Saturday Shout Out: Are You Feeling It?

Introducing "Saturday Shout Outs!" I am going to periodically give a "shout out" to someone or something, past, present, or future that has influenced me or the field of music therapy.

Today's shout out goes to fellow Drury student, Tyler Stokes.

Tyler gets a shout out because I never seen any musician who allows musical emotion to show in his face and body quite as naturally as he does.

I think advanced musical training can tend to train our natural expressive reactions right out of us. Sometimes, we get "conservatory face" and if it weren't for the quality of the music being produced, one might think that the musician isn't feeling anything.

A few weeks ago, I was sight-reading an etude with a middle school student. Midway through, she stopped and giggled. I was baffled. What about sight-reading is giggle-worthy? She told me that the music took a turn she wasn't expecting and it filled her with surprise and delight. WOW.

How often would we allow ourselves to giggle while making music anymore? Or to sigh? Weep? Grimace? Or grin?

Would it be the end of the world if a musicians on stage looked like they were having fun?

One thing I can tell you is that Tyler has this expression down to an art. His performances are inspiring, both in sound and sight. Shameless plug alert: You can follow Tyler on Twitter (@TylerStoked) and be sure to check out his fantastic band, Delta Sol Revival (@DeltaSolRevival).

So, in honor of Tyler's Saturday Shout Out, I challenge you to be a little less inhibited the next time you make music. Are you feeling it?

What I Would Love to Share with Music Educators

At Drury, we are blessed to learn and work very closely beside our friends and colleagues who are majoring in music education.

I spend a lot of time thinking about music education and music educators, because every single current or future music therapist is able to do what they do because they had positive experiences in music education at some point. Our first formal musical learning experiences came from music educators.

That fact alone means that music therapists should have a vested interest in the continuing well-being of music educators and the vitality of their curriculum.

And on that thought, here some of the things music therapists know that I would love to share with music educators.

Advocacy

Music therapists know that our profession depends on advocacy. This is no less true for music educators. People go into education and therapy both because they had positive experiences in music education. It's a self-perpetuating profession. Advocacy is essential, but it seems like many educators learn how to advocate effectively after they are already teaching. And when you find out that your band program may be in danger is no time to learn advocacy strategies. I really wish that music education curricula would include more specific instruction on the most effective strategies for advocacy.

Transference and Counter-transference

 As I wrote in a previous post, clients can bring a lot of rough stuff to sessions with them. We are prepared for this - that's why our clients are seeing us - the rough stuff! Even though someone is a music educator that doesn't mean students won't bring tough subjects with them to class. Music educators are not insulated from the harsh realities of students' lives that have nothing to do with music. So, I really wish that more attention could be given to the issues of transference and counter-transference in music classrooms.I would love to see educators receive more preparation for their own emotional reactions to students' personal difficulties.

Self-Care and Burnout 

 The music educators I know spend a lot of their time stressed out and emotionally drained. That's not to say that music therapists don't spend a lot of their time that way, too! It seems that music therapists hear a lot more about self-care than educators do, however. I would love for more educators and therapists both to take self-care to heart and to really be vigilant against the dangers of burnout. It is true that if the educator or the therapist is not at his or her very best, students and clients aren't going to get the very best treatment or education possible. 

Resource Sharing

Finally, I would love to see educators and therapists put our heads together a little bit more than we already do. Students with disabilities are frequently mainstreamed in music classrooms because music is so very accessible. But music education curricula do not include a large amount of information on students with exceptional needs, as a general rule. Are we making music educators aware that they can collaborate with music therapists in their music classrooms? Are we teaching educators how to make music therapy part of the IEP for a student? Additionally, what educational strategies do music educators have that music therapists aren't aware of and could benefit greatly from? Where can we get our heads together more?

For the all the music educators out there, what would you share with music therapists? How would you most like to see us collaborate with one another? What are educators doing well that therapists could do better? Please feel free to share your thoughts!

Roll With the Changes

 REO Speedwagon: "Roll With the Changes"

As music therapists, when something happens in our lives, we can almost always think of the song that accompanies what is going on. This week, "Roll With the Changes" by REO Speedwagon has been my theme song.
Dr. Natalie Wlodarczyk tells us at Drury all the time that our greatest assets as music therapists are our flexibility and our creativity.

This became especially true as this week, it was announced that due to overall budgetary constraints, Drury's Master of Music Therapy program will not be accepting any new students for the next foreseeable future.

This decision came down at the same point I was getting ready to begin taking some graduate coursework. I absolutely love Drury and I think we have a fantastic program for music therapy. Our students go out prepared for their internships and have great experiences, as a general rule. Our curriculum is rigorous and we have a clinic for music therapy services on campus.

Obviously, if it were up to me, I would have been extremely happy to stay in our great environment at Drury and do my graduate work there.

But, things changed, and so you roll with the changes. My husband and I sat down with our five to ten-year plan and used our flexibility and creativity to roll with the changes. It really is true that flexibility and creativity are my greatest assets, both for working with clients and for navigating life. While I am disappointed that I won't be able to do my graduate work at Drury, it is also exciting to have the opportunity to make new plans. 

So, I would second what Dr. Wlodarczyk says - flexibility and creativity will get you through anything, whether it's a session that doesn't go how you were expecting or a significant change to your educational plans. 

Whatever may be going on in life right now, it's always a good time to turn some pages and roll with the changes!

The Rough Edges and Beyond

Music therapists spend a lot of their time with people who are not exhibiting peak levels of human functioning. If you see a hospice patient who is experiencing tremendous physical pain, you see some of that person's "rough edges." If you see a client who has difficulty controlling his or her bowel movements, those are more rough edges. A child who is so frustrated at his or her communication difficulties that tantrums and violence ensue - that is also certainly a rough edge of the range of human possibility.

Music therapists see people at some of the most raw and vulnerable points in their lives, when things are the roughest. We see precious pre-term infants, struggling for a chance to live, and equally precious human beings on the other end of the lifespan who are actively dying.We are called in to assist with nearly every other rough patch of life in between.

The therapeutic relationship takes an enormous amount of trust on the part of the people we assist. Our clients must trust us enough with all of their vulnerabilities to allow us in to help. Music therapists are blessed enough to be invited in to those most vulnerable moments of human existence and to make those moments feel a little safer, a little smoother.

In fact, one of my favorite things about music therapists is our ability to see so much more than our client's rough edges. We see beyond - to potential, to creative expression, to personal growth in the face of tremendous challenges. When we look at a client, we assess and acknowledge their "rough spots" and all the areas that need improving, but we also focus so much of our energy on what each client can do.

Music is so very adaptable on so many levels. Everyone can engage in music in some way, no matter how small or how passively. How humbling. How utterly amazing.

You must be a special kind of person to expose oneself to all the rough edges of humanity, to throw oneself into the work of smoothing those edges. It takes a special kind of person to clearly see a person's limitations and to also see far, far beyond them.

It takes a music therapist.

So on this gorgeous Friday afternoon, I am thankful for all the music therapists and other helping professionals the world over who go about this work on a daily basis. May you find that you are able to see the good and the potential in every client you meet.

The Best Practice Tips You Haven't Already Heard

Every musician has heard the stock set of practice suggestions. You’ve probably heard them enough that they are starting to get really old. And as I am putting in more time in the practice room in preparation for my senior recital, I am finding that I need some more strategies for making the practice room productive and avoiding practice room burnout. (Seriously, you don't want this-->

 to be you at the end of your practice session!)

Here are the best ideas I have come to this semester for practice room success.

1. Get out of the practice room

Really, go practice anywhere else you can think of. Most university music buildings have at least one other rehearsal space that you can probably get permission to use for half an hour. Hearing yourself in a different environment can show you a lot of things you maybe weren’t hearing before. It can also reenergize your mind and focus. But if you really need out, then literally get out. When was the last time you played a gorgeous solo underneath a tree? Or in a rose garden? There are also probably some beautiful local churches around and the office staff are probably more than happy to let you serenade them from inside their fantastic acoustic spaces.

2. Introduce some noise

White noise, that is. If you are anything like me, there is nothing worse than trying to tap out a complicated polyrhythm or hemiola when the (talented and lovely!) soprano in the next room is belting out an aria at the top of her lungs. If a diagnosis of ADHD could be localized just to the practice room, that would describe me perfectly.

The best solution I have found to help me focus is to take my phone and turn on my white noise app. My favorite is the gentle rain sound. For whatever reason, having a more immediate but non-intrusive, non-musical sound next to me helps me block out all the sounds coming from the rest of the music building and channel my focus toward my practice goals.

3. Set an alarm and then forget about time entirely

When you are having to squeeze shorter practice sessions in between classes, or sessions, or meetings, or work, it can be hard to stop thinking about “When do I need to pack up and leave? How much time do I have left?” My solution: As soon as I walk into the practice room, I set an alarm for when I need to stop playing and start packing up. Then, I put the concept of a deadline or time limit out of my mind completely. This allows me to get to a place of deep focus with the music, trusting that I’m not going to be late for my next scheduled activity because I know the alarm will jolt me back into my day when it’s time to go.

4. Put your goal physically where you can see it

We have all been told that our most efficient practice will happen when we go into the practice room with a goal in mind. Some days, though, my thoughts are disorganized enough that having the goal only in my mind just won’t cut it. I find it extremely helpful to actually write down my goals or the spots in my music that need my attention the most and put them physically in front of my face. Index cards work very well for this. I like to stick them to the mirror in the practice room, and then, when I am having a hard time letting go of the rest of my to-do list, everything that I intended to accomplish in the practice room is staring me in the eyes and there is no avoiding it.

5. Use a decibel meter to gauge your dynamic contrast

I recently found a great sound meter app for my phone. The best thing about it is I can have it display a graph of sound levels over time in seconds. When I put this across the practice room from me and play a phrase, the shape on the graph should match the shape of the dynamics written in the music. If the peaks and valleys on my decibel graph are too flat, then I know I need to exaggerate my dynamic contrast even more to have the shape be apparent to a listener. The decibel meter is to dynamics as a metronome is to rhythmic accuracy. It forces you to be right on.

Those are my most recent and innovative practice room discoveries. Now I want to know, what helps you get the most out of your practice time?