music, therapy, and me

I recently saw a request for s specific type of song for a specific goal, and I did not respond to the request because my response would have been rather snarky. I wonder why people do not make up their own songs in these types of situations. I really do. Why do you need to ask for songs when you could write your own? Were these music therapists not taught to write music as students? Are they laboring under some imposter syndrome symptoms that tell them that they cannot write their own songs? Is it easier to ask for others to give them something than it is to spend some time making their own thing? After I abstained from responding in a vein similar to the paragraph above, I started wondering if I just do this because I haven't always had the ability to ask others for their work.  Gather 'round, children, as I tell you a tale from the 20th Century...   In the days afore email, social media, and home computers, we music therapists had to create our own songs, take them to confe...

Last night, I attended a webinar hosted by Alverno College that was led by Jenny Cook-McKenna. The title of the webinar was "The Genealogy of Music Therapy Theory," a topic that merges into my areas of interest in music therapy very nicely. I was not disappointed at all with the topic. It further strengthens my resolve to find the commonalities between music therapists while acknowledging some of the differences we have as well. Are you confused? Let me explain a bit more. All of my music therapy life, I have been baffled by the attitudes of some music therapists towards others that practice within a different philosophy of music therapy. I have been the recipient of these attitudes several times, and it makes me wonder why we have these thoughts and feelings in our profession. I have removed myself from many of the places where people seem to profess their beliefs that their way of doing music therapy is the only way to do things because I cannot fathom a helping profession ...

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 As I was putting this together, I realized that my website is pretty out-of-date, so revising that goes on the to-do list.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 ...

Last night, I had a chance to do something that I absolutely love...talk to interns about music therapy and my way of writing therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) for use with clients. During the webinar, we developed a new TME that uses random things that I had on my desk - a set of Avengers playing cards. Using these cards as the starting point, we brainstormed ideas on how to use the cards to engage client interest and support two very different client goals - color recognition and upper extremity gross motor range of motion. I need to write the ideas down into my TME format today so I will remember the TME concept. We talked for longer than my usual 60 minutes - there is just so much to cover when talking about this concept that I can't stop in the middle of it all. I went back to my bedroom a bit later than usual, had to scootch the cat over from the middle of the bed, and then my brain started working...and working...and working. I scrolled through options for watching th...

I am excited to announce that I will be hosting a 10-hour Continuing Music Therapy Education course on Internship Supervision. This 10-hour course will be held in three bits over a weekend, and will include 3 hours of ethics!! It was approved by CBMT yesterday, and I am getting ready to start marketing it to all the music therapists out there who want a bit more information about the nuts and bolts of supervising music therapy interns. I am so excited about this. I've set it up to go on three weekend days - Friday, Saturday, and Sunday on the second week in December. The nice thing about this particular course is that it can be split up into several different formats - weekly for 2 hours for 5 weeks or in one VERY LONG day or in three evenings. This time around, I am going to ask course participants to give up their evenings during one weekend. Who knows what I will do the next time around. Tickets will launch on October 27th, but you heard about this new course here before...

I am glad that my to-do list never really gets finished. There is something a bit comforting about always having something to get done. Why is this coming up in my brain right now? I've been singing a song about setting goals. My intern, #24, wrote the song last year at this time. I know that because the sheet music that I have for the song references this transition from August to September. We are using the song to help students make personal goals, so I am thinking lots about my own personal goals (and sharing the ones that are relevant to my clients). Some of my students are writing their goals down on paper. Others are verbalizing those goals to the entire group. We are discussing the fact that goals have smaller parts to them. For example, the goal of "going home" includes using coping skills and being safe as part of the expectations before folks can get to their next place. As I am facilitating this particular TME, I have many different thoughts that go thro...

One of the things that I absolutely love more than anything else in the world (other than actually DOING music therapy) is talking about music therapy, and I am feeling the need to host a music therapy student webinar! If you are a music therapy student reading this right now, please consider signing up for this free webinar all about how to find your internship. We're going to meet on Thursday, September 5, 2019 at 7pm (Central Time) for about an hour to talk about everything internship application process! Click here for the registration link. There are more details about the "what" we'll talk about here . If you are someone who knows a music therapy student (or better yet, a group of them), please pass on this link to the registration form. I can accommodate 24 separate computers for this webinar, so that means as many people as you can get to watch from one computer can participate in the live webinar. If you can't make this webinar, contact me at th...