Most of the time, in music therapy, teaching how to play an instrument or how to read music isn’t really the main focus of our sessions. That’s more along the lines of what children do in music education classes. However, there are sometimes that our clients do benefit from learning music but in a modified way. I’ve had experience with clients who benefited from the challenge of learning how to play an instrument. In those situations, I teach music at a much slower pace and always keep in mind the client’s needs. In traditional music lessons, the child has to be fairly focused as the lesson can sometimes progress at a quick pace. But in my sessions, I incorporate lots of breaks by either doing something completely different or just getting up and moving/dancing. I do not want the child to get frustrated or mad, that would completely go against what we’re trying to accomplish, so I do my best to follow the client’s pace/cues. Learning to play music is so good for our brains and when taught in a manner that allows success, it can be so much fun too! For this month’s blog I created a color coded sheet to “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. This is the system that I use when teaching piano for the first time. I then put the same colors on the piano keys and have the client play what they see. It has been a really fun way to teach and it gets them playing fairly quickly. I hope this can help and happy learning!

 

Sara Chigani, MA, MT-BC, FAMI