music, therapy, and me

Do you remember, WAAAY back to last Saturday when I started talking about how I use my time? I decided to do an informal time study to see where I could change some routines and make better use of my time. (Here's the link to the post , if you want to read and catch up.) Well, I did complete my little chart and what I found was pretty interesting. I was awake longer than I thought I would be (still not grown-up bedtimes, but later than infant bedtimes!), but I was actually in bed very early every night except for Wednesday where I had to work a VERY long day and didn't get to my home until after I am usually snoring away. What does this tell me? That I am tired. Of course, I already knew that, but this really did exemplify that my job is wearing my body out. I have some work to do to make myself more prone to being out of my bed rather than crawling back to recline. Maybe it is time to get some different seating to encourage me to remain up and out of my favorite comfortab...

Welcome, everyone, to the beginning of a new blog series! I've decided to go back into the world of song analyzing for the purposes of enriching my therapeutic music experience (TME) library and to shake up my repertoire for use with my clients!! So, here's how this is going to work... Week One:  Step One: Choose a song using the super scientific random method that I've developed - AKA, go to one of the many places where I have sheet music books stored, close my eyes, choose a book at random, and open up to a random page in that book. Step Two: Go to the beginning of that particular piece of music (I, for example, opened up on page 111 in my current book, but the piece starts on page 109) and sightread the piece vocally. (This step is MUCH simplified if I already know the song - which I do this week! Hooray!!) Step Three: Find the song on YouTube so I can hear it as well as play it (after sight reading to see how accurate I was the first time around - gotta keep ...

Yesterday, our BCBA guy came to observe me during a music therapy group. He's been at the facility since October and presented on a "school-wide program" that he had started that was not truly "school-wide" back in January. I got a bit frustrated by the attitude that something encompassed the entire school but did not include the entire school. He came into my room on Monday, during lunch while I was eating ravioli and watching my documentation television show (long story), to talk for "a couple of minutes." He stayed for 20. Yesterday, he arrived for one of my therapy sessions to count interactions and see what was going on in music therapy. After the session, we talked for an additional 20 minutes about his current data collection strategy and how music therapy does not fit. Now, since I left my internship many years ago, I have not been evaluated by a music therapist. I have had no information about whether my skills are appropriate as a therapis...

Forgive me as I deviate from my usual practice of offering up a therapeutic music experience (TME) on this day. I decided that today was a day to talk about how I organize my thoughts into TMEs, and how I organize those TMEs so I can fill up my sessions with TMEs that work for my clients. Some background is needed here. I am an older therapist. I started off my education before the advent of personal, portable computers, so most of the things I did in school were typed or handwritten. (I took a class on how to write using the computer - how's that for being ancient??) I started my TME file in the second semester of my freshman year at college. The course? Observation and Music Therapy. My professor had us come up with 25 TMEs. We had to choose what size of index card we would use to keep track of our TME file, and then off we went. My very first TMEs (yes, I still have those cards) were just what you would expect from a beginning MT student. All of the TMEs were typical m...

I tried to start my hour of reading every night habit this week. I got two nights finished before my schedule intruded. So, this week's goal is three nights of reading (or more, if I can fit it in, but no pressure on me).   This week, I finished reading the book I started quite a bit of time ago. A Comprehensive Guide to Music Therapy was an interesting read. It's a wonderful overview book and opened my eyes to many of the music therapy domains and realms that I have not explored. There are still many, many more that were not described in this book, but there was enough information in this text to make it valuable in my continuing journey to find my way in this vast and complex music therapy world. There were lists of names of music therapists who have developed theories, methods, and supported their ideas through research. There was a discussion about Evidence Based Practice in a format that allowed me to understand what it was we are constantly talking about. I spent lots...