What is Music Therapy?

    Music therapy is an interpersonal process in which the therapist utilizes all aspects of music to help children restore, maintain, or improve health and/or psychological and social functioning. An improvisational approach to music therapy is based upon the interactive use of live music to develop communication, expression, and relationship. Therapists work in both group and individual sessions using guitar, piano, and vocal improvisation as a primary tool.

    Children participate in creating musical themes and ideas with the therapist. Instruments are used which require no previous musical training on the part of the child. The therapist creates music to match and enhance the child’s playing. The musical experience is personalized and possesses a special feeling of gratification and accomplishment.

    Through live, interactive music-making the therapist attempts to access the strengths of each child and develop whatever potentials he can uncover. Spontaneous physical movements, vocal expressions and instrumental responses are taken up and used as the basis for improvisations and songs. The work with developmentally and/or physically disabled children emphasizes the creating of rich musical experiences which allow the child to respond at his or her own level.

    Disabled children have the same need for meaningful activity as do other people. Yet, due to pathology, these children are often denied the emotional, social, vocational opportunities which imbue human lives with meaning. Engaging in meaningful activity is thus an important human and clinical goal in and of itself; as well it provides motivation for functional skills. In a world that is meaningless or with very little meaning, musical experience for these children is so much more important because it is that more meaningful in proportion.  

    The therapist’s primary purpose is to support, motivate and facilitate the ongoing social, physical, and emotional development of the child. At times, the therapist may focus on related areas-such as verbal communication or motoric skills- as means for achieving our primary goals.

    In working in this approach, the therapist works with the whole person and utilizes the aesthetic, emotional, cognitive, and social dimensions of music to address each child’s needs in an individual manner.