In addition to offering music therapy, another service we provide at Wholesome Harmonies is adapted music lessons.

Whereas in music therapy our goal is something non-musical (like increasing attention or improving articulation), with adapted music lessons our goal is musical – for students to acquire skills to learn an instrument.

The benefits of having a board certified music therapist (MTBC) provide adapted lessons are:

• MTBCs have the skills and training to work with children who have special learning needs
• MTBCs can provide creative adaptations to help students feel successful when learning the instrument. (More on that in next week’s blog post!)

When I teach adapted lessons, I always use a keyboard and not an actual piano. The reason I do this is because the keyboard has a variety of cool settings and features that help me when I teach. Here are a few of those features:

• Voice: You can use this setting to choose any instrument sound. Sure it’s not the most authentic sounding feature (try the saxophone setting and you’ll see what I mean!) But it really is fun to have a student play “Ode to Joy” with the voice set to chorus or a Halloween song with the voice set to organ.
• Styles and beats: One of the things I like to incorporate into my lessons is improvisation. I’ll start by setting a style (like samba, country or reggae) and a beat. Then I’ll ask the client to improv. Using different styles adds a creative and fun feel to our lessons, especially when the lesson book becomes a bit dry ;)
• Metronome: The keyboard has a built in metronome so I don’t have to worry about bringing one or pulling up an app on my phone.
• Recording: My keyboard has the ability to record the improvisations of my students. We love to hear the playback and talk about what they sound like.

These are just a few of the reasons why I love using the keyboard to teach my adapted lessons.

Stay tuned next week when I share some ideas about how you can incorporate creative adaptations into your lessons with students with special needs to help them feel successful when learning an instrument!

Image courtesy of graur razvan ionut at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The post Why I Use a Keyboard (not a piano!) For Adapted Lessons appeared first on Wholesome Harmonies, LLC.

I’ll admit firsthand that I’ve been a little hesitant to incorporate improvisation into my sessions.

I never knew quite where to start or how to musically support my clients.

Also, my clients (who are mostly on the autism spectrum) need a lot of structure, so I didn’t know how they would handle the “musical freedom,” so to speak.

But, I recently decided that just because I didn’t feel comfortable with incorporating improv into my sessions that didn’t mean that my clients should miss out on that experience.

So recently I started incorporating a new segment into my Sing, Speak & Socialize music therapy group for children and it has been amazing.

Here’s what we do:

I start off by setting out the keyboard and letting the children come up either one at a time or in pairs to explore the keyboard.

They can play however they like.

Following that, I set the auto accompaniment, (which, if you’ve watched this video, you know is one of my favorite keyboard features).

The auto accompaniment setting offers three features I love:

1. A grounding beat which provides a nice structure for the improv.
2. An interesting musical style like samba, country, or rock and roll (just to name a few).
3. And an interesting ‘voice’ or instrument sound.

One we have the beat going, the children can again explore the keyboard. But now, with the auto accompaniment, the beat and the voice match the style you choose and everything sounds more musical interesting.

Once the children have had a chance to explore the keyboard further (usually in the lower bass notes), I play in the upper register, musically supporting what they are playing.

If they need some prompting for how to play, I will cue them to explore playing on the white keys only. Then the black keys only. Then with just one finger.

This approach has helped me feel much less intimidated about offering improv experiences for my clients.

And the incorporation of the auto accompaniment really makes it feel like a piece of music that sounds good no matter what the clients are playing.

They have enjoyed choosing a musical style and instrument voice and they’ve enjoyed the “structured free play” we have at the end of our sessions.

I’m going to continue to explore different ways to offer improv experiences for my clients and I’ll be sure to share them here!

The post Intimidated by Using Improv as a Music Therapy Intervention? Try This. appeared first on Wholesome Harmonies, LLC.