight into just general electronics. My computer died yesterday. Not the one at home that has had so many problems over the past several months, but the one at work that I have to use to document, communicate, and help clients learn about composition and other stuff. It completely froze and was nonfunctional. I had seen the signs. Things didn't stop when I asked them to stop. There were several re-boots that just didn't seem to be appropriate. Typing was slow. The signs were there. The thing that really got to me, though, was that the iPod stopped working as well. I'm hoping that the iPod will eventually start to work (it is an iPod Classic - not made anymore) and will give me what I want as a tool for music therapy. (I can't stream music with the ease that I can find it on the iPod.) If all else...

My trials with iThings continue, and I am being proactive this weekend by replacing all of my music files by ripping my CDs back onto my computer, but in a more local folder this time. Translation? I'm spending lots of time ripping CDs. I'm also NOT hooking up the iPod to the computer until after I am finished with most of my music files. I find this to be an interesting trip down memory lane. I can remember details of clients who requested specific songs which led me to purchase the CDs in the first place. I can remember when I first heard specific songs and the extramusical associations come flooding back. I remember how powerful music is in my life and in the life of others when I go through my CD collection. My music collection is eclectic. Now, I don't use that word lightly. It is not something that I just toss around, but in this case, I think it is apropos. I suspect that most music therapists have a collection of music that includes fugues and fingerplays, sound...

The iPod Classic that I had purchased for my program keeps giving me fits. This has happened many times, so I should be able to predict that it will not work the way I want/need it to work, but I keep thinking it will be okay. It isn't - it really isn't. I went to the updated, fully synced iPod on Thursday to listen to music with a client and found that things hadn't synced the way they were supposed to. I had spent an entire week updating and then resynching the iPod to find that it hadn't actually synched all of my music - just bits and pieces of it. So, I redid the synch this weekend - all weekend long. I am sure that there are some readers who are thinking, right now, "Why don't you just stream the music you need?" Well. My music therapy room is not covered by our wi-fi system, and I don't want to access my personal music files through my cloud system at work using their access points. That's just a whole other can of worms... Anyway, I...

I'm having some difficulty with my iPod. Again. It is currently re-syncing everything that was on it before because it all of a sudden just stopped working. Things went missing and stuff just left. I've found out that this has happened to others as well, so now I'm not feeling like iThings have a personal vendetta against me, but still... I have become accustomed to the convenience of having my music library at my fingertips. It's nice to have a small device that stores ALL of my music during music therapy sessions. I can arrange playlists during the middle of the session and have them for all the subsequent sessions. It is a great device. ...when it works. I've always had better luck with Windows stuff, but there are n't any Windows-compatible devices with the storage that I want for my library. For music therapists, the convenience of portable music files is wonderful. No more CD books full of music to lug around. No more cassette tape devices and ta...

I am a banana in an apple world. This is an all-too-familiar rant for me, but it is one that I just cannot seem to fix.  I cannot think like iThings. I have never been able to, and I will never be able to use them the way others seem to be able to do. For some strange reason, my brain is not wired in a way that makes the Apple operating system easy to intuit. If your brain works well in the iThing universe, congratulations! I just cannot make things work. I am in the midst of yet another iPod struggle. iTunes refuses to talk to my storage and all of my musical pieces are currently in a hostage situation. Interestingly, this only happens when I really need my iTunes to actually work - on the morning of the Talent Show, when I am trying to coordinate music for student projects, when I need to make playlists for sessions. My problem is that I do not know of a music storage device that can hold my entire music library that is not an iPod Classic (160 GB of storage) - believe me...

I had myself a bit of a temper tantrum last night. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't an adult thing to do, but it really seemed necessary at the time.  I am now on a better side of things. Here's what happened. I started the day in a funk. It was a 12-hour day: 8 hours with kids and then 4 hours of inservice time. (I hate inservice days!) My morning groups weren't bad at all. The kids engaged in my TMEs without too much difficulty, and they seemed to like what we were doing. The afternoon group? Utter disaster. Now, I share a wall with this class so I know that they are struggling. They have had a new staff member arrive this week along with a new student. (What school district starts a student in a new school 10 days before the end of school? Makes you wonder...) The group doesn't deal with change well, and now? Bam! Two major changes in a row.  I won't go into all of the details, but kids were in and out of the session all afternoon. We ended up with a l...