Category: Music

The Canadian Association of Music Therapists (CAMT) oversees the certification of music therapists in Canada. “Music therapy is a discipline in which credentialed professionals use music purposefully within therapeutic relationships to support development, health, and wellbeing. Music therapists use music safely and ethically to address human needs within cognitive, communicative, emotional, musical, physical, social, and spiritual domains” (CAMT 2018). Music therapy is used with individuals of various ages, abilities, and musical backgrounds in clinical, educational, community, and private practice settings. The list below includes examples of medical conditions, living conditions, and goal areas that might lead to someone accessing music therapy:

Acquired Brain Injury
AIDS
Autism and other Pervasive Development Disabilities
Critical Care
Developmental Disabilities
Emotional Traumas
Geriatric Care
Hearing Impairments
Mental Health Difficulties
Neonatal Care
Obstetrics
Oncology
Pain Control
Palliative Care
Personal Growth
Physical Disabilities
Speech and Language Impairments
Substance Abuse
Teens at Risk
Victims of Abuse
Visual Impairments

One example of using music therapy to ameliorate the problems faced by patients suffering from autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) is in communication. As an alternative to using words to communicate, musical activities such as improvisation, songwriting, playing musical instruments, listening to music, or dancing to music can promote social skills and interaction. Making eye contact and how to take turns are actions that complement these types of activities. Incorporating learnable lessons (for example, taking turns) into the lyrics of a song can make the educational process more accessible. Likewise, songs can be used as musical cues for promoting desirable actions, which, once learned, the cues could be phased out. A recent study found that music therapy helps individuals experiencing ASD “to improve their skills in primary outcome areas that constitute the core of the condition including social interaction, verbal communication, initiating behaviour, and social emotional reciprocity” (Geretsegger 2014).

Music therapy intervention is used in oncology. Although music therapy does not provide a solution for the actual disease of cancer, it is capable of having a huge impact on the patient’s mood, and can often provide much-needed coping skills and attitudinal change toward their lives and the disease itself. The nature of music being creative, structural, emotional, and (optionally) non-verbal facilitates the development of self-awareness, self-expression, and personal development. These tools promote physical rehabilitation and are important as preventive, curative and palliative cancer care techniques.

CAMT facilitates post-degree certification in the form of a Music Therapist Accredited (MTA) designation. They recognize several universities across Canada that offer degrees in music therapy. Sir Wilfrid Laurier University in Kitchener, Ontario, offers degrees in both Bachelor of Music Therapy and Master of Music Therapy. Laurier describes the philosophy of their Masters program as music-centered psychotherapy. They use clinical, theoretical, and experiential practices to develop collaborative musicianship and psychotherapeutic techniques. Graduates assume positions at hospitals, universities, health clinics and other private practices (Rx Music 2020).

Improvisation is the first step in the creative process, the necessary spark of inspiration that individualizes an idea and, if we are lucky, explores new territory. Studies have shown that improvisational capability improves with exposure, and it has unique properties quantifiable through brain scanning technology.

One of the challenges in researching improvisation is that the word tends to be conflated with other creativity synonyms, such as innovation, imagination, extemporization, and spontaneity. The context for this discussion on improvisation is musical, yet we could use the same term for poetry, dance, comedy, drama, theatre, and even business and government.

In Gilbert Ryle’s paper titled “Improvisation” in the journal called Mind, he provides a long list of activities that he considers requiring improvisation, including catching a ball, climbing a ladder, negotiating traffic, and telling a joke (Alperson 2016, Ryle 1976). None of his choices were artistic in any way. A professor of psychology, Ryle may not have been one for aesthetics. And although expressions like jazz improvisation may be widely accepted in the world of music, individuals working in different fields may not appreciate such a focused definition. Improvisation is an important part of everything we do.

The act of true improvisation has been described by many as an ethereal experience–lofty, out-of-body, liberating, transcendent. Academically, terms to describe this detached euphoric feeling of true improvisation have evolved over the years and the most commonly used today is Flow State, a concept developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Csikszentmihalyi 1991).

Flow State is sometimes referred to as The Zone, or, in Buddhist expressions describing meditation, it is the “action of inaction,” or “doing without doing,” or “attaining a state of effortless attention.” It is recognized across many fields of study, and it can have a negative connotation, such as in gaming, where being hyper focused in a TV-trance can become part of a gamer’s addiction. But it remains a desirable component for creative activity where inhibitions fall away and ideas are allowed to bubble up without judgment or second thought.

Studies have shown that musical improvisation creates a unique and desirable set of characteristics in our brains. Even more studies have shown that experiencing improvisation in any activity (such as musicking, dancing, preventing senior’s falls, negotiating traffic, telling a joke, juggling, or bouncing a ball) has beneficial effects on improvisational capability in other activities as well. If our desire is to become more creative in every way, not just artistically, then we need more ego-free, uninhibited, zone-inspired activity in our lives.

Our society needs to accept improvisation and all of its experimental and inevitable errors as part of our day to day existence. It is good to experience new things. It is good to make mistakes. It is good to improvise (Rx Music 2020) .