music, therapy, and me

I have so many half-written songs in my ideas book that need to be formalized and released, but I have had little to no interest in doing that recently. It is time to get that project going, and I have a new system to help me accomplish this particular task!! (See yesterday's post if this statement is confusing.) Many of the half-written songs that are waiting to be completed are done in every aspect except setting the songs into professional looking notation. All I need to do is use my notation software to finish these tasks. Perhaps that will be my focus for this morning. I am interested in leaving my house, and I am thinking that I might want to try working somewhere else. The library seems to be a good fit for what I want to try, but I am hesitant to go. I don't know why I am hesitant, but I am. Fear of the unknown, I guess. All I know is that I am feeling antsy while at home. There are too many things that need to be done in order for me to concentrate the way I could some...

 Gotta Gonna Go On a Trip Purpose : To develop concepts of life-long leisure planning; to reminisce about travel; to assess group members’ ability to sequence, plan, and act in logical manner; social interaction; geography awareness; travel; abstract thought development Source : Original Song. © 2009 by Mary Jane Landaker, MME, MT-BC Materials : Accompanying Instrument; pictures of objects people pack for a variety of trips (for example: keys, money, wallet, shoes, coats, others as appropriate for the types of trips to focus on. Some trips might be long vacations. Others may be errands to run around the town.); OPTIONAL: suitcase; actual items (rather than pictures); map or globe   Environment : Group members need to be able to hear and see the therapist   Song/Chant/Words : See sheet music attached. i                           ...

It was move-in week in my college town, so I know that classes are getting started and students are getting back into the routine of school and all the things that come with being a music therapy student. So, if you are a teacher or a music therapy student, check out this format for thinking through how you can develop ideas for use in pre-internship, internship, and professional clinical interactions with clients. Here is the format along with an explanation. Please note that this was directed towards interns working at my former workplace, so things might not work for every population served. I think it is a good way to think through the process of doing things in the clinic, and the credit for this goes partially to me and mostly to my supervisors over the years who made me do most of these processes and thought exercises over the years. Here goes... (By the way, comments, questions, and criticism are welcome here. Let me know what I am missing, what you have never had to do, and wh...

I enjoy composing music. Most of my music is for clinical application, so the songs tend to be simplistic in nature rather than complex or orchestrated. I have lots of repetition, simple sentences, and goal orientations in my pieces, but I still love writing songs. There are times, though, when I am unable to get my brain going to compose things. This usually leads me into a bit of a spiral and causes more stress than I really need, but one of the good things about being a vintage music therapist is that I know several things will happen: Creative blocks happen. They will end when they end. It is okay to take a break from composing when the ideas seem forced. There are ways to compose things when your brain will not work the way you want it to. Not every song you compose has to be wonderful or even relevant. Sometimes, just getting a song out of you is the way to unblock your creativity. So, how do I get out of a composing block? I have several different ways to help me write songs whe...

I did not sleep well last night. These nights of staying awake are becoming more prevalent in my life which is interesting to me. I am more likely to stay awake than I am to go to sleep these days, possibly because my energy output is less than it was when I went to work every day. My life is quiet now, and it is spent mostly in my own company. I am starting to feel an itch to get a job, not just for financial reasons but also for having something to do with myself. There is a reason for this first paragraph - while I was not sleeping, I kept working on my Game Board and first set of game cards. I now have two games in the design phase. The cards are finished, the game board arrangement is ready, and now I just need to make everything into a digital format for posting on TPT. After that is finished, I will print out copies and make the games for a video that I am thinking about. The games that I am designing are based on my usual games. They will use game cards and dice to move around ...

One of the things that is interesting about this job of music therapy is that there are creative needs that never really end. I just finished my sing about the ocean  packet ( available here, by the way !), and now it is time to finish up the next sing about   songs edition for the month of October. If you are unaware, I try to release my monthly subscription about three months in advance so you have the resources available well before the month arrives. I find that composing music and coming up with ways to use songs in sessions with a variety of clients keeps me engaged and thinking. When I talk with other music therapists, I hear things like "I feel like I'm in a rut with what I do with my clients," and I get that. I understand that and have written about it over and over for many years now. Ruts happen, especially when the rigors of the job demand that the creative process take second place to working on the actual act of therapy. So, one of my projects for this week...

One of the things that I wish I had learned way back when I was an undergraduate is the skill of thinking through therapeutic music experiences from an ergonomic perspective. Not just what will I do for my clients, but how will I preserve my joints and body as I am interacting with clients? This has become more of a consideration as I have aged, but it would have been good to be thinking about this more as a young music therapist so I could preserve my knees and back. I am a big fan of only taking in what I absolutely need in a session with multiple options for how to use those things in many different ways. Since this is something I think about, it has become a consideration when I am developing my session strategies. When I had a music therapy room where my clients came to me, this was less of a concern. Now, since I am no longer clinic-based, this will become more of a focus when I am designing sessions. Of course, I am not sure that I will be working with clients in my near future,...

Recently, I have gone into a pattern of not writing ideas or songs down. This is great for my improvisational skills, but it is not great for my therapeutic music experience (TME) compendium. It is time to be a bit more intentional about my composition and TME development. If you have read any of my previous TME Tuesday posts, then you know that I have an organizational system for my ideas. I have a structure that really works well with my brain and my way of doing therapy. This system requires that I think through all sorts of musical and therapeutic elements to coordinate session strategies with specific clients. Now that I do not have clients, I have time to compose and write TMEs down again. My current focus is the two upcoming events through my company, musictherapyworks.com, LLC. One of them is a conference focused on working with adolescents and the other is a creative endeavour that includes making visuals for use in sessions with clients . These are both things that I enjoy c...

So, here is the deal. I have come up with a system to boost my creativity when it comes to writing therapeutic music experiences (TMEs). Of course, I can't upload the video file that I just put together to get you to see what I'm talking about, so this entire post is just a practice in futility. Ugh. Anyway, my dice have dictated that I write a chant that focuses on motor skill development, in an AB form, using Orff/Keyboard instruments, for the month of November, and working additionally on oral motor and speech skills. I also rolled that I should do things in the key of F, but that has nothing to do with a chant, so that dice result is moot! (Thank goodness!) Gak! While this has been a good way to help spur my creativity when it comes to writing TMEs, this is not the best time to be engaging in this practice. I will work on it a bit more this afternoon after my five sessions are finished. I tweaked my finger (the one that's been broken twice by clients) yesterday. I will ...

I am a music therapist who gets creative blocks at times, and that fact just annoys me. I do not like it when I cannot create something just whenever I want or need to do so, and I have explored many different ways to spur my creativity over my many years as a music therapist. The other day, I grabbed a set of Dungeons and Dragons dice at Five Below. I have followed several people on various social media platforms who use these to make decisions - I especially enjoy Roll for Sandwich - check it out! I thought that this could be a good format for me, and I turned it into a couple of therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) already! Now, I have released this as a free resource in my TPT store . (It will not always be free - get it now!!) You have to have an account in TPT to access the information, but signing up is free and there are tons of free resources that music therapists can use and adapt.  Here's how it works. I have determined a criterion for each die value. Each die has a diff...

Have you ever had your creative and intellectual property stolen by someone? I have, and it was devastating! Someone passed off a song that they learned at their internship (which was my internship as well) as their own in a professional conference presentation. I couldn't believe that they stole my song by taking credit for it when it was complimented, but I heard her say, "Thanks, I wrote that song in my internship." Nope. I WROTE THAT SONG IN MY INTERNSHIP! I graduated before this person started, but it was MY SONG, not hers! As a result of that one comment where someone took credit for something that belonged to me, I have been a voracious defender of copyright protections ever since. I strive to find the original sources for every song that I use in my sessions. This is because I always remember that situation and do not want to take credit for something that is not mine to begin with. So, I am a bit of a researcher into copyright issues and how to avoid complication...