Had to brag a bit

Thought I'd share a picture from my garage band days, mentioned in the previous post.

Ahh, those were the days...

Hats and Where You Got Them

Before jumping into this post, I want to announce that I am now proudly listed on the Erfurt Music Resource! Be sure to check out this awesome website, it's chock full of excellent music therapy resources (which now includes your's truly!)

Been quiet around here lately. I've been crazy busy with everything. This week, I begin taking over half the caseload, which means planning whole sessions rather than just a few activities per session. This means a whole lot more time management for me during sessions, which is tough for me.

I visited Tallahassee this weekend, which meant 10 hours on the road this weekend. This let me catch up on one of my favorite podcasts, The Music Therapy Round Table. In episode 8, Rachel, Michelle, and Kimberly discuss the many "hats" music therapists wear (clinician, researcher, advocate, etc.)

Listening to this, my mind began to wander, as it is known to do when facing 300 miles of highway (don't worry Mom, I was still focused on the road), and I came up with this question: What non-academic life experiences have taught you skills that you never realized would be so useful in the future?

For me there are two. One would be my most recent job, and the other would be my garage band in high school.

During my last two years at FSU, I worked as a tour guide for the University. I gave countless tours to prospective students and their families. Each tour lasted about two hours, and I probably gave well over 100 of them while I was employed there.

I loved this job for many reasons. Of course there's the obvious reason, I was getting paid to talk about how great The Florida State University is! Pretty easy for me. But there's also the amazing life skills it taught me, namely the ridiculous amount of public speaking experience it provided.

On a daily basis, I gave a two hour presentation to groups ranging from 1 person, to upwards of 40 people. Some of my internship supervisors have commented that I'm very comfortable jumping in front of the group and modifying my plans on the spot. I attribute my comfort level in front of groups to that job. I was even asked to sing the FSU fight song on the spot in front of the entire group multiple times. Being in front of groups doesn't raise my anxiety levels at all, and I'm very thankful for this.

The other experience that taught me skills I never knew would be so useful is the experience of starting a band in high school. Around my sophomore year, I started a ska band with six of my best friends. We called ourselves "Go Play in Traffic." I played saxophone in the group. Our band was more successful than most of us had ever imagined it would be. We headlined local shows, packed venues, recorded a full length CD and sold around 500 copies of it, even went on a week-long tour! I met so many people through this experience. It was an absolute blast and it will always be the defining memory of my high school years.

But it also taught me some amazing business skills! It really was like running a small business. We had to manage the money we made. Once we made a handful of money, we decided to invest it in some stickers with our logo on it. That in turn made us more money. We took this money and invested it in t-shirts with our logo on it. This brought in more money. So we got more shirts. Then we started saving money to record our CD. We got 1000 copies printed and made more money off these. So we saved up again for our tour. This is where I learned first hand about investments and profits and how this fits into running a business.

We recorded our CD by ourselves in our drummer's bedroom, and this is where I learned about types of microphones, how to use recording software, mixing and mastering a recording, and how to maximize the quality of a recording.

I don't know how it happened, but the responsibility of designing and ordering merchandise fell into my lap as well. I learned how to use high quality design software that I've used countless times since. I made the designs for the shirts and stickers and assisted my band-mates with designing our album art as well. I made some pretty cool looking logos, if I do say so myself.

I learned some great song writing skills as well, and more team work skills than I could ever imagine. Time and time again, I'm reminded about how helpful this experience was. And at the time, I thought I was just playing some rock and roll with my friends.

So what non-academic experiences have proved more useful than you could have ever imagined? I'd love to hear your stories.

Writer's Block

I have a confession: I frequently suffer from what can only be described as "Music Therapy Writer's Block."

What I mean is that I will sit for hours staring at a blank lesson/session plan racking my brain for what I should do. For some reason, I have the hardest time coming up with activities. This is something I struggled with during practicums and recently as well.

So how do I solve this? One way I've come up with recently is to just adopt the brainstorming strategy. Whenever an idea pops into my head, I write it down. Doesn't matter if it I think it's an awesome idea or a terrible idea, I write it down. This has been working pretty well for me. Sometimes when I come back to the idea, it really comes together and forms something pretty cool. Other times, nothing really comes of it. But that's okay. The idea is that it gives me a really wide range of ideas to start with, which is sometimes the hardest part.

Just this morning, I was awoken by my alarm radio by the song "Do You Feel Like We Do?" by Peter Frampton. For whatever reason, I thought about using this song in an activity involving recognizing emotions. I wrote it down, and a few hours later when I came back to it, I was able to form it into a workable plan (one that I'm pretty excited to try out. In fact, depending on how it goes next week, I'll do a write up on here.)

Professional MT's, do you ever find yourself suffering from music therapy writer's block? What are some successful strategies you employ to overcome this?

Sites I Love: Justinguitar.com

How's that for a good title for this series, Sites I Love? It works.

This would be installment #2 for Sites I Love (last month was "Beyond The Music," in case you forgot). This month I want to plug an amazing guitar resource called justinguitar.com.

The site is run by an English gentleman by the name of Justin Sandercoe, an excellent musician and songwriter. I found the site through youtube, I happened to be searching for a video on how to play a song and stumbled across one of his videos.

His website is the most in depth resource of online (and free!) guitar lessons I've ever seen. Lessons ranging from beginner guitar to advanced. Blues, jazz, and rock lessons. Information about guitar gear, tutorials on how to play your favorite songs and sound just like the recording, it's awesome!

The site is super easy to navigate. There's a navigation bar on the left side of the page with everything you need. One of my favorites is the song tutorials. Towards the bottom of the navigation bar, click on "songs." He's got a whole list of lessons on how to play various popular songs. Each lesson has an accompanying video, where he breaks down everything you need to know slowly and in a way that even guitar newcomers can understand.

He's got great material on improving your technique, learning to improvise, what and how to practice, all sorts of cool stuff.

Since I don't take private lessons on guitar (would love to, but an unpaid internship makes that a bit difficult currently), his website is the first place I go to when I have a question or am struggling with something.

So check it out! Learn something new!

www.justinguitar.com

The Whole Day Through

One of the great and therapeutic things about music is that it means so many different things to so many people. What one person hears as total noise, another hears as soothing music. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people say something "isn't music." That usually means they don't like it or don't understand it (Sadly, hip-hop and metal are the most frequent victims of this close mindedness, in my experience). It's art! If someone says it's music, than it's music! John Cage wrote a piece entitled "4'33"", and it is literally 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. Guess what? It's music. Why? Because he said it is. My brother loves this band called Lightning Bolt. I can't stand them. But I would never go as far as to say it's not music, because music is art, and it can be whatever people want it to be.

However, there is one indisputable fact in the music world. Something that is not open to debate, i's just the truth. And it is this:

The state of Georgia has THE BEST state song in the U.S. In case you're unfamiliar, it's "Georgia On My Mind" made famous by the great Ray Charles.

Now I hear what you're saying: "But Andrew! What about my state's song?" Sorry, "Georgia On My Mind" blows it out of the water. This is coming from a proud Floridian, and Georgia's song most definitely is better than my home state's anthem.

If you live in Indiana, you can take solace in knowing that your state's song is a solid 2nd place, but that's mostly because of the awesome tradition it's part of.

So kudos to you, Georgia, my temporary home. You nailed it. Now I'm off to the Braves game! Beat the Phillies!

Pep Talk

Quick update tonight. Time is flying by.

I had a great day today. Lately, I've been feeling like everyday I've been improving. I don't mean that to sound cocky, but I feel like at the end of the day I can look back and pinpoint what I did and learned that made me a better music therapist than when I started. It's an awesome feeling. It's like when you first notice the results of a work out program or diet.

I realize everyday won't be like this. In fact there will probably be days or whole weeks where I feel the exact opposite of what I feel now. But for now, I'm just enjoying the progress.

I've heard both former FSU coach Bobby Bowden and current coach Jimbo Fisher say this: "You're either getting better or getting worse. You never stay the same." I like that. It's tough to stick to sometimes, it's always easy to fall into a routine and be happy with the status quo. Trust me, it's something I struggle with frequently. So I'm going to make my best effort to keep up the progress, even when it gets a lot more difficult.

Show Your Work

No update for almost a week? What's wrong with me?

I was going to do another status update on what I've been up to (which has included some good stuff, like getting to observe speech, physical, and occupational therapists work with students), but I read an article tonight that I wanted to critique on here. It'll be a good change of pace. By the end of this week I'll be drowning in IEPs (that's Individual Education Plan) and writing goals, so I'm sure I'll have plenty to say then.

When I was in school, my math and science teachers would always tell me "show your work." I hated it. Sometimes, I could do things quickly in my head, and I didn't need to show my work. But that was the rule. The reason for this rule was that if I came up with an incorrect answer, I could see where I went wrong. This same adage can be transferred to music therapy. You must "show your work."

I found this article via Twitter. It was posted by a music therapist I follow, Rachelle Norman. Rachelle runs a private music therapy practice called Soundscape Music Therapy, running out of Kansas City.

Before reading my response, you may want to read the article. It's titled "The Illusion of Evidenced-Based Practices", by Michelle Dean. In the article, Dean takes issue with the heavy emphasis on evidenced-based treatment (EBT) in education and healthcare practices today, and how art therapy doesn't really fit into this model.

Before I begin, let me make my bias very clear. I am in full support of evidenced-based treatments. This is what I was taught at FSU, and it's what I believe is the best route. I feel that the only way you can administer a treatment fairly to a client, is to prove to them scientifically that it works.

Now I take several issues with this article. One of the first arguments Dean makes is that the success of art therapy is predicated upon the relationship between the therapist and the client.

"...when symbols or people in a relationship are taken out of context they lose their meaning...those relationship qualities that are so elusive to measure."

She claims that in order to measure the benefits of art therapy scientifically (without bias), one would have to remove the regular therapist that the client sees. Thus, the client/therapist relationship variable would be removed, and the effectiveness of the therapy would be stifled.

I take issue with this for several reasons. One is that just about every treatment and therapy you can think of, outside of chemical treatments, is reliant on a successful relationship between the client and the therapist. The health of the client/therapist relationship plays an essential role in the success of psychology, psychotherapy, speech, occupational, and even physical therapy. If you change the therapist in any of these fields, you will more than likely reduce the effectiveness of the therapy, at least until this new therapist establishes a relationship with the client. This is especially true with special needs children, who thrive on routine and structure.

All of these fields cannot simply disregard EBT and abandon having to prove and document the success of their treatments, just because they rely on the client/therapist relationship. In fact, I don't think you need to remove the therapist to scientifically measure the effectiveness of these therapies. Granted, this is a variable. It would be difficult to judge if it was solely the treatment having the positive or negative effect on the client. But you'll never be able to remove all of the variables in any kind of behavioral science. That's just the nature of the beast. There are far too many variables to control. How is the client feeling that day? Did they have breakfast? Did they sleep well the night before? You just can't control everything the way you can in a biology or chemistry lab. It's always been this way though, and that hasn't deterred behavioral science very much.

Dean also makes the argument that art therapy does not fit into the EBT model because it is very symbolic in nature. The creative expression is the therapy, and that is difficult to measure.

"Although objective observation may be desirable in evidenced-based therapies, it is not truly possible in this relational, creative, and symbolic context."

I believe this sells art therapy short. The benefits extend far beyond the opportunity for self-discovery or expression. Certainly this is very important, but look at the big picture. Look at the motor skills benefits, both gross and fine, painting has. Look at the object identification opportunities, or the academic and pre-academic lessons you can transfer into an art session. I feel that Dean is only focusing on one goal, and it's a very limited goal.

The Fulton County MT's all have a poster with their music therapy supplies that I love. It says "How can I use music to ________?"I believe the art therapy field can ask this same question: How can I use art to _______? To practice following directions, to increase social contact, to teach colors, to exercise fine motor skills, etc? Simply looking at the expressive aspect limits the field so much. It'd be like a music therapist who only ever worked on the goal of mood elevation. Just, "let's play some drums and talk about what we're feeling." This is definitely a very important goal in MT, but there are thousands of others that are equally important.

I also interpret Dean's words as saying that you cannot measure these expressive and symbolic benefits of art therapy, and I disagree with her here as well. I don't believe there is anything wrong with good 'ol self report. Doctors in the hospital use it all the time. Think about every hospital room you've been in. I know all the rooms I've seen have a Likert scale on the wall, usually numbered 1-7 or 1-10, of the patient's current pain perception. The doctor asks how the patient's pain is that day, and they let him know on that scale. The lowest number would be "little-to-no pain" and the highest would be "unbearable pain." This is a very important tool in helping doctors assess a patient.

You can use the same concept to judge the effectiveness of an art therapy session on a clients emotional state. A simple pre-post self-assessment using a Likert scale. This isn't any less valuable than any other data collected in an experiment. It's a simple, fast, and effective way to collect quantitative data on a phenomenological experience.

I don't think you'll find many music therapists who will belittle the importance and impact that the Journal of Music Therapy has had on our field. Having research support our field opens up jobs and new opportunities for music therapists everyday. It may be inconvenient at times, but the only way to protect and expand our career field is to back it up.

Show your work.

Photo courtesy of Flikr user Kevin H.