A Typical Music Therapy Session

Because I work with a variety of different types of clients in several different settings, there’s no set way a therapy session may look, but here are some possibilities to give you a better idea.

I have a client-centered approach to therapy, so I perform a formal assessment from which I develop individual goals and objectives in the first couple sessions, just like any other medical-based therapist, such as occupational, physical or speech.

Once goals are developed, I come prepared with musical interventions and a rough plan for each session, but am always flexible and open to each individual’s mood and energy on any given day. Often a session will take us in a different direction than my initial plan and that’s fine, even wonderful.

Therapy activities generally take two forms: active – the patient creates music, or passive – the patient listens to music, but even listening is active in the context of therapy, since we are always working toward a specific goal. Music is merely the tool that helps patients achieve their goals, whether cognitive, physical or emotional. And we always keep in mind how skills learned in music therapy will transfer to daily living.

Here are a few examples of music therapy activities for different patients:

With Parkinson’s disease, we may start a session with breathing exercises and warming up the voice, then move onto singing if improved speech is a goal. Improved gait is another common goal for patients with Parkinson’s, so I use techniques from my NMT training including gait exercises using a metronome and preferred music. If a client loves Journey, we walk to Journey. If a client loves John Denver, we’ll use his music. As music preferences are part of my intake, I come prepared with some knowledge of those songs so that I can play them live. This allows me to adjust the elements of music in the moment, to motivate the brain to move or to slow down.

For my oncology or palliative care patients we may listen to favorite songs and talk about the feelings they bring up, and even re-write the lyrics to fit their own situation to help them work through this difficult time.

With clients who are recovering from a brain injury, I use musical patterning to play games with the client- I’ll play a musical idea, and ask them to repeat it, and then ask the client to improvise a new idea. This addresses memory, attention span, sequencing, and builds confidence.

Remember that you don’t need any musical experience to participate in music therapy. In fact, often it is my patients with no musical experience that benefit the most.

You can read about what one of my sessions with children could look like here. I got to work with a very special three-year-old while demonstrating the potentially powerful results of music therapy to hospital staff and other therapy disciplines.

On my Press Page, you can click on the MPBN Maine Calling video I was featured in for more examples or watch it here: