music, therapy, and me

I have to be honest with you, I am running out of ideas for this theme. Actually, an idea just popped into my head, so here it goes. I live in a world of broken instruments. My clients are very good at destruction and not very good at being gentle with fragile instruments and materials. While I do work on proper playing techniques and making choices about which instruments my clients are able to use during sessions, there are times when an instrument breaks. In addition, most of my handheld percussion is over 20 years old, so things wear down and break due to being used. So, it is not unusual for me to have a bunch of instruments waiting to be repaired, replaced, or thrown out. I tend to be a repairer rather than a replacer. As a result, I have some things in my clinic that I cannot live without when it comes to repairing instruments. In no particular order, here is my list of things that help me extend the life of various instruments and materials: Super glue - oh, dear. This is a gre...

It is time for a new series - The Thrifty Therapist - something to happen on Tuesdays because I like alliteration and themes. Here's what I'm thinking... One of the things that unites us all is a quest to get more for less. We music therapists are no different from anyone else - we want things that work for us for less money. So, I am working on ways to do just that. Now, this does not mean that things will be free, but there are ways to find materials, share ideas, and stay within a firm budget as a music therapist. This series is going to be a way to share ideas and things that have worked for me in my decades of being a music therapist. There will be products that I use, things that I offer and sell in various places, some free things to download and use right away, and some questions and surveys of the music therapy world. I have recommendations for gifts for music therapists and for equipment, instruments, and supplemental materials for working with different populations o...

I haven't written since Wednesday this week. I seem to be falling into a pattern of not writing as much, but I want to write more. I'm just not doing it. I have no reason other than just not feeling like writing in the mornings lately. There's not much going on that is different from other seasons in my life, but writing still just feels like too much right now. I am trying really hard to figure some things out. I am tired. My body is doing strange things - gotta love perimenopause. I feel like I am stagnating yet again. I have lots of ideas, but absolutely no impetus to follow through on those ideas. Does anyone else have this existence? Okay. That's enough self-pity. Time to get started with something more productive. I spent some time on Tuesday laminating things for music therapy. I have been spending lots of time at work making things for other people, so it was nice to have some time to just sit and laminate things for my use rather than giving things away. I have...

This may be a bit of a short post - I have about 40 minutes before I have to leave for work today, so writing may not be my first priority. I am currently working on making task boxes for some of my clients. I have time on my hands since my interns are running some of my music therapy sessions, so I am trying to figure out ways to keep myself occupied while still providing opportunities for observation and intercession in the music therapy room, if needed. To that end, I am taking in a bunch of tools that will make my task box production a bit easier and quicker. These tools are things that I already have here at home and will assist me in finishing up projects a bit more effectively. I find that tools are essential to be a good time manager. In this case, the tools that I have available are things that will help me make file folder activities and task box pieces, but the whole idea of tools for time management and effectiveness carries over to this example as well as others that I hav...

Do you have an answer to the question, "what is your favorite song?" I have been thinking about this lately. I don't really have just one favorite song - my music preferences change significantly over minutes, so I have many favorites. In fact, I have made so many compilations of "favorite" songs over the years that I can't really just pick one for all the attention and love of being "favorite." I just can't do it. When I'm asked this question, which I try to avoid, by the way, I hem and haw until any song that I currently like pops into my head. It is difficult to figure out what to say when you have some many wonderful pieces to choose from, isn't it? Right now, my music preferences are based in older music. I brought a whole bunch of CDs with me on my recent road trip rather than filling my iPod with music - I filled that with television shows and movies - so I had lots of older compilations of current favorites with me. I listened t...

It is Monday again, and I actually made something for use in my clinic this weekend. I wrote a bit about it on Saturday (see this post for more information), and I finished it up yesterday. I thought I would write about it - the process and the purpose - today. I have been toying around with an idea about making books out of these little booklets that i've been picking up at my Target Dollar Spot. I get eight of them for three dollars - a good price and something that I am naturally drawn to - empty booklets. I have had several books in progress that I've started over the years. Some of them have to do with instruments, others are specific songs, and I try to make them as useful and accessible as I possibly can, I have one classroom that is now constantly changing, and I have some new clinical challenges that are happening because of this change. As a result, I find that I cannot focus on the "new" clients as much as I like to because everyone is "new."...

If you don't know, I am a proud "Music Therapy Maker." (I think I've just coined this phrase, and I think I'm going to start a hashtag about this...) For me, this means that I love to make things for my clients to use and use up and play with and enrich and change and adapt and all that stuff. I make lots of things, but I think my favorite music therapy materials to make are file folder visual aids.  I have made so many different types of file folders to assist my clients in completing specific goals and objectives over the years that I have found many tips and techniques for my fellow Music Therapy Makers (how does #MusicTherapyMaker look for a hashtag?? No one else is using it yet!) I have messed up SO many folders, laminating sheets, tools, and materials that I don't even try to keep track any more. It is just too sad to think about how much time and energy I have wasted over the years. So, I CHOOSE to focus on what things I've discovered about making...

As some of you know, I love making visuals for my clients to use during music therapy sessions. I have a dream where my clients can communicate anything with me using the visuals that are present, but I am far from that reality. I am, however, working towards that goal, slowly but surely. Now, what most of my clients do is not the protocol involved with PECS - our Speech Language Pathologists have not really gone into the protocol with our clients - but they do understand how to use visuals to get what they want/need. My visuals are often PECS sized but are not part of Boardmaker (a program). After all, it is difficult to come up with one picture that can universally indicate " Does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight " (a fun song title!). So, I don't really worry about whether or not the song will translate outside the music therapy clinic - I probably should, but I don't. Within my clinic, my students know that a particular card, often han...

It is Monday morning, I have two weeks of my vacation from my school therapy job in front of me, Mom is coming tomorrow and my living space is not at all ready for her (but it is much, MUCH better than it was), I've sprained my knee, and I'm trying to figure out what to write about today. Oh, I know - visual aids - my other interest at the moment! I promise I'll only mention my TPT store this once - I'll be putting up a visual aid kit later this week that contains all of the non-free resources that I recommend below, and that's the last mention!  Now, some of these visuals are easily made - get a camera, a printer, and some cardstock and off you go! Others are not as easily found, but I have some resources for you listed below of (free or almost free) resources to make and use during your music therapy sessions. Are you ready to see my list? Here we go! Alphabet cards - this one seems pretty simple when you think of it, but having a set of alphabet cards o...

I admit it. I have a rhythm notation block that I have not really been able to practice out of my repertoire in all my years of taking dictation and writing songs. For some reason, rhythm notation is my downfall when I am composing. I can't tell if what I've written is actually what I am thinking until I hear it again. Unfortunately, if you are interested in writing music, you need to be able to notate rhythm as well as melody lines, harmonic figures, and other elements of music. For years, I've written music down and then given it to competent musicians to play. I then hear what I've written and have to change things because what they play is not what I want. The best thing that happened to me was the advent of music notation programs! Over the years, I've used all sorts of music notation programs, including Cakewalk (which I LOVED!), SheetMusic Notation (another one I LOVED!), and Finale's Printmusic (which I am learning and don't find as intuiti...

I am a proponent of being prepared for almost everything. This is a holdout from my active Scouting days - the motto is "Be Prepared," and that motto has served me well over the past decades. Part of how I approach music therapy sessions is certainly rooted in that philosophy - I understand that the way I envision a session going is only one of a myriad of possibilities. As a result, I try to think about many aspects of my life through this motto. Be prepared. I have a toolbox that I keep in my office (and my home office).  This is an actual toolbox, full of tools, and not a metaphor for the things that I do with my clients. Just want to make that clear. My toolbox at work fits in a pencil box (at home, it's a bit larger, but it includes all my tools, not just the ones that I need to maintain instruments, etc.). Here's what is included in my music therapy toolbox: Drum Key - when you need one, you really need one. It doesn't take up much space, so keep one...

I have made a recent decision that is really making a difference in how I am writing and composing therapeutic music experiences. Are you ready? I am going back to writing things on actual cards. Okay, it's not really all that earth-shattering, but it has really sparked my creativity and my ability to compose. I am no longer reliant upon a device of any type (except, I guess, a pencil would count as a device...hmm) - let me restate. I am no longer depending upon an electronic device of any type for my composition process, and the cards are something that I've had around me since the beginning of my music therapy evolution. I have two boxes of them on my desk here at home. It may seem pretty silly to those of you who have been fully immersed in electronic ways to learn and compose music, but I find that my cards are the best way for me to notate my musical ideas. They are inexpensive and plentiful, so I can rip them if something isn't really working. (There is someth...

A couple of years ago, my sister dragged me into the world of computer interfaces by asking my Dad for a Makey Makey for the holiday. When my father saw what she was asking for, he decided that we both needed one, so I received one as well. My sister gave me a Makey Makey Go for Christmas this year with requests to figure out how to rig it to my cat's behavior (in some way - Auntie wants more pictures of the kitty, I guess!). I will be playing with this a bit more in the near future. I've played with mine a bit, but haven't really delved into the possibilities of what this device can do. I like that it has lots of implications for clients with limited mobility. I can rig just about anything to do something - great cause and effect work opportunities as well as access to communication or composition or many other things as well. It wasn't cheap, but it also didn't break the bank, especially when compared to switches, Big Macks, and other software programs. Make...

I am always thinking about how to use music as a therapeutic medium with my clients, especially when I am in transition and trying to figure out how to make things work differently in my music therapy life. As a result, I write things that are always works in progress as I try to write my thoughts out in a way that makes sense to me. This recent Just a Song Sunday series is the result of just such a process.  For a long time now, I've been interested in how music therapists do their jobs. I want to know what music therapists do in their day-to-day jobs - more how and why they make the clinical decisions they do than anything else. I want to know what is different from the work practices of a music therapist working with preschool aged clients with a variety of diagnoses and another music therapist who works with the same population group. I also always want to know what is different between a therapist who works with one population and someone who works with a different populati...

The iPod Classic that I had purchased for my program keeps giving me fits. This has happened many times, so I should be able to predict that it will not work the way I want/need it to work, but I keep thinking it will be okay. It isn't - it really isn't. I went to the updated, fully synced iPod on Thursday to listen to music with a client and found that things hadn't synced the way they were supposed to. I had spent an entire week updating and then resynching the iPod to find that it hadn't actually synched all of my music - just bits and pieces of it. So, I redid the synch this weekend - all weekend long. I am sure that there are some readers who are thinking, right now, "Why don't you just stream the music you need?" Well. My music therapy room is not covered by our wi-fi system, and I don't want to access my personal music files through my cloud system at work using their access points. That's just a whole other can of worms... Anyway, I...

It amazes me how tools can make things more efficient, effective, and easier for everyone. Today's supplemental, while not a visual aid, is a tool that helps me with some of the administrative duties of being a music therapist. A while back, I decided to try something. I decided to make boxes to use with my large groups of kids to assist me in distributing materials, to increase the amount of time that I could actually be doing something therapeutic, and to keep some things contained. In order to do this, I pulled out some of my favorite containers - scrapbooking boxes. You can see some of them here, including a bunch that I use to make visual aids with and some examples of the ones that I am using at work - the blue and purple ones. I chose four boxes - red, blue, purple, and green - as the basis for my visual aids. I rationalized that color-coding materials would help us all keep things where they needed to be (and it is working!). The green box was wrecked by a client who ...