“Meaningful music experiences"- Join us for a conversation with Rachelle Morgan, MA, MT-BC about music therapy and eldercare, business, and clinical inspiration for working with older adults.

Ellisa and Maggie talk about their top tips and tricks for using guitar in their music therapy sessions. They share ideas on adapting the instrument for both themselves and their clients to create success and music when accomplishing both musical and non-music goals.

"People have intrinsic value" - Ellisa sits down with Zoe Levine, LPMT, MT-BC to talk about her music therapy work in various school settings. Zoe uses foundational principles of Community Music Therapy and Critical Humanist approaches to inform their work and shares how to write goals that support the personhood of the student, first.

As music therapists, we love a good themed session, don't’ we? The inspiration we find, the visual aids and props we get to use,  the playlists we start building in our head..It can be a lot of fun for us. But is it what our clients need? We’re going to share some clinical inspiration love and share not only ideas for Valentines theme interventions, but also ideas for covertly themed sessions and how to work around holidays.

It's November and Thanksgiving is right around the corner. Ellisa and Kristin sit down to talk about how a practice of gratitude impacts your body and how to introduce a practice into your sessions, your work, and your life.

We are thrilled to welcome Haley Shinn MM, MT-BC to the podcast….and to Giving Song! Haley joined our team of music therapy clinicians officially in August and we can’t wait for you to meet her! Listen and learn as Haley shares advice on staying inspired, self-care, working in schools, and more.

It’s officially May which means we’re counting down until the end of the school year. This is the final leg of the race for teachers and I've seen so many encouragement type posts that start with “to all my teacher friends...”. That got me thinking, school based music therapists need some encouragement too! We’ve compiled a short (but power packed) list of some things to help get you through the final push. You've got this!

I do believe that some people respond better to this approach than others, but when it is all that you have, I’ve seen teachers, paraprofessionals, students and even myself, make the most of it!

I’m going to be going over some very basic and doable techniques for vocals, guitar and piano that will add some character and authenticity to your music performance. I’m no expert by any means……..but I want to give you some ideas from things that I’ve thought about and link you to teaching resources so that you can take your practice to the next level.

I like sets of 3 so the formula we will use for this second half is 1) Awareness 2) Learning and 3) Intention. The first step in implementing effective trauma-informed care is awareness. This part is what we’ve already addressed. Awareness of the prevalence of trauma and awareness of those three main factors of predictability, connection and learning social and emotional skills. Now comes learning! This is where you look at effective strategies that can help in combating the effects of trauma for your clients, students and children.

Having a starting point for authenticity is important as we discuss what it means to replicate music. A large portion of the day-to-day study that we do at work is building a repertoire of music. Now, oftentimes your working repertoire is greatly determined by your clients, the setting you’re working in, the approach etc. But often, we need to be equipped with a basic variety of music to appeal to a range of tastes and preferences.