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Perspectives & Insights from a Local Music Therapist

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Posts Tagged ‘Emotionally Disturbed’

Surviving Power Struggles

Filed Under : Adult Wellness,Emotionally Disturbed,Family,Mental Health,Social Skills,The Therapeutic Process by Natasha Thomas
Nov.28,2012

“It’s the most _________ time of the year!”

Many of us think of the song containing the above phrase and insert the word “wonderful” in the blanks.  But the holidays are so much more than that – and not always in a good way!  This time of year can be busy, tiring, and downright stressful for some, if not all of us, and with stress for many of the clients I work with, comes misbehavior.  Refusing to follow directions and all out tantrums abound.  Some of these misbehaviors are within my clients’ control, some of them are due to overstimulation and may be beyond the clients’ ability to self regulate.  No matter what the situation, how I react is key.  Any one misbehavior has the potential to turn into an all out battle of wills depending on how I choose to respond to it.

During my internship I was encouraged to take a course on something called “Conscious Discipline,” a self-regulation program for parents and educators created by early childhood specialist Dr. Becky Bailey.  When I describe Conscious Discipline to others, I call it “part common sense, mixed with a lot of patience, a great deal of listening, and a little intuition.”  Educators and parents can take classes from Dr. Bailey herself (in persion or via video) or from instructors that have been certified under her.  I’ve applied strategies found in Conscious Discipline to everything from my preK clients to colleagues and parents – the tools Dr. Bailey provides are worth checking out! What I love most about Conscious Discipline is that it’s evidence based, but easy for the average layperson to understand.  There are all kinds of books and materials put out there by Dr. Bailey (check out her resources page here for tidbit tips to use on the go), but one of my favorites is an audio recording I have of a presentation she did on power struggles.  In it she makes 3 main suggestions I keep with me at all times, and find particularly useful to remember during the holidays:

1. Recognize the signs of a power struggle early, and pick your battles.  Is the behavior harmfully disruptive to the client or others around them or is it just irritating?  If it’s just irritating, let it go by practicing “extinction:” just ignore it, no matter how the student might push you to respond to it.

2. If you can’t avoid a powerstruggle, remember to keep breathing and monitor your own feelings – accept them for what they are and then choose your actions carefully, keeping in mind that your counterpoint in the power struggle may not be able to do the same.  It may even be necessary for you to say “I think we both may need to take a break right now, let’s talk about this later” and then do just that.  Walk away or ask some nearby staff (or another parent) to escort your client/child to another location while you both cool down.

3. Another positive tool to use in power struggles is to offer choices.  When you tell someone “You can do this or that, you choose,” they are more likely to cooperate with you than if you just tell them “you can’t do that” without making any suggestions as to what they can do instead.  Power struggles gain their strength from the polarization of the two partieis involved.  If you take that polarization away, then you weaken the struggle.  Note that I said you weaken the struggle, and not the other party.  Offer them real suggestions, not just those designed to get you what you want.  For example, if a client is refusing to give up an instrument they’re supposed to be passing to their neighbor, you can offer them the choice of who it goes to (“you can hand it to that person or this person”), rather than stating that they just “hand it over.”

At the heart of every power struggle is the need for validation.  Clients and therapists, parents and children, colleagues, friends, and children, all need to feel like their feelings have value and are taken seriously.  When you can present choices, a general respect for space, and recognize when the battle is not worth fighting, what you’r really saying to your client or child is “I hear you, and while I may not understand now, I respect your right to feel what you feel and ask only that you do so in a way that respects my right as well.”  Note that you ask them to act in a way that respects your right to your feelings, you don’t ask them to respect your feelings themselves.  That’s not within your control.  We all come to the table with unique experiences that shape who we are and how we react to certain things.  I, for instance in the last month have attended 2 funerals and narrowly avoided having to attend a third, so there are topics that are touchy for me that coworkers of mine may have noticed, and I may never tell them why.  I have clients for whom I avoided asking about the recent Thanksgiving holiday because I knew that spending time with their family may not have been a positive experience for them.  We all come to the table with things we may never share but that influence how we react to and interact with the world around us.  All that any of us can ever do in such emotionally charged times is be patient and respectful of each others’ space and need to feel valued in this world.

So, go forth and be patient! How’s that for a holiday message? Wishing you and yours a very patient holiday season :-)

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Defining Music Therapy… in Residential Facilities

Filed Under : Abuse,Adolescents,Adult Wellness,Education,Emotionally Disturbed,Family,Hospitals,Mental Health,Other Special Populations,The Therapeutic Process by Natasha Thomas
May.9,2012

There’s been a lot going on in the schools I serve lately – we’re hurtling towards the end of the academic year at the speed of light, it seems, and my kids at the ND School for the Blind and the ND School for the Deaf can’t seem to wait for summer to arrive!  It’s at times like these that my job focus starts to shift somewhat from the cognitive to the behavioral and emotional needs of my clients: change is coming, and that can be hard for anyone, with or without a disability.  So, each session begins with recapping how many sessions we have until there’s “No more Music Therapy” until next year.  “Three sessions left…two sessions left…one session left…See you next year!”

This, of course, is not the case for my residential clients.  On my caseload currently are 3 placements where I see clients only in their homes, not at school or anywhere else in the community.  These individuals are mostly adults with developmental disabilities, though one of my placements is an adolescent treatment facility where the clients live and go to school in the same building.  My role at those kinds of placements continues year round, so my focus is different than the schools I see, or places where young children are being prepared for school.  Where my school placements are focusing on academic concepts like colors, numbers, and letters, my residential facilities are geared more towards occupational skills that you use for daily life, like planning and sequencing, establishing and maintaining interpersonal relationships, and dealing with loss and other emotional disturbances.  When I come into my clients homes in environments like those I serve, I bring drums and my Ipad mostly, sometimes my guitar.  We spend some time listening to other music and talking about what it means (or could mean, some songs are more abstract than others – makes for good discussion!) or we just talk about what we like about it.  “Strengthening Emotional Vocabulary” is actually a goal at one of my placements – just learning new words for how to describe something is a valuable skill so you can learn how to speak appropriately and succinctly.  After we do a bit of listening, we engage in playing activities that require teamwork, like passing an instrument, or something more abstract like passing a beat (“you play, then I play” type of stuff).  It’s a lot like the community drum circles I lead – music making for stress relief and recreation.  We’ve talked here before about the importance of self-care.  Unstable mental health can so quickly become unstable physical health, and some of us need more support than others to make sure we’re taking care of ourselves!  That’s what I see as my primary role at the residential facilities I serve: a guide to self-care for my clients.

Some of the clients I see in their homes are so medically fragile that it may not seem like they’re doing much “caring” for themselves.  I’ve occasionally had people ask me where the “making” of music is happening with someone who, physically or otherwise, is incapable of grasping an instrument or making a sound. “Quality of Life” is a term you hear a lot used in many medical settings, and it’s a term I use heavily when I’m documenting sessions with my clients who have Severe Disabilities.  To me, someone who has a good Quality of Life is able to live as independently as their abilities allow them, and able to connect and share in day to day activities with people they care about and who care about them.   Sure, they may not strum the guitar without assistance or sing the words to every song with me, but when you commit yourself to getting to know someone through frequent time spent together, you notice the little ways they tell you what they want – a blink, a change in their breathing pattern, even an increase in salivation can mean “I’m paying attention, and I want more!”  – and for me, being able to help someone interact with another person on whatever  level works for them is not only magical, but meaningful and crucial to them having the best Quality of Life that they can.  I welcome the experience of working with an individual for whom I might have to look a little deeper for clues into what they like and don’t like – it’s well worth the effort to get to know another human being on this earth!

Next week we wrap up this little series with a look at Music Therapy with Community Centers, specifically my work with the LISTEN Drop-In Center and their free Family Music Group, which I’m off to right now!  Then I’m rehearsing with the ladies of the Lovely Dozen and 12 Houses Bellydance for our stage show this weekend – sure to be a rockin’ end to our first full week in May!  Before you know it, Summer will be here!

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“This is a…” Game!

Filed Under : Adolescents,Education,Emotionally Disturbed,Family,General,Hearing Impairment,K-12,Mental Health,Other Special Populations,Sensory Integration,Social Skills,Visual Impairment by Natasha Thomas
Sep.16,2011

You may find yourself reading this post’s title and thinking “a what?” To which I would reply:

“Exactly!”

In a previous post I mentioned that I was a kinesthetic learner – I learn by doing.  As you may know, there are other ways of learning too: visual, auditory, kinesthetic – we all learn differently.  Today I’d like to share with you a game I like to use to teach a variety of concepts (like rhythm and following directions) that is accessible to each of those kinds of learners.  I call it the “This is a…” Game!  Some of you may know it as “This is a Pen” and have learned it at a Theatre Camp like I did.  In essence it is a verbal passing game like telephone that is carried out by one person turning to the individual next to them, interacting with a message that gets passed around a circle, but instead of just one phrase it’s a whole dialogue that goes like this:

“This is a pen.”

“A what?”

“A pen.”

“A what?”

“A pen!”

“Oh! A pen!”

The person asking the “what”s then turns to the person on the other side of them and initiates the same dialogue, and so it passes around the circle.  I like to start with this original incarnation of the game and then move to just playing the dialogue in rhythm, like this:

This is the rhythm we would use to play/say these phrases on a Drum

First we all play it together on our drums (or sticks, or whatever instrument we like, but all of us on the same one), then we start the game again, with one person playing the rhythm to their neighbor.  This can be done to achieve a variety of goals, such as:

1. Waiting and Following Directions - this is the most important part of this game – everyone can’t play all at once!  You have to wait your turn and listen for the rhythms being played to you.

2. Eye contact – looking at your neighbor so they know you’re “talking” to them – this is big for my teenagers and students who are Deaf – even those that are Visually Impaired learn to turn towards individuals they are speaking to.

3. Boundaries/Expression of Comfort Level – sometimes I will have students tap the rhythm they intend to “say” to their neighbor on that person’s drum. This can be a really uncomfortable thing for some people, so I ask that they tell their neighbor what level of playing on their drum (edge, center, or not at all) they are comfortable with.  If everyone is comfortable playing on each other’s drums as well as having their own drums played on, the game can actually become more of a motor challenge and produce many a good laugh!

4. Focus – the next level of this game is to have more than one person in the circle starting the dialogue at the same time.  This can only happen if Eye Contact, Listening, and Boundary control is consistent across the circle.  Eventually you can build up to everyone playing both dialogues back and forth – if you do this by playing on each other’s drums, it can be quite fun!

5. Concept Development - at the School for the Deaf in North Dakota, not every student is able to successfully participate in Music Education, so concepts like Quarter Notes and Eighth notes are not well understood.  This month I’m focusing on introducing the basics to my Middle School students there, and today we used this game to cement our understanding of how to notate rhythms.  I showed them the rhythms first, then we added the dialogue.

So… there are lots of ways you can play this game, even backwards as I did in Music at NDSD today!  You can check out the original “This is a Pen” game and other games like it in the John Fierabend Book of Echo Songs – they’re great fun across age ranges and ability levels.  Try a game of your own today!

Like the games in this post?  Check out some of my other favorite musical games.

 

 

 

 

 

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Singin’ the BLUES – Songwriting for Adolescents

Filed Under : Abuse,Adolescents,Adult Wellness,Advocacy,Education,Emotionally Disturbed,Family,General,Grief,Humor,K-12,Mental Health,Social Skills,Songwriting,Studio Music,The Therapeutic Process by Natasha Thomas
Sep.9,2011

Hello all!  Earlier this week I mentioned that I’d be taking part in a blog challenge put out by one of our affiliate sites, Music Sparks.  The theme?  Blue.  So simple and yet so complex at the same time, much like the musical style that comes to mind.  Most easily recognized in 12 bar “AAB” form, Blues as we know them best today are both a music form and a genre, derived from distinct chordal structures, tonal patterns, and subject matter of old African American Music.  The Blues are direct, the Blues are emotional, but above all, the Blues are accessible.  They’re easy on the ears (for the most part) and their lyrics have staying power – people across generational and cultural divides can all relate to Blues lyrics.  That’s why I like to use the Blues as springboards for working with my Adolescent clients.

Adolescents and Music often go hand and hand, whether we’re consistently aware of it or not.  Listening to, playing and writing music can often be a sanctuary for teens – it allows them to process all of their feelings about school, their peers, and their families with all of their emotions, through tempo, pitch and sheer decibel level (gotta feel that bass!).  So it’s not too surprising that when I ask students about their favorite kinds of music that I often get more personal information from them than I would have gotten just asking about their home life directly.  Who and what they listen to speaks volumes (literally!) – These kids have a lot to say, and Music can help them say it!  The challenge is reigning all that projection in.  Without the proper supports I find teenagers can be a bit like that X-men First Class character, Havoc: all power and no focus.  It can come across as chaotic and get written off as unproductive when the potential for so much more is there.  So, I use the Blues to help students isolate their ideas and work on developing them more effectively.  Here are a few elements of the Blues that I use to do that:

Lyrical Form (for our purposes, “AAB”):  Before we even look at chords or melody, I ask students to come up with a single phrase based on a question like “What’s bothering you today?” or “How do you feel about ______ ?”  I ask that they keep it short, even limiting them to a specific number of syllables if necessary.  We write that phrase down once, then again on the separate line and label both lines “A.”  After the two “A”s we write a “B” phrase.  Something that follows up on “A” but doesn’t necessarily introduce any new ideas, just a different way of saying what’s already been said.  For instance:

A:    “I’m so tired today – didn’t get any sleep last night”

A:    “I’m so tired today – didn’t get any sleep last night”

B:    “Tossing and turning til the morning – All I wanna do now is shut my eyes”

If students are feeling particularly uninspired, sometimes we will pull up Google Images on a computer, type a random word and then choose a single image to describe in order to create lines for our song (this sparked a story song about loneliness one week – can take you further than you think!) Creating simple lyrics like this helps students practice different ways of phrasing and provides an opportunity to talk about how one way of saying something might be more appropriate or more helpful than another – an important life lesson!

Rhythm and Melody: next we look at how we might say or sing the lyrics.  What’s nice about the AAB format that we use is that there’s no wrong way to to this – a student that’s more vocally inclined may want to get really technical about what beats they start the phrase on, what their pitches are, and how they emphasize specific syllables.  Others might just want to have a little guitar riff with spaces built in where they just say each phrase without any real rhythmic or melodic emphasis.  Either of those works just fine, so long as students make a conscious decision about which one they’re doing and give it their best effort (another life lesson!)

Chord structure: early in working with my clients, I might tell them not to worry about this part – I might come in with a chord set already chosen, or perhaps few templates of traditional Blues progressions that I can play through and offer students a choice, or we might take the time as a group to learn a few chords to create our own guitar progression.  The sky’s the limit!

I find that after a day of Blues writing, the pressure is off of students to be Eminem and create complex rhymes and thoughts on the first try – the pressure is also off of them to do anything too emotionally revealing.  Blues can be funny too!  I remember a class a few years back that wrote a whole progression about Tacos – it was a really fun day, and allowed the staff working at the facility I was serving to see their students in a different light.  Even the most broody, oppositional student was participating appropriately that day – that song, that day, didn’t have to be about the tough stuff – we just cut loose.  Everyone needs to do that now and then!

So, cut loose today – have some fun creating nonsense lyrics to a song you know.  Blues form or not, popular music today has it’s own structure familiar to Western Music listeners, and many of them have lyrics and rhythms that are pretty easy to follow and relate to.  Who knows, you might just find that singing the Blues never felt so good!

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“Rockband Therapy”

Filed Under : Abuse,Adolescents,Adult Wellness,Education,Emotionally Disturbed,Family,General,K-12,Other Special Populations,Technology,The Therapeutic Process by Natasha Thomas
Jun.13,2011

I’m baaaaack!  Summer is in full swing, and boy has it been a busy one!  Coming soon, another post on movement and music, after a Middle Eastern Dance and Drumming Festival has me all a-flutter with ideas and choreography, but first, as we approach Father’s day and enjoy the beautiful BBQ worthy weather this season is so notorious for spending with our families and friends, a post on a game I enjoy playing with my own friends and have come to find has tremendous potential as a therapeutic tool: Rockband.

Now, some of you may be asking. “What is Rockband?”  Rockband is a video game available for the Playstation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360 in which participants can sing karaoke-style, or play guitar, keyboard, or drum shaped controllers along with their favorite music.  Rockband 3 is the latest in the franchise, coming with everything from classic rock to German death metal in its setlists, with other songs from artists like Greenday and Lady Gaga available for purchase.  Through playing each song you can earn high scores and trophies to unlock other songs and materials within the game.

So why Rockband as a therapeutic tool?  And how do I use it? I believe that everyone deserves a game day once and while, if for nothing else than just to have fun and cut loose!  For my students, “Rockband Day” happens in the last week of every month.  On that day, we review the ground rules that serve as the basis for the other goals I think make Rockband such a valuable tool, particularly for my students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders:

1. Each student will get a turn to be “Team Leader” and choose a song to perform.  The team leader also gets to choose what instrument they perform the song on, and who their other team mates will be.  Once upon a time I had enough instruments for everyone, but as some of my groups go bigger, we have to share and rotate.  I ask team leaders to be considerate of those students who might not have gotten to play yet when it comes their turn. This kind of consideration for others is an important skill to build in kids with and without disabilities alike.

2. All students are to remain quiet while the team leader selects the song and their team.  This is a rule I enforce heavily early on, because I want for students to be able to make their own choices without feeling pressured by their peers or having to struggle for focus amidst unnecessary chatter.  If the team leader would like though I do allow them to ask their peers for suggestions.

3. Whether you’re playing or not, I ask students to be encouraging of their peers.  Once the music starts they are only to speak if they have something constructive to offer to their peers who are playing, or if they need help.  This helps again to cut back on unnecessary background noise that can be distracting, as well as improve focus and discourage trash talking.

4. To elaborate on the rules of encouraging positive discussion, being considerate of their peers, and asking for help if necessary, I ask lastly that if a student needs help that they ask for permission to pause the game before changing difficulty levels or backing out of a song.  This is probably the hardest rule for some students to follow.  Many of the students I see come from families where they have little control over their environments – they are looking for any opportunity to be in charge and thus solve problems like failing an instrument in Rockband themselves, but pausing the game without notifying peers can be frustrating for teammates a) because it interrupts the game, and b) because it may not give others an opportunity to make the same changes if they need to.  So, my students now have a key phrase (“Pause Please!”) before they break the game to give everyone a heads-up that the game will be paused, and allow anyone else who might be needing to make adjustments the opportunity to do so at the same time so we don’t have to pause more than once within a single song.

I’ve heard of some instructors and therapists who have their students play in “No-Fail” mode.  For me, this would depend on the population I was using it with.  At one of my Special Needs Highschool placements, we have Karaoke day at the end of every month.  It’s an opportunity for those students to just share their favorite music with each other and practice using their voices in a safe space.  With a population like that I would use the “No-Fail” mode in Rockband to help them meet those goals of confidence building and sharing.  With my Emotional and Behavioral students, I’m looking for them to work together to reach a common goal (finishing the song) and working with the possibility of failure I think is an important component to really grasping the value and importance of teamwork.  However, sometimes a song is just too difficult, and I never want for my students to feel as though they can’t succeed.  So, I encourage my students to be conscious of their own abilities and the difficulty levels of the songs they choose so they don’t find themselves in situations where success might be overly hard to reach.  But, if they do find themselves in such a situation, they have the option to either collectively lower their individual instrument difficulty levels or back out of the song entirely and choose a different one.  We rarely have to resort to the latter option, but whenever we do we always see success with choosing an easier song and adjusting difficulty levels to make it to the end.  Learning to be realistic with your goals is another valuable skill I want my students to learn.

There are other video games out there that work well with achieving these kinds of teamwork and confidence building goals: before Rockband there was Guitar Hero, and games like Disney Karaoke and Wii Music are also great vehicles for addressing interpersonal communication through virtual music play.  Of course, nothing beats live music making, and so Rockband will always be just a once a month thing for me and my students, but on that one day at the end of the month, and whenever I play with my friends after a good day grillin’ in the sun, we all enjoy a little time to cut loose and be Rockstars for a while!

Also coming this month: the next 12 Houses Drum Circle will take place on the Greenway in downtown Grand Forks (ND) at 8pm Saturday, June 25th.  We will meet outside of the old 12 Houses location on 3rd (near Widman’s Chocolates) before crossing the dike together.  As always, drums will be provided, but you are welcome to bring your own, and encouraged to provide chairs and blankets for sitting outside.  Kids are also welcome!

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Music and Movement for Wellness

Filed Under : Adolescents,Adult Wellness,Autism,Early Childhood,Education,Emotionally Disturbed,Family,General,K-12,Other Special Populations,Uncategorized by Natasha Thomas
Apr.3,2011

Archive note: as this post was written in April of 2011, the events noted therein (the Hands on Learning Fair, Healthy Living Expo and April 12 Houses Drum Circle) are of course long over, and the next new post may or may not actually be about Music and Movement or Learning as mentioned at the end of the post, but I hope you’ll enjoy a look back on some of my first insights on Music and Movement here and keep tabs on the MT in ND page for updates on when the monthly drum circle and two annual events will be occurring again!

*Begin Original Post*

Hello everyone and welcome April (though it doesn’t look much like it outside here in Grand Forks)!  There is much happening this time of year; it’s Autism Awareness month and the month of the Young Child.  The Grand Forks

Hands On Learning Fair (you’ll have to scroll down on the linked calendar a little bit to see the details) will be coming up Saturday April 16th, where you will see many a young child, some of whom will have Autism, or other medical and/or developmental needs.  I encourage all Grand Forks families with small children to consider coming to this event, in which Emily Wangen (of Music Therapy in Motion) and I will be participating.

This coming Saturday (April 9th) I have been asked to be part of the 12 Houses booth at the 2011 Healthy Living Expo being hosted by the Alerus Center in Grand Forks.  I will be hosting two demonstrations: one on Drumming for Wellness at 10am, the other for Bellydancing for Core Strengthening at 11am.

Why Bellydance?

As a participant in a Healthy Living Expo, using dance as a form of exercise isn’t a new idea, but I find as a musician that the percussive elements of Bellydance can be really fun to engage in, and as you’ll read on below, percussion can have benefits for the body, mind, and emotions, all essential elements to overall human wellness.

Why Drumming?

There are many reasons to engage in Drumming for physical, mental, and social well-being.  I’ve included several videos from my last Drum Circle at 12 Houses to illustrate each.

Playing a Drum requires Physical Energy

The instruments I bring to my drum circles all require physical exertion.  The mere action of holding a large drum between your knees and striking it with one or both hands can be physically tiring.  In this first attached video clip, you’ll hear a steadily increasing tempo coming from a drum in the the left corner of the screen (me!).  As the tempo increases, you’ll also hear some laughs from folks who quickly realize what parts of how they’ve been playing their drums are sustainable and which parts aren’t, see them adapt their playing to fit as the pulse of the circle adjusts itself, and perhaps even imagine how heart rates are increasing  around the room.  We have drum circles that end with participants actually feeling as winded as if they’ve just finished a jazzercise class!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=404z_S2aOcA

Drumming requires mental focus

I will often engage my drum circle participants in games that challenge their brains as well as their bodies.  One such game is in the next attached video: you will see me step into the center of the circle (wearing a little set of ankle bells, my latest and favorite Drum Circle Accessory!) and instruct one half of the circle to stop playing.  It takes a little time, but eventually one half of the circle is listening to the other play.  After a time, I invite the listening half of the circle back in to play together with the playing half for a time before instructing the half of the circle that got to play alone previously to stop and listen to the half that listened to them first.  A game like this gives the group a chance to refocus and really hear what their fellow participants are doing.  So it’s a social game as much as it is a mental one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VXQvg57A2c

Another opportunity for mental wellness is the learning experience that can happen for children present at Drum Circles.  It’s a chance for them to learn about music and instruments from cultures that are different than their own, a vital step towards raising children that are socially aware in the increasingly multi-cultural world we live in.  In this final attached clip from my most recent 12 Houses Drum Circle, you’ll see the little girl in the video I linked to last post slip on a bellydance hip scarf and move around the circle, picking up various drums as she goes and experimenting with using claves as mallets (which may make some of you hand-drummers out there cringe, but don’t worry she eventually gets some felt tip mallets that are much gentler!).  It’s fun to see this little gal’s thought process as she essentially builds herself a little drumset!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzVa6VGur9M

Drumming is a social experience

The previous video has some examples of this in the way that the little girl checks with various members of the circle before taking the drums she ends up using for her set, as well as the interaction between her, myself, and the woman who kindly lends us her felt mallets to use for playing it.  The video I linked to last post was also a great example of the social experience that making music with a group of people can create, so I’ve included it again below.  Seeing that little girl go to her father and play his drum with him never gets old!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=404z_S2aOcA

So…I encourage any of you who live in the area to check out the Healthy Living Expo, and my demos at the 12 Houses booth.  If you aren’t from North Dakota, find a Drum Circle or Bellydance class near you and find out how music can move you to a better state of physical, mental, and emotional well being!

Next Week:

More on Music and Movement/Learning

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Music and our Emotions

Filed Under : Abuse,Adolescents,Adult Wellness,Autism,Emotionally Disturbed,Family,General,Other Special Populations by Natasha Thomas
Feb.13,2011

I’ve been hearing over the past week that the Grammy’s are today (Feb 13th), and enjoying NPR’s recapping of some lesser known artists who have been nominated for less listened to categories. Janelle Monet’s “Tightrope” for example, is a great song that’s been nominated for Best Urban/Alternative Performance, yet the only place you’ll hear it here in town is at the end of that Target Commercial where the little girl brings her father breakfast in bed (or at Grand Cities Idol in April!). Another lesser known artist, Ray LaMontagne, cracked the “Best Song” category with Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, and other big names with his gentle ballad “Beg, Steal, or Borrow,” but that’s not a tune you’ll hear on XL93 either. Yet those types of songs (the ones that don’t make Ryan Seacrests’ top 40) are the ones that tend to resonate with me most. Why is that? What is it that draws us to certain types of music?  And what is it that makes those top 40 become top 40 songs? And how can Music Therapy harness the power of the music that motivates us to promote positive change?

What draws us to certain types of music?

The answer to that question is as varied as there are styles of music and people who enjoy them.  Whenever I lead a lyric analysis discussion at one of my sites, I always ask participants 3 questions to start things off:  What did you like about the song, what didn’t you like, and what “stuck out” to you.  I’d encourage any of my readers here to do the same thing with your favorite song – what is it you like/don’t like?  Is it the lyrics, the style of music?  Is it the artist his/herself?  Many people feel they can’t enjoy an artist if they know things about them personally that they don’t find appealing, and vice versa (“Sting practices yoga?  Me too!” etc.).  For me, it’s a combination of both the lyrics and the music, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on any one thing that instantly does it for me – it depends on my mood.  My playlists contain everything from the songs linked above to Opera and Rob Zombie.  What “sticks out” to me might vary with each song, but whatever it is, I know it when I hear it, and it makes me run to my Rhapsody playlist and hit “Add!”

How does music corral the masses?  How does a top 40 song become a top 40 song?

I mentioned before that some artists rise in popularity due to who they are.  The scandal that followed Michael Jackson all his life is part of what kept his career going – people wanted to see what he would do next.  Lady Gaga sparks the same kind of morbid curiosity (“If she wore a dress made out of meat in public, what does she do in private?”  I wouldn’t want to know).  But even their behavior and our strange attraction to it, is born out of the music.  A book I’ve got marked on my “to read” list is The Triumph of Music:  The Rise and Fall of Composers, Musicians, and Their Art by Tim Blanning.  You can read a review of the book here. What drew me to the subject matter, and what I think greatly answers the question of how music moves a culture was in the final line of that review:

“Although not always in step, music, society, and politics…march in the same direction”

There was a time when artists were strictly bound to the rules of society.  Over time, their urge to stretch their creative muscles and the capabilities of technology to expand with them created an ability to question and even inspire the changing of rules and societal norms.  Think of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, the Vietnam War, how much of role music played in those times.  Musicians were regarded as political activists, and Music as a political and social tool.  It still holds that power today, even if it is just encouraging us to “Evacuate the Dance Floor” (not sure why that Cascada song just popped into my head but there you go).  Actually I’ve been finding a lot of “Self Preservation” types of songs out there lately – in this day and age, Depression and Post-Traumatic Stress disorders are real and crippling conditions – many of the top songs on the radio today, like Eminem’s “Not Afraid,” Katy Perry’s “Firework,” and Bruno Mars’ “Just the way you are” deal with facing those core issues of self worth and overcoming adversity, and people are drawn to that.  Those are the kinds of changes in perspective our society is craving right now, and it shows in our national music trends.

How can Music Therapy use our emotional connection with music to enact positive change?

It starts before a single note even sounds with the therapeutic relationship.  I finally got a chance last week to see “The King’s Speech,” starring Colin Firth in a Golden Globe winning (and Oscar Nominated) role as King George the VI of England, who ruled during World War II.  He possessed a severe stutter and sought the aid of Lionel Lowe (played by Geoffrey Rush) to correct his “mechanical problem with speech.”  From the moment they meet, Lowe asks the King some very personal questions (“how did you come to stutter?  When do you stutter most?”)  and the King initially refused to answer them, insisting they had nothing to do with his “mechanical” problem – but they did.  The King stuttered most under extreme stress and around particular people – his “mechanical” problem was born out of personal ones.  Through the disclosure of that information and the relationship that bloomed out of the trust between Lowe and the King (not to mention some great ties to Music Therapy, among them singing and dancing to bypass stuttering roadblocks!), a great change became possible.

Complete trust and open disclosure must exist between a therapist and a client if any change is to take place.

So, we Music Therapists do more than just push play on an Ipod or strum a few chords here and there on our guitars, we are trained in Counseling and Psychology as well.  After the establishment of a relationship with our clients through assessment of their abilities and needs, we apply music and techniques that have meaning to them based on the information and understanding we’ve acquired between us to achieve the goals they need reach.  We can harness a love of music to address emotional expression and social interplay, or we can use the love of a particular composer or artist to look at that musician’s life and discuss what we can glean for our own lives from looking at their life and music.  Every individual’s session contents will be different.

Now, music itself does do some pretty amazing things.  A recent study in Nature Neuroscience discovered that while listening to music we enjoy, our brains release Dopamine, the “feel-good” chemical released after we sleep, eat, or engage in other rewarding activities.  This means music is actually a reward for your brain. How cool is that?  The more actively you’re engaged in the music, the greater the reward will be – hence the reason you’re always hearing me encourage live music making or participation.  This past weekend I was involved with two large-scale events involving active music making that I mentioned in my last post- in the week leading up to them I’ve fought a lingering cough from a cold I keep thinking is over (but it never is!), along with a full week of work that left me feeling pretty drained before I picked up that first drum at the Firehall on Friday.  But after each song, and after each dance on Saturday at 12 Houses, no matter how my body had felt before I started engaging in the music, I felt infinitely better afterwards.  My husband was with me at both events and even he commented on how my demeanor changed from start to finish.  My brain was releasing “feel-good” chemicals, and all I had to do was play, sing, and dance.

Now the process of treatment in Music Therapy can get much more in-depth, as you’ve seen in past posts and I will continue to happily share in future posts (my brain has been so full of fun information to share it’s often tough to prioritize just which facet I’ll share next, there are so many!) but until then I encourage you to check our MT in ND page for up to the minute events in Music Therapy that you can take advantage of Statewide.  If there isn’t an event near you, just find a concert or CD featuring a band you really enjoy, watch the Grammy’s tonight, invite some friends to share the experience with you and sing or tap along with the performers.  For where there is active engagement, in music, and with the people you love, there is reward.

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Making Music as a Family (Part 1)

Filed Under : Abuse,Adolescents,Adult Wellness,Autism,Early Childhood,Education,Emotionally Disturbed,Family,General,K-12,Other Special Populations by Natasha Thomas
Jan.27,2011

It’s been a busy week in Music Therapy!  Music and Me at UND started this Monday with Music Therapy in Motion’s Emily Wangen (check out the MT in North Dakota page if you’re interested in registering – it’s not too late!) and students from across the state flooded into the School for the Blind for Programming this week, a time during which I serve primarily as a Braille Music Instructor.  This week has also been a week of advocacy for Music Therapy in General.  Colleagues of mine drove out to Bismarck this Wednesday to share information that will hopefully see our field recognized, regulated and reimbursable for families across our great state.  All in all the perfect week for a Drum Circle, which will be happening this Saturday, January 29th at 12 Houses from 7-9pm!  Now, you may be asking,

“What is a Drum Circle?”  and

“What Happens at a Drum Circle?”

Drum Circles are as varied as the persons who lead them and those who participate in them.  My personal definition of a drum circle is a gathering of individuals from all different walks of life, age, and ability who come together in a common love of music and their community to share in a common experience by contributing to a group musical effort.  When I pull up to the monthly Drum Circle at 12 Houses, I bring with me a bag of drums and other percussion instruments with the sole intent that they will be demonstrated on and made available to anyone who wants to play them, and I am always excited to see how quickly they get snatched up!  As one group member told me back when the group first started,

“Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, you just have to grab a drum and start playing!  Every off beat becomes an on beat somehow.”

In the course of the evening, I might just play my drum along with the group, demonstrating different rhythms and facilitating group starts and stops or drawing the focus of participants to one instrument group or another, but more often than not, I’ll be singing: songs of welcome from countries around the world, songs of love and peace, silly songs, energizing songs, all based on where I feel the group is in the playing process and what style and message I think they would most benefit from in that moment.  Some circles we have lots of children and the group is lively and filled with dancing and improvising nonsense vocal syllables in a call and response, sometimes there are more adults and the circle is pensive, with songs recognizing our unity as human beings and celebrating our differences and how they enable us to each contribute something of meaning to our world.  Every circle is different.  Every circle is special.

So what’s the research to support Group Drumming?

A recent study found that infants as young as 5 months respond to music more than they do to speech.  120 infants were all subjected to different styles of music and their movements were analyzed by professional ballet dancers.  Their movements were found to be most frequent during songs with a steady, predictable beat.  The more children were able to synchronize their movements to the beat, the more they smiled.  There is research to suggest that physical exercise strengthens the brain as well, which would lead to the natural conclusion that…

If rhythm prompts movement and movement prompts brain development, then rhythm promotes a healthy brain.

The practice of Group Drumming (or indeed any type of Group Music-Making) has specific implications on social and emotional skills as well.  In a study published by NAMM, a global music products industry, Group Drumming with a group of low-income at-risk teens showed tremendous positive effects on such problems as withdrawal, depression, and anxiety.  As Ping-Ho, principle investigator of the study says:

“Drumming is inclusive, culturally relevant, stress reducing, and does not bear the stigma of therapy. It is an ideal framework for social-emotional skill building.”

When individuals engage in that type of hands-on music making, positive associations and connections with their peers are possible.  Imagine the possibilities of making music as a family!  Family music making is an excellent way to celebrate each others’ strengths and dig deeply into your own learning style and how you can use it in conjunction with the rest of your family to contribute to a group process.  The experience of making music with my husband is one of the most fulfilling, intimate things we do together.  When we have children, we’ll make music with them too – it just makes sense to us.  It fuels us.

So, give it a shot!  Try joining us at 12 Houses this Saturday at 7pm, and bring the kids!  As a new parent bringing her child to my family music class at the LISTEN Center found out just this week, even the most shy, reserved individual can be brought out of their shell to enjoy a music making experience, and it’s one you as a parent won’t want to trade for anything in the world.  The wonder and excitement on the face of this woman’s child  as he experienced Group Music for the first time is truly something to see and enjoy – it’s contagious!  In fact, I taped the very session at LISTEN in which that experience occurred, and I’ll be sharing clips from that recording in Part 2 of our discussion on Making Music as a Family next week.  **If you’re interested in joining the LISTEN group, we have now combined the Elementary and PreK groups into a general, FREE Family Music Time Group at 5:30 on Wednesdays. **

Whether it’s at LISTEN, Music and Me at UND or 12 Houses, we hope you’ll find some way to get involved in Music this week.  Find out what Music Therapy can do for you!

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Apocolyptic Fireflight – Musical Mashups as Therapy

Filed Under : Abuse,Adolescents,Adult Wellness,Emotionally Disturbed,Family,General,K-12,Other Special Populations,Studio Music,Technology,Uncategorized by Natasha Thomas
Jan.18,2011

I mentioned last week that a student had told me they used the song “Unbreakable” by Fireflight to relax and focus.  Now, no matter what you feel about the music, the lyrics are energizing at the very least:

“Now I am unbreakable, it’s unmistakable
No one can touch me
Nothing can stop me”

Now, picture this same student as one who, when I first met them, requested we listen to the song “I don’t care” by Apocolyptica (featuring Adam Gontier, lead singer of Three Days Grace).  That chorus reads:

“If you were dead or still alive,
I don’t care – I don’t care,
And all the things you left behind,
I don’t care – I don’t care”

Those words aren’t so uplifting, but reverse the order in which each of those song’s chorus lyrics were presented to you, put them in progression with each other as this student did in the “Mash-up” activity I’ll describe in more detail below and you’ve got a totally different, new message:

“All the things you left behind,
I don’t care – I don’t care,

Because….

Now I am unbreakable, it’s unmistakable”

Cool, huh?  Looking at those lyrics together, you get a sense of the person who requested them, and why they might have chosen to put them together.  “Mashing up,” or cutting-and-pasting existing songs back to back or on top of each other, based on how well their lyrics and musical styles fit has been the subject of a new project of mine at a variety of locations, predominantly with teenagers who are emotionally disturbed, have suffered abuse, or have criminal records.  As I’ve gotten to know the music they choose to listen to and enjoy, I’ve gotten to know them.

First, I ask them to tell me what kinds of songs they like.  We listen to them in their entirety, which can often take weeks depending on how many songs students share, discuss what we think the lyrics mean, what the artists’ intent may have been, and how the music reflects the lyrics and vice versa.

Second, after all the listening is done and each member of the group has had a chance to contribute at least one song to the list, we start choosing which songs we think will go well together, again based on their lyrics and style of music.  Apocolyptica and Fireflight have very similar musical styles and their subject matter fit well together – other songs selected by the peers of the student who chose those first two were Puke by Eminem, Bounce by Timbaland (both very different musical style and lyrics for sure, but the tempos matched almost perfectly) and Airplanes by B.O.B.  Each of those songs has merits in their own right and is worth looking up on Youtube or downloading on Itunes, but when put together they take on new meaning, not to mention that the process of putting them together is an excellent experience in team building and appropriate social interaction.  That’s the final step.

Third, and lastly, each group I did this with used the Free Version of WavePad Audio that can be downloaded here. From there, we would divvy up which student would take responsibility for which song, so in the group that did the mix including those songs above, some students had to share one song with another student.  Each team would choose what part of their song we would use, and then be responsible for editing it in the WavePad software.  They would trim the piece to its desired length, then make sure it transitioned well from the piece before it, asking feedback from the group after each edit, as I told them the finished product needed to be something everyone was happy with.  The end result was a pretty cool little mix of songs reflecting each student’s unique personality and tastes in a master work they collaborated to create.  (I would include it here if the sounds of Eminem puking at the start of the track weren’t such turn-offs for most weak stomachs!)  Now, this is no easy feat for some of these kids to accomplish.  Social skills like those required to handle another peer’s constructive criticism and learning to offer your own are built out of practice, something many of these kids don’t have the opportunity to do in a safe environment.  The experience of music making in this activity offers them that.  Plus it’s just plain fun!  Their assignment for next week is to think of two songs that we could stack on top of each other using another Free Audio Editing Software called Audacity, which you can find here. The idea is for them to come up with something like this Mashup of Man of Constant Sorrow and Gwen Stefani’s Hollaback Girl, which I credit my Internship Director for showing me in Georgia during my time there – very cool!

Want to find more mashups?  Check out Mash-Up Breakdown.com, where you can find visual representations of the 300+ songs used in the DJ Girl Talk’s album All Day.  The page shows you a bubble of each song being sampled as it goes by in every track, each of which are combinations from various genres and styles of music all chosen to fit together by tempo.  Be warned that there is profanity in just about all of them, so if you’re looking to avoid that, some good tracks to listen to are 5, 9, and 11 (all of those are clean for the first 2 minutes).  Now I have no idea how much time it takes to put something like that together (and I have no intention of finding out) but the outcome is pretty amazing and fun to aspire to in the little mixes my classes and I have been putting together.

Next week on MusicMoves we’ll take a look at Early Childhood and some fun songs and activities for that population – in the meantime, new events highlighted below have been added to the Community Page, now titled “Music Therapy in North Dakota:”

In Grand Forks

For Children:

FREE Sessions at the LISTEN Drop-In Center continue with Natasha Wednesdays, at 5pm (Elementary), and 5:30 (Prek/Family).

NEW Music and Me at UND (formerly known as MusikTanz) classes are going to begin Monday, Jan 24th.  There will be classes for infants 1-12 mo, 12 mo- 3 yrs and 3yrs to 5 yrs. For more information call UND Music Dept or call Emily Wangen at (218)-791-0908 (see below or on the Community page itself if number doesn’t show up here).  To register for classes go to musictherapyinmotion.com and download the enrollment forms under the side bar named UND Children’s Music and Me at UND Classes.

Emily Wangen is also available for private Music Therapy services in Grand Forks (including a jam session for students with special needs for those interested in forming one!) and to cofacilitate ABA and Music Therapy together.

For Adults (Children Welcome)

FREE Drum Circle for the month of January is coming up!  Saturday, January 29th, 7pm at 12Houses

NEW EVENT LISTED: LISTEN Drop-In Choir, an inclusive group of Adults from ALL walks of life and ability, led by Natasha, is currently preparing for their Valentine’s Day Show!  Meets Wednesday nights at 6:30, 624 N. Washington.

In Fargo – ALL NEW INFORMATION!

A full time music therapist is available in Fargo for private music therapy and modified/adaptive music lessons for individuals with special needs.  She is available for consultation and is willing to travel to rural areas to provide MT services.  For more information contact Emily Wangen at (218)-791-0908.

…and beyond (also new)!

Music Therapy is also on the rise in Bismarck!  Natasha is currently in the process of developing a group there for children on the Autism Spectrum.  Updates that and other MT events and groups opening up statewide coming soon!

Check the community page often for more updates on new events as they become available – Maybe you’ll find one YOU want to check out!

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