music, therapy, and me

  As I go through my stuff here at home, I am reminded of the things that I have done with various instruments, materials, music. I remember specific clients who loved certain songs or certain instruments. I have the opportunity to find old things that have gone out of style with current clients, and I get to figure out new ways to use familiar objects. It is an interesting thing to revisit what has been important in your therapy life, and this is a season where I am doing just that. I started being interested in the ways we adapt music and musical elements during my graduate studies. In discussions with my fellow students, we determined that we did not often think about how we were changing the music to match our clients - we just did it. It seemed that we were missing out on opportunities by not really thinking about how we were using our primary therapeutic tool - the music. The fellow student that I talked to about this topic focused on the research to demonstrate how the eleme...

So, I am in a season of change and metamorphosis. There is just no real way to define how I am feeling at this moment because it changes from moment to moment. As a result of the emotional rollercoaster that I am currently on, I am feeling the need for structure and boundaries and routines. So, I am going to be structuring my blogging a bit more than I have recently. Sundays will be for music sharing, thoughts, and therapeutic music experience development using songs that others have composed as well as shared with the world. The problem with this type of blog post is that I am often unsure what songs to use in posts like this. I try to select something that would work with a variety of populations, and I will strive to continue to highlight how you could use these pieces of music with everyone that you do music therapy with during your week of sessions. If you read this blog regularly (and I know that some of you do), then you know that I like having structure and templates are my thi...