Author: Erin

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Iso

I have a client who seems to have a great deal of anger. For months now, he and I have made very small steps toward reaching his goals. I have had trouble engaging him in any of the musical experiences I present, even though he speaks at length about how he wants to be a guitarist.

I feel that I’m failing him, and I don’t have any more ideas. Only one time in months leading up to tonight have I felt that he was interested in anything I provided, and that experience was songwriting. He participated in that for only one session.

Tonight, he seemed particularly angry. He vented for most of the session, which seems absolutely appropriate for some clients to do every so often. However, with this client, I can hardly ever direct him away from this venting on any occasion. Because I sensed he would not even touch his guitar, I decided to match his mood with some recorded music I have on my iPhone. His favorite genre of music is heavy metal. I don’t have any of that genre readily available, so I found “God’s Away On Business,” by Tom Waits, with which he was not familiar. The timbre of Waits’s voice could be somewhat comparable to some of the vocals in some heavy metal bands. But, Waits typically juxtaposes the roughness in his voice with melodic lines, provided by instruments such as the bassoon and marimba. I felt I could intrigue my client with novelty and the quality of Waits’s voice, and hopefully move him away from his anger. I think it worked; he quieted and seemed to listen, even though his comment was, “That sucked.”

We moved on from there, and I did hold his attention for the rest of the session by using Pandora on my phone to play a station of bands he likes.

Sure, we weren’t able to reach any “true” goals tonight, but I was happy with the distance we did travel.

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Successful show

Ah, success was had. Today was the first-ever “variety show” at the care center. An 18-person choir and a seven- or eight-person drama troupe performed in addition to the nine-person tone chimes ensemble. There were many people to organize and prepare, and I was so pleased that a lot of them had friends and family members attend the show. I believe there were more than 100 people in our audience.

One resident, who performed in all three ensembles, said he was feeling “lousy” when I collected him from his room before the show. He almost refused to go. After the show, though? “How are you feeling?” I asked him. He looked at me, smiled, and said, “Really good.”

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Grasping the music

I worked at the care center tonight, and we had a 35-piece community band come perform their Christmas music. I know the memory care residents pretty well, and so I sat among those who attended the performance in order to be sure they were comfortable and wouldn’t feel a need to leave. In the middle of one of the songs, one of my residents reached over and grabbed my hand as she moved with the beat of the music. I was thrilled.

I love my job.

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Concert

I am consumed by the care center’s upcoming holiday performance.

I have:

  • sent invitations out to family members / friends of performing residents
  • prepared binders of music for each choir member
  • given written reminders to each performer
  • printed and posted signs all over the facility
  • reserved the space for adequate time to set up
  • sent out e-mails to staff who will hopefully help the performers dress in a unified way
  • had nightmares about being unprepared for the performance

Happy Friday.

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Clive Robbins

Directly following our Minneapolis music therapist meeting last night, I received a text from one of my good friends and colleagues, saying that Clive Robbins of the Nordoff-Robbins approach to music therapy died. I am sad to hear this, and know that he will always be a very prominent figure in our profession.

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Meetings

I love getting to see the music therapists I know face-to-face. Tonight some of us met for a Minneapolis music therapists meeting, and I adore how rejuvenated I feel when in the midst of other professionals. One of us shared a template she uses to track her CEUs. We discussed different tactics in working with certain clients. We planned for future months. I was happy to see them all, and am excited to be trying to grow a community, hard though it may be at times.

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Tomorrow night

For you Minneapolis/St. Paul area music therapists:

 

Upcoming events at Sound Matters Music Therapy

Meeting of Minneapolis Music Therapists

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

7:30 PM

The Lowbrow

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A care center Christmas

I am not sure how the Christmas season has come already. I spent half of my afternoon decorating the care center for Christmas, and the other half preparing invitations to send out to family members of residents who will be performing in a variety ensemble concert in a week. This concert will be the first for our new resident choir and drama club, and only the second time I’ve directed — if you can call it that — the tone chimes ensemble. How I’d love for the Young @ Heart Chorus to be our model, but I’m positive I don’t have the time I’d need to help us come to that.

Either way, happy holidays! 

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Now, if only I had access to a CAT scanner

When I was growing up, I played Suzuki Method violin with about a dozen other kids. Three of those kids — who happen to be siblings — were (are) very, very talented musicians. As an eight-year-old, one of them locked herself in a bathroom with her violin and didn’t come out until she had taught herself the entire Book 8 (the Suzuki books start with Book 1, being the easiest, and go to Book 10). Another sibling traveled the world as a performer. Though I don’t know the details, I recall hearing that she had a bow (just the bow) that was thousands of dollars.

I came across an article by way of Bob Collins’s News Cut that described the use of CAT scanners in replicating instruments. Specifically, a 307-year-old Stradivarius violin.

The short story is that a radiologist by the name of Steven Sirr left his violin, which he practiced in his quiet time at the hospital, on a table near a scanner while he attended to a patient on his way to surgery. When Sirr returned, he thought he’d scan his violin. (Out of boredom? Who paid for that? Anyway.)

Stradivarius and its replica, picture from BBC News

The data was used to build very near exact copies of the antique Stradivarius.

Read the whole article here.

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Fascination Station: Björk’s “Biophilia”

I love Björk. I have for years. I even liked how she sent me to tears for days in “Dancer in the Dark.” 

I find Björk to be a creative genius, with the beats she produces, the instrumentation she manufactures and manipulates, and the ideas she seems to be constantly generating. This is why I was thrilled to hear a description and review of her newest album, “Biophilia,” on the The New York Times Science Times podcast.

Who knows

 

 

 

“[The album] is no ordinary album. It uses unusual and newly-invented instruments to reflect the rhythms of nature.”

–Pam Belluck, The New York Times

 

 

Ritchie King wrote about “Biophilia” for Science Times, and you can hear some of what he has to say about it here.

Björk combines her music with iPad apps in order to make her product interactive. I am fascinated by her.