Читать книгу The Creative Arts in Counseling - Samuel Gladding T., Samuel T. Gladding - Страница 45

Sound out on a table, a chair, or your knees what the rhythm of a typical or a special day is like for you. Include the sounds of getting up, going to work or class, eating lunch, partaking in afternoon activities, returning home, and finally going to bed. What do you notice about the beat or rhythm of your life? What would you like to change or keep the same?

Improvising with music is best represented in American jazz, whether performed by clients or simply listened to. In improvising, musicians follow a plan to be playful as well as artful in their work with others. In a jazz band, for example, there are at least two parts: a rhythm section and a front line. “The rhythm section lays down the beat of the music. The front line instruments are responsible for the melodic lines and their interplay” (Barker, 1985, p. 132).

When counselors work with clients who are musically inclined, improvisation can be accomplished concretely by asking individuals to do variations on musical themes (Wigram, 2004). In these cases—and in others in which clients understand musical improvisation—individuals can play with their instruments and alter melodies (i.e., make them faster, slower, or more pronounced). The results of such transactions can then be discussed or, in some cases, left alone. In the latter situation, the process of creating and developing a relationship is seen as therapeutic in and of itself.

Composing music is a creative act that puts composers in closer touch with their feelings. “It can be used as a way of promoting many of the healing qualities inherent in creative acts” (Schmidt, 1983, p. 4). It is empowering because it gives the composer an opportunity to arrange notes in a way that is unique and personal. Composing can also be self-enhancing in that it requires perseverance and discipline that become part of a person’s self-concept after the event has occurred. For example, clients who play a musical piece representing their lives may be exhausted at the end from the intensity of the experience. However, such clients may also be quite satisfied with themselves for putting their feelings into sound and writing them down as well as playing them in an expressive and representative way.

Counselors may also request or encourage clients to engage in musically related activities such as writing a song that represents themselves, their experiences, or their feelings. For example, Bradt et al. (2019) used music therapy to help military veterans who suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder and other psychological health conditions express the themes in their lives, such as personal struggles and barriers to recovery, moving on, and positive relational challenges. “Songwriting enabled service members to share their thoughts, emotions, fears and hopes with family, friends and other providers, often for the first time, and as such played an important role in their personal growth and recovery process” (p. 19).

Music making and song writing can take many forms, such as asking clients to tap, snap, click, bang, or hum to represent different emotions. A musical group of the 1960s, the Mamas and the Papas, had a popular record album titled Make Your Own Kind of Music, which perhaps stresses the individualization of people, especially clients, in using themselves to create harmony both within and without. In some cases, musically inclined counselors may compose and play music to represent themselves to clients. Such a process, whether unilateral or reciprocal in nature, assists clients in realizing the universal power that a musical composition can generate.