music, therapy, and me

One of the advantages of going through my CD collection and ripping music to my computer is that I am being reminded of music that I have loved over my life and career. One of these songs is by Fiona Apple who was part of the "angry girl singer-songwriter" movement that happened at some point in my past. Criminal  is one of my favorites from Fiona Apple. Okay, let me explain something about me. I tend to find one song by an artist that resonates with me, and I then explore more of the music. I am not always impressed by the other songs that those artists share, but I have many CDs that I got because I wanted a copy of the one song that I love. I used to be part of a CD club - BMG got me many CDs for less than $2 each back when I was budgeting for everything - so I was able to find many of the songs that I loved back then for very little money. (I never really paid full price for any CD.) So, with Fiona Apple, I have a couple of songs that I like and more that I do not like as...

I have decided that it may be best to make my "What I'm Reading" posts every other week instead of every week since I can't seem to bring myself to read every week these days. So, here is a "Not What I'm Reading" type post that still has something to do with music therapy. My current intern is very good at taking music and adapting it to what she needs in the moment. She has introduced my clients to many different melodies and harmonic progressions that have never occurred to me as options for TMEs. It's been fun to learn these songs along with my clients, and she has inspired me to head back into my music library to use the resources that I have and to find more. I have been looking at fake books on Amazon recently. I love fake books and have gone through several of them in my career. I have the bits and pieces of several of them floating around my house, so it is time to get a new set of fake books. Right now, the most popular one is the Disney Fak...

And... This week's song is Little Gem by Euphoria. It's on the CSI Soundtrack and was released on the soundtrack in 2001. Euphoria is a Canadian band that falls into trance, techno, and electronica musical genres. On first listen, the piece seems to be closer to trance than techno, but that is part of being somewhat unused to listening to this type of genre. The tempo is at a good pace for my clients - moderate and consistent. The music itself has some repetitive figures with embellishments in various instrument parts. It doesn't get too repetitive (though that seems to be more about my preferences for music than about my clients' preferences). Another search for this group of performers without the title of the song led me into the various groups that use the same name. There is a Canadian group called Euphoria at present, but it is not the Euphoria of my song. There is also an Indian group called Euphoria that seems to be a bit more well-known these days, but, ...

It's that time again. Time to go to the iTunes account, set the play controls to Shuffle, and see what comes up to use as a therapeutic music experience. I start up the program and, voila! The song that comes up is Pon De Replay , performed by Rihanna, written by E. Rogers, C. Sturken, A. Brooks, and V. Nobles and on my iTunes account from the album Radio Disney Jams, Volume 8 . Basic Information about the song: the song is 3 minutes, 36 seconds long. starts with a percussive pattern that forms the foundation for the piece - approximately 98 bpm (according to my new favorite website Get Song BPM - seriously, why haven't I heard about this site before???) there is a primarily vocal timbre to go with the percussion and electronic sounds - chorus of voices support the front singer the lyrics are primarily concerned with movement and offer some directives for moving in a specific manner, but there doesn't seem to be a set pattern for dancing offered released in 2005 ...

Last week, my randomly selected song for this next series of Song Conversion Sunday posts was one that sent me into some deep thinking about culture and cultural appropriation and that has challenged me to think a bit differently about the music that I have on my iPod and how I use that music. Now, to start all this off, I am not an expert on culture, cultural appropriation, cultural misappropriation, or anything other than my own experiences. My own cultural experiences are that of middle-class, caucasian America. I am a woman, I prefer the pronouns "she" and "her," and I do not have to spend much time thinking about cultural misappropriation because my cultural background seems to be prevalent in the place where I live. I have never really thought too much about whether the music that I use in sessions is something that I'm taking from another culture and shaping it into something other than what it was intended for originally. I guess this is something to...

The last time I selected a song, I found it on my iTunes account, and that worked really well for me, so I think I'll do that again. I set my music to shuffle and press play. Here goes - let's see what song comes up... Zen Buddha Indian Meditation Music for Awakening, by the Sea Tranquility Academy, on the 111 Ambient Nature Sounds album. I really like it when fate takes me on paths of exploration and learning. I know very little about Buddhism or meditation, so I will be trying to find out as much information as possible about this particular piece of music as well as why it is titled what it is titled. I don't know that I will be able to do this music any justice whatsoever, but I will make an effort to learn what I can about this piece and the people who present it to the world. A Google search for "Sea Tranquility Academy" reveals that this type of music seems to be what this group does. There is little information about who is behind the music under th...

It is time again for me to dive into a therapeutic music experience development post. If you recall, the last time I actually wrote about music, I selected the song, Stand By You , performed by Rachel Platten, as my new focus. I then took a week off for the Online Conference for Music Therapy, and I am back to my focus. I've been listening to this song this morning, and I find it to be an interesting piece of music. It is not complex - in fact, I think I can replicate most of it just from listening to it a couple of times. The melodies are repetitive, the rhythms are steady, and the harmony (I don't think I wrote about the harmony on the graphic below - I'll change that for next week...) is pretty unremarkable - I, IV, V chords with the occasional vi and ii thrown in for novelty. What I really like about this song is the words. This is a song that is meant to be sung to someone who is going through a rough time. It offers support, and I like that.  This is a song that...

Oh my. It is time to finish up this month's song and make it into a therapeutic music experience. This particular song, which I found in The Flying Pig Campfire Song Book , had a very simple beginning, but I think it can be so much more!! So, this will now become an information carrier for facts about insects. The melody, harmony, and basic song structure will remain the same, but there are going to be so many more facts offered than in the original song.  I think I will keep the original chorus as originally shared. (It's a Small World) It's a world of centipedes, a world of moths It's a world of katydids, a world of wasps There's so much that we share that it's time we're aware It's an insect world   It's an insect covered world It's an insect covered world It's an insect covered world It's an insect world   It's a world of beetles, a world of fleas It's a world of caterpillars, a world of bees In th...

It is Sunday again, and that means a Song Conversion is in process here at my computer. Last week I selected It's An Insect World , a piggy-backed song that I found in The Flying Pig Campfire Song Book , and that is a brief song about some insects. My rule is that I choose a song randomly and then make it into a therapeutic music experience (TME) to use with clients somewhere. So, here we are. The lyrics of this song are not complicated. They list eight types of insects - centipedes, moths, katydids, wasps, beetles, fleas, caterpillars, and bees. That's it. All the song does is list these insects. I think this song could do so much more!! The song is designed to work with the musical format of It's a Small World , so the musical analysis is pretty easy. Form - A/B. Melody - varied contour, clear differences between chorus and verse, tessitura - about an octave, maybe a bit more (I'm not looking at the sheet music - maybe I should do that...be right back...). Sheet...

Good morning, all. It is Tuesday here in the States, so I am posting my latest TME Tuesday video. For the past three weeks, I've been involved in a songswap hosted by Music Therapy Kids over on Facebook. Every week, we are challenged to share a TME idea (not the fully fleshed out TME) based on a very general goal (this week was academics). People are sharing all sorts of things, and I am torn between being excited about getting lots of new songs and being a bit sad because of how we are labelling these TME ideas. Here's my video - on academics. Sorry it is so out of focus - I am still learning how to use my different cameras - this is NOT one I'll be using again...(the camera, that is!) Academics is something that is part of everything that I do. I think through various subject areas with every single TME that I present to my students. Think we're just throwing balls at drums? Nope. We are experimenting with geometry, physics, scientific questioning, and throwi...

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 ...

Welcome to the other side of the first holiday mountain that we traverse every single year - that of Halloween angst and anxiety. With this particular holiday over, my work place will go back to "normal" for a little bit before the next holiday hoopla begins. Fortunately, I get to go to conference and then straight to Thanksgiving in the middle of all that hoopla, so this next holiday doesn't register too much on my radar. Anyway, now that Halloween is over, I am happy to be able to concentrate on a brand new series for Sundays at this blog. I think I've decided to call it - Song Conversion Sundays - and the idea is that I'll choose a song at random from my music library and then develop it into some therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) for use with my clients and with other clients. It may take me a bit to get into my groove here, but I think that I will probably use one song per month and really go deep into how I can use the song for therapeutic gains, outcom...

As you know, if you read this blog regularly, I am involved in a songswap challenge led by the folks at Music Therapy Kids over on Facebook. I've decided to go the video production route, putting what I learned over the past month at the Ignite video challenge to use in this part of my life. This is the first time that I've really participated in a series of challenges, and I am not sure about all this, but I am trying. Anyway, the prompt this week was to share a song that addresses movement with the rest of the folks in the songswap, so I pulled out an old standby. This comes from my sing about a bit of everything packet from way back in December 2016. This packet will be available on my website here - I will upload a link to the packet later today. In the meantime, look and see if there are any other editions that you might want to know more about... Walk Like an Animal (AKA Animal Walking) addresses more than just movement, but movement is an essential part of the th...