It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

With Christmas soon approaching, we have decked our house out with Christmas decorations. Personally, I LOVE decorating for Christmas! It is so much fun and really gets me in the mood for the season. The other thing that gets me in the Christmas mood is… Christmas music! Christmas music is the absolute best thing, and it is just about the only thing I listen to during this time of the year.

So, naturally, while decorating the house I needed to be accompanied by Christmas music. Unfortunately, I do not have any music of my own on my iTunes or any CD’s laying around. …hello Spotify! If you haven’t yet used Spotify, you’re missing out. (For those of you who don’t like Christmas music, don’t worry—it has every other kind of music as well!)

I found a Christmas playlist someone else had made, turned it on and basked in the glory of the music for the rest of the day.

With Spotify, you have two options: Regular or Premium version. I only use Spotify for the regular settings, but it has some wonderful other settings if you choose to buy the monthly Premium version. Either way… It has a wonderful collection of music of every genre and artist. I have yet to look for a song on Spotify and couldn’t find it. Kind of impressive! It is also available for mobile as well as laptop/computer.

Easy to use. Easy access to music.

Spotify for the win!

A Wizard in the Mix

For a clinical this semester, we are working in a senior living center and giving individual music therapy piano lessons. Personally, I have been taking piano lessons since I was in first or second grade, so I thought, “This will be easy! I have so much experience with piano lessons!”

Then we started working with a program, Piano Wizard. At first I thought it sounded weird and like a “cop out” because we were using a program and not just our own skills and such. But, since it was for a class, I obliged.

After a few weeks, though, I grew to love it! For someone just starting out on the piano, it is very accommodating and rewarding. It comes with a few songs already in the system for varying levels of expertise, tempo is easily adjustable, notes are easy to read, hands can be split up, and any midi file can be inputted as sheet music.

And as a music therapist… It is fantastic for data collection! Immediate data is outputted on note accuracy throughout the song! It takes away the objective “they did better” or “third try seemed better” and replaces it with “89% accuracy was obtained”.

For music therapists interested in piano lessons for any client population, this is a piece of technology that will be very useful and helpful for both you and your client!

Clinical Win

So today in my clinical, I had a wonderful encounter with technology. We were playing through “Amazing Grace” and I wanted to make sure Mr. L could play his song without using the piano program. But I still wanted him to play it in tempo. Usually I would just tap or snap the beat myself, but I wanted to also accompany him on the other piano.

With all of these things in mind, I had only one option. I needed a metronome.

I know. It sounds very melodramatic.

But it was in that moment that I was even more thankful for my smart phone! I pulled out my phone, pulled up my MetroTimer app, and BOOM! We had a metronome and we were ready to play!

Plus, my client was actually kind of impressed with the app (granted, he is like 65 years old, so technology isn’t his thing…). Another win for technology!

Working with the Military

This weekend I attended the National Music Therapy Conference! First of all… It was amazing. I learned so much and heard from some great music therapists on many different areas of service.

One of my favorite sessions I attended was on Music Therapy with Active Military. The therapist gave a great presentation on the progress she’s had with her clients and showed data on some of the studies she had conducted. One thing I found really cool was the technology she used to monitor their vital signs called Inner Balance. The sensors are attached to their ears and monitors their heart rate and breathing variability. Through this, they were able to monitor the actual effect of the music on the person’s physiological signs and compare it to the perceived levels the client reported. For example, a client was asked to rate their perception of peace before the music intervention then again after the intervention. Their responses were then compared to the physiological symptoms—did their body physically and mentally relax? Just physically? Just mentally?

Whether or not the particular music interventions were successful with these clients was also interesting, but I thought the Inner Balance was just so neat because of the way it was affixed and the accuracy of the results. Go techonology!