On Thursday, April 4th, some of our youngest musicians gathered for a special cabaret-style recital. The theme of the night? Cupcakes and Comedy! With April Fool's Day just behind us, we put a creative twist on our traditional recital format by asking our teachers to help students prepare songs that were designed to make people
One of my favorite music therapy consultation jobs was pushing into a Science class where a student with autism was being integrated. I would gather information from the teacher about different topics and then create an experience for the whole class to do. One class centered around the classification of animals into the 5
In this song, the “Wishing Tree” represents our heart’s desires. What would you wish for if you discovered the Wishing Tree? I encourage my students to select a word that is important to them from a list of inspirational words like: love, friendship, wealth, courage, creativity, happiness, understanding, support, faith, wisdom. Then there is
When designing Suzuki tone chime sessions, I am always looking for different ways to use the tone chimes to focus on specific group and individual skills. For some songs, players will follow a powerpoint on the TV, for other songs players will read a specialized notation of the song in their tone chime book.
Paraphrasing, or the rewording of something written or spoken by someone else, is a great skill to learn. Often a deeper meaning of the work is achieved through the basic steps of paraphrasing. I have found this to be an exciting songwriting technique when working with individuals with special needs. Often my students have a
Sometimes it's easy to fall into a rhythmic rut and reuse the same styles and rhythms over and over in your song creations. Want a fun way to create new rhythms in your songwriting process? Select 3-5 songs you currently are enjoying listening to. If you have an iPod, you can simply go to your
Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream was to end discrimination and bring about racial equality. He devoted his life to pursuing this dream and inspired not only his generation, but future generations as well. There are many songs to use as dedications and in observation of MLK day, but here is a hidden gem- "Follow That
When leading wellness clients through various breath exercises and experiences, I find that exploring different combinations of mouth and nose inhalations and exhalations can be a powerful tool. Here is one sequence I have clients follow, repeating each step 7 times in a row before moving on to the next step. Inhale and exhale through
I set out to compose an inspirational song to celebrate Earth Day with one of my larger group ensembles. I wanted to include a variety of elements: repeating lines for ease of singing, songwriting opportunities for the group, a different mode to create improvisations on pitch instruments, and maybe even include some foreign language elements. Initially
I am always looking for new ways to use music to optimize articulation and fluency skills with my students. I have always found drumming to be a great place to start because of the rhythmic connections one can make with the body and speech production. See a previous post, “Drumming to Foster Fluency in Speech”
