We asked respected Australian music therapist/ pianist, Enid Rowe to answer the following question..

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How the music therapist works

The next question might well concern the way I work as a music therapist. Keeping in mind that other therapists work differently depending on their training and musical background.

Although I have worked with adults and the elderly, most of my thirty years in music therapy involves children. (For the previous twenty eight years I was a music teacher.) I work with individual children or groups of children.

With individual children I generally work from the piano where the possibilities for variety of rhythm, melody, harmony and tonal colour are enormous. The voice is also used freely, not necessarily words. Meanwhile the child is free to play on one of a variety of tuned and untuned percussion instruments, to sing, move about or play the piano with the therapist. I encourage the child to beat the drum if he/she can. Whatever the child does - vocal sounds, even crying or screaming, body movements, jumping, running, perhaps head banging, or the drum beating - will give me a tempo and a dynamic and an idea of the child's mood. So the child is in control of my improvisation and as the session develops the therapeutic and musical goals become evident. In this way it is possible to reach even the most profoundly isolated and disturbed child.

Therapists have a moral responsibility to challenge and disturb a child's pathology if this will lead to awakening of the child's often deeply hidden self.

Doing this work requires courage, faith in music and our abilities and intuition, and faith in the child.

A video is made of each session which is then evaluated. Music which appears to have involved the child can be noted and the therapist can carefully observe the child's behaviour. It is important to see and hear what is actually happening, not what we wish to happen.

When working in music therapy with groups my aim is to encourage awareness of others, listening skills and, if the children are able, reading colour coded music on large charts. This is a direct route to ensemble playing using pitched and unpitched percussion, wind and string instruments where only one note is produced. I have a group of young adults who read colour coded notation to play handbells.

Age and individual abilities are taken into consideration as the important thing is to produce beautiful music correctly. Musical difficulties are practiced until they are right. Wrong time, wrong notes, ugly sounds are not accepted. I am a severe critic. Children know when the music they produce is correct and beautiful.

Presenting the results of their hard work to friends and family in concerts and eiseddfod can lead to new personal growth and self esteem. To a new identity as a musician.

People with disabilities are denied the opportunities the rest of us take for granted.
 

© 2007 Enid Rowe
Enid Rowe LTCL.Dip MTNR, RMT, SRAsT(M)
founder of Nordoff-Robbins in Australia in 1984

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