music, therapy, and me

When I am writing music, I tend to do one of two things. I either start with a specific client in mind and write for that client's goals and objectives, or I start with an idea and let the idea grow regardless of the clients that I am serving at the time. I spend time with lots of hypothetical clients - thinking about the vast number of clients and their unique goals as I develop songs and therapeutic music experiences (TMEs). Today, though, I would like to start with the first focus - that of a specific client and his or her or their goals. Currently, I am sharing a wall with a class of students who are experiencing lots of life and school changes. Two students have transferred from residential care to home care and are now day students. One student is brand new to the classroom. Another student recently left the class. All of these changes have shifted the dynamics in the classroom group, and old behaviors of concern have reemerged as well as finding new behaviors to contribute. ...

It's here again.  Songwriting Sunday, and I think I am ready to talk a bit about how I write songs. Today, I think I will focus on my goal-based compositions. Anyone wondering what that is?? Here we go. There are times when I have to write songs to support and rehearse particular skills to match my clients' goals. The topics are not ones that are easily supported by precomoposed music, so it is my job to make the music that my clients can use in places other than music therapy. So, how do I do this? (NOTE: Please keep in mind that this is how I do things, not the only way to do things - you find the way that works best for you, okay?) I start with the goal and an assessment process. If my client's goals are already known to me, then I do a quick baseline assessment. If the client has a brand new goal, then I start from the beginning. I write task analyses for the different skills or levels of mastery for the goal. For example, if I am writing a goal for toothbrushing, I try...

Just in case you missed yesterday's post, I have decided to try changing up my morning routine. As a result of lots of stuff going on, I am allowing myself to sleep later in the mornings. I am now going to try writing this blog in the afternoons. Today is the first day that I have actually been able to do this, so let's see how things go. Today is Tuesday, which is usually the day that I write about therapeutic music experiences or TMEs. This is the terminology that I like best to refer to what I do with my clients in their sessions - others call these same things modules, or interventions, or applications, or even the outdated term, activities. I just like the terminology of therapeutic music experiences, so that's what I call my ideas. More information is called for here. I enjoy writing songs, finding new ways for my clients to experience music, and challenging the same clients to develop their own relationships with music outside of our sessions. I write music for all s...

My brain is reaching post-COVID stage, and I am starting to think logically again (at least, I feel like I am being logical...), so I am thinking about things that are not entirely important but that make a difference in my life. Yesterday's post on systems was about classroom systems that my sister (Hi, KB!) uses in her second grade class, and included some talk about centers. Now, centers are one of my favorite ways to check for independence and generalization of skills for my clients, but they are hard to run in my music therapy room - mainly because of constant staff turnover and the need to constantly train staff members on how to interact and how to stay out of what clients are doing! **We all want to help, but we don't all realize that helping too much hinders people rather than actually helping them.** I want my students to explore and figure out answers without interference from well-meaning staff members who just don't get how we all learn. Anyway... Lately, I hav...

It is time. I have neglected my therapeutic music experience (TME) database for the last three interns, and it needs to be updated! So, today is the day that I start to get that process started. If you are a new reader, then, keep reading the next paragraph. If you are familiar with what I do and how I organize my ideas, then you can skip the next paragraph and not miss much of anything at all! I have been collecting ideas for my therapeutic music experience (TME - what I call the things I do with my client during sessions) since the second semester of my freshman year. I had an assignment to come up with 25 ideas of things I could possibly do in sessions with clients. I remember that assignment as being extremely difficult, but I did it, and my TME file was born! I put in all sorts of ideas and situations into my file, and I add the TMEs that my interns share with me during their time at the facility. It has been a long time since I have linked TMEs into my file, so I will be spending...

I had a bit of an adventurous day yesterday. I sat down with my journal to think about my current way of setting goals and not setting goals and wanting a bit more guidance than what I currently have available and realizing that my past ways of establishing goals have not helped me out at all and just generally thinking about lots of existential stuff. I think I have decided to do a different type of goal system - more task oriented and focused because I tend to do these types of things a bit more consistently than aspirational goals. So, I fell back into my habit of writing some goals, but I am hoping that I will be a bit more motivated to do some of these things with a different type of system and focus. We will see in three months... After I finished the journal work, I went out into the world to see another house. As I was waiting for my realtor to get the key out of the key box, I felt a sharp pain on my left upper arm. I whipped my head around to see a wasp-type thing flying off ...

After many, MANY years of being a music therapist, I FINALLY figured out what HAS to be part of every single Therapeutic Music Experience (AKA: intervention, activity, application, interaction - whatever you call what you do with clients within the structure of your music therapy sessions) - are you ready? The DESIRED OUTCOME! That's it. That is the essential element of every single TME - you have to know what the end goal is of this form of therapy before you can accurately provide experiences that assist the client in accomplishing that end goal. I am embarrassed how long it took me to put this together. In my opinion, every single music therapy student should know this from the very first time that they sit down to write a therapeutic music experience! I have found that many of us know this thing a bit, but most of us don't realize the importance of knowing what the end goal is when we start the process of therapeutic intervention. I often think about this from the perspecti...

It is the end of my goal period for myself, and I am ready to review what I have done over the past month. To recap, (if you are a regular reader, first of all THANK YOU, and second of all, you can skip the rest of this paragraph...) I decided several months back that making monthly goals around the first of the month was not really working out for me. My patterns and cycles usually mean that I feel pretty positive and happy towards the beginning of the month (that's when most of the full moons are happening this year) and less inclined to complete goals in the middle of the month when my negative cycles and patterns arrive. Goals that I made when feeling positive were impossible to accomplish in my negativity. So, I switched my goal periods around a bit and have found that this schedule is better for actually accomplishing my goals. So, I tend to do my monthly reviews around the 14th and then I establish the goals that I want to accomplish and start them all up on the 15th. Today ...

I had a better yesterday than the day before, even though I broke a laptop display and then the same computer sat in a puddle of urine for an undetermined amount of time... Ah, the life of a music therapist that people rarely write about. Welcome to MY blog! Even with the destruction of my clinic computer (the one I use to play recorded music for my clients), yesterday was a better day than Tuesday. That happens often in my world - ups and downs all the time. My 2020 visual here needs to be updated a bit to include how 2021 has just taken me down a new track - 2020 is no longer a closed circuit but took a sharp turn into 2021 issues and events. I think this picture illustrates life pretty well - it is a series of loops and twists and turnabouts that just seem to happen without any sort of rhyme or reason. 2021 has continued the pattern here - there was a sharp fall after my father died with lots of bumps and twists in the (almost) three months since he passed away. Today is my parents...

Happy Spring Forward Day, fellow Americans! If you are living somewhere else in the world, then enjoy your full night of sleep!! We have lost one hour this morning, so it will be interesting to see who makes it to a late morning church service today. There is always someone who comes barreling in at what they think is 30 minutes early to a service to find that we are in the middle of our processes. Fortunately, that hasn't been me... ANYWAY... I feel that I got lots finished yesterday on my first day of setting goals for this next week. I contacted lenders to start the process of moving into a home of my own - that was the biggest chore that I had in front of me. I hate having to talk about finances, but it is a necessary thing when you are trying to buy a home. I now have three appointments to talk to folks tomorrow. I have my cell phone all charged up so I can talk to these folks. I am flying into this situation blindly, not really knowing what is going to be happening in the nex...

I set up another Zoom meeting this morning. This one is focused on music therapy students and is all about finding an internship for each one of those students. I have a week to coordinate it, but this is a topic that I have presented on for many years, so I feel confident that I can get this coordinated pretty quickly. As I was putting this together, I realized that my website is pretty out-of-date, so revising that goes on the to-do list. This task joins several other tasks that I have neglected, so the list is growing and embiggening (word courtesy of Jenny Lawson, The Bloggess!) in leaps and bounds. Most of the things that I have on the list are things that I enjoy doing, so neglecting them is pretty silly. The only reason that I have not accomplished those things is because other things became a bit more important in the moment. I spent some creative time yesterday putting together a digital kit for theme-based communication boards for music therapy sessions. My goal is to have a ...

I am currently starting my second Inclement Weather Day - yesterday doesn't count as it was a planned holiday for us all, but Friday was our first snow day. I enjoyed not struggling through the snow and sub-zero temperatures and just staying in bed as long as I wanted. I also enjoyed that feeling yesterday, but my body got some revenge in the form of a migraine which made me change all my plans. Today, I am ready to get some things done around here. My view from my window shows snow and gray skies as far as the eye can see. The plows haven't come by yet and my maintenance folks haven't bothered to shovel because snow is still in the forecast. I have to start my car for the first time in five days this afternoon, and I'm a bit concerned that we are going to be frozen solid. I sat down and made my February/March goals yesterday. I've changed from making my Saturdays reserved for only rest to making sure that I take some time to craft and create every week. I am contin...

I did a bit of playing with paper yesterday. I've been trying out different techniques to see what hurts my fingers and what I can do with recovering tendon issues and a healed fracture, and I completed a project for a SkillShare Class that I signed up for a while ago. Here is the video of my most recent project - a junk journal. I took bits and pieces of paper that I had around the house and made them into a journal of sorts. This project is not finished - the only thing done is the construction of the book itself. True junk journalers then take their books and make them into masterpieces of painting, journaling, ephemera, and memories. I don't usually do that much with the things that I make, but I am going to try with this book. It is WAY out of my comfort zone, but that is what this year is all about for me - deepening my experiences to experience things more. For some reason, actually using a book that I make is difficult, but it was nice to know that I could assemble this...

Today is the last Monday of 2020, and I am more than ready to say goodbye to this horrible year. Now, I don't believe that things will miraculously clear up at midnight on Friday, but I hope that something changes in this next journey around the sun. This year, my word for the year was "evolve." It was my goal to make my business ideas happen in ways that I could envision - mostly needing face-to-face interactions - and I was on my way until March. In March, as we all know, life as we knew it and as we planned it came to a screeching halt. All of my plans were shaken about, set on fire, and then left in the world of uncertainty that we now know is COVID-19. I was not able to get much of my plans accomplished, but I found other ways to evolve into the therapist and person that I am today. The word I have chosen for 2021 is "deepen." I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what I wanted from life last year, and I found that I am pretty much bored...

It is a bit past the halfway part of my new monthly goal setting process. I decided last month that it might be better if I set goals in the midst of my angsty cycle rather than in my energetic cycle. So, I sat down on the 15th to set some goals for this month. I have been working on three different goals - one was to get gifts for my family members to my family members - I'm at about 65% done with that one - 9 days to go to accomplish that goal. My other two goals are not as time bound or as time specific. The first goal is to make Saturdays a true day of rest. I no longer have a day in my schedule where I have no work obligations at all. I am trying to get my part-time job obligations going before Saturday. I am not doing well with this goal. I have not managed to get my video work done before Saturdays yet. The last goal is to declutter. One of my goals will always be to declutter. This goal has actually been helped significantly by the entire other topic of this post - working ...