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From: Erika Shira
Date: 07 Oct 2008
Time: 17:00:08 -0500
Remote Name: 216.195.210.138
These are great questions! Music therapy is a pretty broad field, so it's common that a MT and a client will do anything from a four-session plan using cognitive behavioral techniques up through several years of therapy working on a variety of issues. Particularly for people with complex neurological issues, it's common to receive music therapy services all through school and then later in a residence or day program. I think that much like any therapy, there's probably a curve wherein even a single session would have some effect, then additional sessions would have even more effect, up until a point where there might not be a whole lot of work going on in any one session, but then at that point there's the benefit of working within a relationship that's gone on for a long time and where expectations are very clear and familiar. Nope, no musical experience is necessary. I'd say that a majority of music therapists work with people for whom it would be really difficult to have extensive musical ability -- folks with severe/profound mental retardation, folks who are very psychotic, young children, etc. I find that musical skills often actually get in the way. Imagine giving a xylophone to a pianist and telling them to improvise, versus giving a xylophone to a child. They'll both probably be a lot of fun to improvise with, but the child is more likely to play in a way that's really revealing about who they are in that moment, while the musician probably will not. Most of the work I've done with fluency has been with folks who have a number of other multiple disabilities, but I have also done a bit of this work with people without other disabilities.