The Music Therapy Show

Kat Fulton is a board-certified music therapist and Curator of MusicTherapyEd.com, the new website with video courses available 24/7 for CMTE credit. She spends most of her days managing Sound Health Music LLC, a small team of therapists in San Diego. They work with in medical settings, wellness settings, and with older adults of varying levels of care. Kat feels SO honored to be a guest for the THIRD time on the Music Therapy Show. She has been riding Janice's coattails in cyberspace for a couple years, blogging, advocating, educating, and helping music therapists get their expertise online. To get CMTEs at your own pace, no matter where you are in the world, check out MusicTherapyEd.com. You can also see Kat's full bio there.

Tracy Richardson is my guest on September 21. Dr. Richardson is the Director of Masters in Music Therapy and Department Chair at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College in Indiana. She has 23 years of experience in clinical practice and 16 years of experience in teaching. She has presented and published on the use of songwriting in music therapy.  She created the first Music Therapy Equivalency Distance Learning Program in the United States.

On September 14, I'm talking with Dr. Hayoung Lim. She is Assistant Professor of Music Therapy and Director of Graduate Studies in Music Therapy at Sam Houston State University. Dr. Lim’s clinical background includes working with diverse population including individuals with mental illnesses, developmental disorders, medical problems, neurologic impairments, dementia, hospice, and others. She completed her music therapy internship at Lutheran General Hospital, Park ridge, IL, and worked as a full time music therapist at the Cleveland Music School Settlement.  Dr. Lim also worked as music therapy director at Children’s Health & Education Management, Miami, FL and specialized in music therapy for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. In addition, Dr. Lim has worked as a concert cellist, performing numerous solo recitals and participating in internationally-recognized orchestras in Seoul, Korea and the U.S.  Dr. Lim’s research focuses on the effect of music on children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, and the effect of musical experiences on cognition, speech/language and physical rehabilitation.  In 2011, Dr. Lim’s book titled “Developmental Speech-language Training through Music for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders” was published by Jessica Kingsley Publisher, London, UK.  Dr. Lim is a board-certified, neurologic music therapist (NMT Fellow) and current member of the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA).  She earned her bachelor’s degree in Cello Performance from the Catholic University of Korea, and master’s degree in both Cello Performance and Music Therapy from the Illinois State University. In 2007, she received her Ph.D. degree in music education with an emphasis on music therapy from the University of Miami.

Lisa is a board certified music therapist who received her Bachelor of Music from Michigan State University. She currently provides music therapy services to students in the Berkley School district.  Lisa was named the 2008 Very Special Arts of Michigan Educator of the Year for her work with "The Starfish Project," which utilizes the arts to promote social skill development for children with special needs and their peers in general education. She has presented at national conferences of the American Music Therapy Association and promotes music therapy education by supervising Eastern Michigan University music therapy students in their field work. Lisa is an active board member for the Kidz Klez Band of Michigan, a musical ensemble of teens that perform throughout metropolitan Detroit. She lives in Farmington Hills with her husband and two sons and enjoys singing and playing a variety of instruments including piano and guitar.

Dr. Dale Taylor, MT-BC is my guest on August 24. He is the author of Biomedical Foundations of Music as Therapy and will be discussing the implications of the proposal to move to a Masters Level Entry on the medical and international perspectives in music therapy. Dr. Dale Taylor is Professor Emeritus and a former Chair of the Department of Allied Health Professions at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire where he founded the Music Therapy Program in 1969.  While completing graduate work at the University of Kansas under such experts as Drs. E. Thayer Gaston and William W. Sears, he was the first to perform research showing that the terms “stimulative” and “sedative” cannot be applied to music, but should instead be used to describe the responses of listeners.  He also conducted the first national study to identify the competencies needed for successful practice upon entering the field of music therapy.  He has served as national Student Coordinator, Chair of both the Certification-Registration and International Relations Committees, President of the Great Lakes Region, Editor of the International Journal of Arts Medicine, Secretary-Treasurer of the International Arts Medicine Association, and he recently completed his term as Chair of the Wisconsin Board on Aging and Long Term Care.  He is perhaps best known as the originator of the Biomedical Theory of Music Therapy which is described in his book, Biomedical Foundations of Music as Therapy, now in its second edition. 

I'm talking with Dr. Janice Dvorkin, ACMT, Director of Music Therapy at the University of Incarnate Word. She is a past president of the American Association for Music Therapy (AAMT) and will give her perspective on the move to a masters level entry.

This week I'm talking with Judy Simpson, Dena Register, and Kimberly Sena Moore about how moving to a masters level entry will affect the State Recognition Operational Plan for music therapy.

Rats. BlogTalkRadio cut me off again in the middle of a statement. This is the 4th and should be final segment of reading the ETAB documents that relate to Masters Level Entry. I will continue with the response to the question that was cut off from Sunday's broadcast and then should finish all the questions today. Thanks for listening to this important topic.

In this installment, I will finish reading the ETAB document "Masters Level Entry: Core Considerations" and will begin reading "Masters Level Entry: Frequently Asked Questions."

Because I use the free version of Blog Talk radio, it cut me off before I could finish reading the documents. So I will continue where I left off from yesterday's show.

This week starts off the month-long series exploring the proposal to move Music Therapy to a Masters Level Entry degree.  Currently, music therapists are board certified at the Bachelor-level or its equivalent. The Education and Training Advisory Board proposed moving to a Masters Level Entry. I will read the proposal and all associated information about this issue. Then in the following weeks, I will have guests on to talk about different perspectives on how this issue will affect our field.Call in to the show and give your input!

DrumHeart.org is the website of Michael Kenny, MMT, MT-BC, a music therapist, educator, and performer based in Dallas,Texas. Michael Kenny offers individual and group music therapy for all ages. Michael has over 15 years of experience as a music therapist. He has worked with a diverse set of populations including: psychiatry, autistic and special needs children, Alzheimer’s and geriatric patients, developmentally delayed and physically challenged individuals. He brings a sense of healing, sacredness, and wellness to every musical experience. TaKeTiNa is a group rhythmic process that utilizes sight, sound, and movement to activate human and musical potential through rhythm. It was developed in 1970 by Austrian musician and composer Reinhard Flatischler. Participants in a TaKeTiNa circle are guided via call and response and the pulse of a surdo drum through a series of steps, claps, and songs. This process induces a flux between two states: being IN rhythm and being OUT of rhythm. Participants fall in and out of rhythm in the circle; a process analogous to our movement through life. Each time TaKeTiNa participants find their way back to the basic pulse and fall back in rhythm, they experience rhythm at a more profound and intense level.

This week I gave some announcements important to the field of music therapy and the schedule of upcoming music therapy shows.

My guests are Ryan & Jody, the creators of urTalker.  urTalker is all about enabling individuals with a voice. Their applications are designed with the individual and their unique needs in mind. While every application comes with default categories and images, every solution provides the ability to create any number or additional categories, load any type of image and most importantly record your voice for use with those images and words. urTalker was developed by the founders to help their non-verbal autistic child, have a voice. Many non-verbal, autistic and special needs individuals have the ability to learn and use assistive technology, but the price for specific devices can be prohibitive. urTalker was developed to be affordable.

This week, my guest is Jason Moon. Jason Moon's song "Trying to Find My Way Home" has won the 2012 gold medal for the Veterans Administrator's art's completions in the special recognition category. Jason is honored to be recognized for his work, both healing him and other veterans through music.       Jason began his musical career playing around campfires in his home town of Eagle River, Wisconsin. He later relocated to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where he attended UW Oshkosh and was a focal point of the burgeoning Fox Valley music scene. He hosted several open mics, wrote dozens of songs, and played hundreds of shows from 1995 until he was deployed to Iraq in 2003.      Jason recently released Trying to Find My Way Home, “an accidental concept album” based on his own war experiences and on his attempts after his homecoming to regain the man he was before he was deployed. In Iraq he frequently performed for his fellow troops, but for over five years after his return in 2004 he was unable to finish more than a single song – despite songwriting once being his greatest joy in life. Jason’s other original solo recordings include Naked Under All These Clothes and Poverty.      In 2009 Jason was interviewed for the forthcoming documentary feature film On The Bridge and was asked to record one of his original songs for the credits roll, an experience that energized him to finally begin to write songs again in earnest, and which ultimately led to Trying to Find My Way Home.