Music Therapy Musings

I just read a great post from Beginner-Guitar-Lessons.com entitled, How Anyone – Yes Even You – Can Become a World Class Guitarist The focal point of this post was that becoming an expert/virtuoso/world-class/etc. at anything isn’t necessarily about having natural ability. Now while I am a musician and certainly was born with some natural musical ability, there have been other musical abilities that I honed while in school. Relative pitch for example. I had to learn how to listen and develop my sense of pitch in order to use it in both my performances and in my music therapy practice.

What I enjoyed about this post was the message that becoming great at playing a musical instrument isn’t about practicing more than the next person, it’s about “the right kind of practice.” To quote this blog post,

So can just anyone become a master guitarist by simply practicing more than the next person?

Not necessarily – you have to do the right kind of practice. Don’t just repeat the same stuff over and over and wait for your cat to bark. In business a definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result – this applies to everything.

More often than not what keeps people from achieving true greatness when it comes to mastering a musical instrument is the tendency to skim over the harder and mundane parts.

To progress to greatness you need to spend time on the not-fun-but-essential-to-get-better tasks. As with anything highly desirable and hard to achieve in life there are difficult, un-enjoyable aspects that need to be tackled. Look at it this way – if there is something you tend to skip over in your practice routine or in your learning package, chances are that’s what you need to be focusing on to get to the next level.

I found this post to be very supportive as a musician. I am, myself, taking guitar lessons to improve my skills and there are definitely days when I get discouraged and think I just can’t get to the level of playing that I want. But after reading this article I am re-energized to keep practicing and moving towards my goal.

I also teach kids to play the clarinet and think this is a great article to share with them, which I will be doing. Thanks to Dot-Dash Innovations and the author of this blog post. I hope it will inspire my own music students.

I had an affirming experience this week. My approach to music therapy with the elderly and those living with Alzheimer’s, dementia, and other mental challenges is this:

Older adults, both healthy and those living with various challenges are still creative, vital human spirits that have something to contribute to this world.

One of the ladies I work with sufferers from breast cancer as well as dementia. In our work together she has not exhibited much confusion in our sessions, until this week. I found her very agitated and confused. She thought her now grown daughter was still a teenager and she wanted to go home. As I sat and listened to her, there was a part of her that knew she was confused. “I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy” she kept repeating. I assured her that I didn’t think she was crazy and affirmed that I felt her anxiety at the thought of losing her mind.

I think often we think of those with dementia as being comfortably uaware of so much in their lives. Yet here was a woman who, for the time we were together, recognized her own confusion and was terrified by it. I knew that I had something to offer this frightened, agitated woman that would help to calm her and give familiarity to her confusion, right at the moment…MUSIC.

Music provdies a safe, familiar environment where people can explore themselves, face the unknown, and be supported, comforted. After our time together, I left this woman a little more relaxed, a little more in control, and feeling a bit more safe. Isn’t that what we all want?