music, therapy, and me

I have to write several songs today. I have a self-imposed and totally arbitrary deadline of tomorrow for sing about october , and I have a couple of ideas that need songs to go with them. It is time to get to the keyboard and start to write songs. I have the rough ideas started already. I used my project book for brainstorming and came up with several new ideas for the month. Now it is time to put the finishing touches on the edition and release it out into the world. This is the part of being a music therapist that I love the best right now - writing songs and finding things to do with those songs that support typical goals and objectives of clients from all sorts of populations! There is something really satisfying about writing music for clinical application that just fills my cup. I will grab my songwriting kit (more about that kit here ) because my composition process always starts by writing songs using a pencil and paper of some sort. I will sit down with the keyboard and just ...

It is raining outside and is supposed to rain most of today. After today, we will be heading back into a heat warning time for four days which means sticking around my home since I react strongly to the humidity. So, I have some time to do something by myself and in the relative quiet of my home. I currently have five unfinished journals sitting in various places around my craft/office space. I have some ideas of how to finish them, but I also see the piles of things that are around my home and feel the "you SHOULD [goblin] be cleaning" guilt pulling me away from those projects. I am getting better with actually moving things, but there is much to be done...still. It has been a month since I retired from my full-time job as a music therapist working in a psychiatric residential treatment facility and day school. I still have a month left on my self-imposed work break, and I am starting to panic about not having a steady job. I am looking at job announcements and am finding lo...

It is thundering this morning, and I am glad. I like storms as long as they don't come along with tornadoes, and this one seems to be just a regular storm. I am guessing that my mowers won't be coming today, but I will put their check on the door as usual, just in case.  I am experiencing some issues surrounding the fact that I am not at work while all my co-workers are working right now, but I am also enjoying my time alone. This changes from moment to moment. My life has changed significantly in the past two weeks. I no longer sing for adolescents. I sit at a computer and try to make things for music therapists to use and sing with their adolescents. I miss the human interaction, but not enough to consider going back. I felt a creative itch last night. I wanted to make something, but I had some decision fatigue and avoidance coming on, so I asked my mom and sister for some themes. I ended up being challenged to make a winter themed journal and a turtle themed journal. I put...

It is Monday, and I have some maker stuff to talk about today. I actually made some things this weekend, so I can discuss them on this Make It Monday!! Hooray! Let's start off by talking about the new TPT (formerly known as Teachers Pay Teachers) file that I uploaded this weekend. I am getting ready to launch my first sing about  theme edition, and this file goes right along with it! Introducing Ocean Rhythm Cards ! I am excited about this resource because it provides me with a bunch of new therapeutic music experience (TME) ideas for use with clients in music therapy sessions. Since I do not have any current clients for music therapy, my brain is going to generic music therapy clients that I might work with in the future. I mean, I don't know who I will work with, but I want to share these ideas with those of you who are working with clients right now. These cards include twenty-seven pictures from Scrappin Doodles that include sea plants, animals, and humans in both color an...

I am really bad at self-promotion. I mean, REALLY bad! I have had a music therapy website based business for the past 29 years, and no one knows about it. I write books of therapeutic music experiences (TMEs), books for interns, forms for music therapists in all sorts of roles. I blog, I do some YouTube content, and I work full and part-time as a music therapist. When it comes to letting people know what I do and what I love to share, it is nearly impossible for me to promote and market to my targeted audience. I wanted to do an exhibit this year, but I did not get organized enough (or produce enough things) to get that done. I am not all that disappointed by this particular situation - after all, I could have done it, but I just wasn't all that interested in working on the project. I still have that on my quest map, but I might wait until next year to get things going. I am getting better at sending people the link to my TPT store which is where I am putting all of my products. So...

One of the things that I like about doing these looks back into topics I wrote about before is that I have the advantage of hindsight to allow me to think through the happenings of those days. Today's randomly selected glimpse back into the past comes to us from March 3, 2020 - ten days before the world closed due to COVID. This was a chance to show off some of the work that I do and offer out there in the world for music therapists and others to get for themselves.  Now, I am not really good at advertising myself very well. In March 2020, I was planning on having my first exhibition at the Midwestern Regional conference, but that plan crashed when the world closed. I still have not had an exhibit at a conference. This past year was the first time I went to a live conference, and I was not ready to try again. My next opportunity will be in 2025, and I do want to try to have an exhibit at that point. I love making things for others to use for inspiration, and I want people to acces...

My current project is to put together a whole bunch of ideas for a cat-themed session. This is inspired by an early morning visitor who showed up outside my office door. I think it is one of the cats from next door, but I am not entirely sure. This cat does not wear a collar, but I'm not sure that either of them do next door. It comes up to my glass door and scratches but it will not allow me to pet it for long. It will not come into my home, though I did get a nose in the doorway this morning. I like making themed sessions, but I don't often use those session strategies in my music therapy practice. My adolescents are not always the most receptive to themes, and the amount of mood vectoring that I have to do on a regular basis often precludes themes or strategies. That doesn't stop me from thinking about themes, though. Perhaps I like themed sessions because it fulfills a bit of what I thought I would be doing as a music therapist when I started off. My dream job was, and ...

One of the things that I always include in my sing about songs editions is a section with different lists. The first list is of silly or not so silly holidays or remembrance days for the next month (it's hard to describe how this works - I try to send out ideas three months in advance, so this list is for four months in advance). The second list is songs that work with a particular month. For theme packets, I add a list of songs that supplement the theme. I enjoy making these lists for several different reasons. I like finding new songs to listen to and to introduce to my clients. I am often reminded of songs that I have come across and later forgotten. I like having silly things to acknowledge when I am putting together things for my clients to do during sessions. A little bit of silly goes a long way when working with adolescents. It is also fun to challenge myself to design client-specific, goal-based therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) around unusual topics - like National Ch...

I am formally announcing the newest part of musictherapyworks.com on this TME Tuesday, right here, right now, as I enjoy a couple of apple fritters and wonder how I can get rid of the ants that insist on liking my kitchen more than the rainy outside. I was going to launch my newest binder system this morning, but I do not have my jump drives so I will have to do some more steps before I can move forward with that project.  As a result, I have to figure out something to write about today, so here it is!  I have been offering my sing about songs for many years now. This is a collection of original therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) that I have produced for sharing with other music therapists. I have books, I have subscription series, and now I have thematic packets! Do you ever have a time when you are stuck for an idea for a specific client or group of clients? Do you ever have to work on diverse clients goals during sessions? Do you ever feel like you are in a rut doing the...

It is time to be stuck in my office more than I am actually working with clients right now, so I will be taking some time to update my therapeutic music experience (TME) database. I am several interns behind on cataloguing and linking things into my database, so it is way past time to get this finished...well, started. I love the memories that come up when I delve into my TMEs. I get a chance to remember interns who are well-seasoned professionals now. I get to remember clients who are in their late 30's and 40's as well as the ones that are still in their teens. I stroll down memory lane while I am updating ideas and looking through different ideas. I have so many ideas generated by so many music therapists over the past decades that I can never get through them all! I love this type of idea bank to deposit ideas into and to withdraw from whenever I am in need of some inspiration. So, what does this all look like? Well, it has varied greatly over the years, but I now have a sy...

Therapeutic Music Experiences (TMEs) are my foundation for everything that I do in my music therapy sessions. I do not make formal session plans. I haven't really done that since I had to as a practicum student way, WAY back, so I have to have something to organize my thoughts and experiences for my clients. My TME plans do that for me - they organize me and allow me to provide robust treatment for my clients in sessions. (As I am writing this, I am hoping that the recent font issues that I have had have been rectified.) I have kept the basic format of writing the things that I do in sessions that I learned way, WAY back. I start off with a purpose statement - this is where I brainstorm all of the goals that will be addressed by the TME. I rarely write clinical objectives in this area because I believe that objectives have to come with the client - it is my job as the therapist to make the TME match what the client needs. Instead of trying to anticipate future objectives, I look at...

It is time to take something that I have been doing for a while now and make it something different. I am taking a little bit of a break from a long time project of mine to shake it up a bit and make it better for me and for others. This is the type of project that I love. I get to make something that I already love into something that does more for me, and I hope, more for you as well. I sat down with a brainstorming book last night and started framing some ideas for changing things up a bit. I am currently getting my sing about mini editions updated and am making them a bit more robust for others. I am toying with the idea of including lots more things in each month's edition. There are so many things that I wish I could find when I need them. So, I am going to strive to make them. In the meantime, though, I am going to share one of the TMEs that I shared a long time ago... I hope this works for your clients! Happy Tuesday - here is a song that is part of sing about travel . If...