Course Descriptions

This course is an introduction to improvisation from a music therapy context. Students will explore their relationship to music, themselves, and others using improvisation. This course offers students an experiential journey through sound-making, organized and free flow improvisation, and the application of improvisation styles and techniques with a variety of populations.

This course is an introduction to applied music therapy skills in a clinical setting with a focus on the elderly in residential care, including group leading, using therapeutic programs, using music in therapy, and learning repertoire with an emphasis on the guitar and singing. This course will include field trips to clinical settings to observe music therapists working with the elderly. The course includes an introduction to ethics, observation and documentation techniques, goals and objectives, and developing activities that can be used in group context.

The purpose of this course is to present music’s therapeutic potential through biological, cultural, spiritual, scientific and personal perspectives. The therapeutic potential of specific musical elements and experiences is examined. Relationships between the brain, musical experiences and therapeutic interventions are presented in the context of current research, including remediation of traumatic brain injury through music therapy. Multicultural awareness is developed through an examination of cultural competence based on client case examples and through examining our own ethnocentrism. The presentation of the spiritual domain in this course includes a psycho-spiritual perspective, using clinical examples of intersections of music, spirituality, and beauty, and introduces transpersonal aspects of Helen Bonny’s Guided Imagery and Music.

The first half of this course introduces the development of music therapy throughout the world, including therapeutic perspectives, clientele and approaches of Music Therapy pioneers and current practitioners. Each approach presented is contextualized within traditional schools of therapy. To deepen understanding of the values, practices, challenges and ethics of therapy, students reflect on their life experience as it relates to material in this course. The second half introduces students to the range of theoretical constructs, applied models and approaches that will prepare students for their first practicum with elders in long-term care. This includes handouts, video, clinical examples, and discussion of clinical practice with elders in the community and in long-term care. Models of care and treatment such as personhood, validation therapy, gentle care and the Eden Alternative are introduced.

This course presents three music therapy styles across the lifespan with a focus on theory, analysis, and practice. Included are Developmental Music Therapy, Nordoff/Robbins improvisational style, and the use of music therapy in in-patient psychotherapy. Students will expand their knowledge of the music therapy literature, critically examine different techniques presented, continue to identify personal and clinical implications of the techniques presented, expand skills in instrumental improvisation, expand music therapy skills in individual and group settings with children in educational settings and adult inpatient psychiatry, and understand and explore their own mental health issues in relationship to practice.

This course is an introduction to fundamental principles of pathophysiology for selected geriatric conditions. At the end of this course, students will understand the social, physiological and emotional effects of common health conditions of adults and be aware of the therapeutic needs of clients and patients. Students will be able to communicate effectively with clients, family members and the health team using appropriate medical terminology.

This course prepares students to work with a variety of children in a music therapy context, with an emphasis on the psycho-social nature of diseases and disabilities. Students will expand their medical knowledge of a variety of conditions with a focus on Autism Spectrum Disorder, including music therapy techniques and approaches for working with children on this spectrum. Students will also broaden their understanding of family systems when a child has a disease or disability.

This course is an introduction to verbal counselling techniques. Students will develop basic counselling techniques, examine their relationship and interpersonal skills, work through models of communication, and improve feedback and confrontation skills. Students will explore attending behaviour, paraphrasing, empathy, transference and countertransference through readings, classroom discussion and in-class role-plays.

In the first practicum course, students have opportunities to develop music therapy clinical skills by participating in a weekly practicum day for twelve weeks with seniors in residential care. Each student will have an on-site music therapist supervisor as well as a faculty supervisor who will offer instruction and supervision on all aspects of session planning, leadership, documentation, group process, and the use of music for therapeutic purposes, institutional systems, and teamwork. Students will develop clinical skills of observation, assessment, goal and objective writing and documentation of their clinical work through submission of weekly reports. Critical thinking and personal reflectivity are integral to practicum success. Students discuss, brainstorm, and share with each other in a weekly class seminar.

This improvisation course is an experiential study on how to use electronic music equipment and popular music forms and idioms in group music therapy. Students will work in bands to develop skills to set up and play electric guitar, electric bass, electric keyboard and drum set, and how to use microphones and amplifiers. Information on popular styles will be researched and shared. Group leadership and participation will be emphasized.

This course focuses on lecture and experiential exposure toward integrating creative arts therapies approaches into music therapy practice. Through methods such as poetry, dance, autobiography, art, and drama, students explore and adapt creative arts methods for various clinical settings. An emphasis is made on understanding and articulating the rationale and methods, including evidence-based practice, for implementing the arts with an emphasis on process level interventions.

This course emphasizes creativity and self-expression skills and development across a range of expressive arts areas with an emphasis on verbal and nonverbal processing skills through a psychoanalytic lens. Students are expected to display competence in leadership skills, debriefing (analysis and processing) skills, self-awareness, and critical thinking. This course aims to augment clinical skills while maintaining a process-oriented focus. The premise is that art and its modes of expression are a way to explore and support psychological transformation through the connection between creativity and health.

This course begins with assessment forms for music therapy settings with an emphasis on mental health. This is followed by fundamentals in the use of music therapy methods such as Analytical Music Therapy, resource-oriented music therapy, and trauma-informed practice with both higher functioning and acute care psychiatric populations to develop a deeper understanding and application of process-oriented music therapy methods in trauma and mental health work. Students develop repertoire pertinent to mental health settings, continue to identify personal resources and values in order to develop their own styles of working, actively participating in class activities to examine their impact. The practice of MusicMedicine is introduced, including identification of psychosocial and physical needs found in medical settings. Music therapy research and protocols are examined.

The first part of this course covers a broad range of professional development topics that prepare students for pre-professional practicum, including resumes, cover letters, interviewing, proposals, in-services, self-employment and entrepreneurialism, professional identity, marketing and ethics. The second part of the course covers advanced verbal counselling techniques, including grief and loss, helping clients change behaviours, safe and effective use of self, boundaries, effective use of transference and countertransference, and crisis management. Music Therapy and verbal counselling are bridged in this course in a way that deepens the student's therapist identity.

Students in this course will learn a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods of research and of analysis, and to understand the limits of interpretations based on such research and analysis. Students will be able to use and understand both qualitative and quantitative research methods, statistical analysis, and qualitative analysis, be able to conduct, analyze and present basic research, and use critical thinking in assessing the effectiveness and limitations of research.

This improvisation course focuses on group work, examining the potential benefits and challenges of eliciting, supporting and guiding individual expression and reflection within groups. There is an integration and extension of all previous improvisation course material and practicum experience. In addition, during this term students bring their practicum experiences of working with clients who have intense psychosocial challenges to reflect on the importance of choosing goals and facilitation approaches for safe and meaningful improvisational group experiences. Each activity in this class is examined for personal and clinical relevance, with consideration of contraindications and potential adaptations for specific clientele.

This practicum course is focused on working with children and youth. Previous course material related to children is reviewed and integrated in this practicum, including normal child development and a range of clinical conditions found in children, and Developmental Music Therapy, Creative Music Therapy and Burke's MakeMusic approach. Students also reflect on their personal experiences of childhood and of working with children before entering the program, to assist them in creating their own unique therapeutic approaches and to heighten their awareness of their own and their clients' transference. Weekly seminars develop therapeutic awareness and clear written and interpersonal communication, and always include collegial sharing of effective approaches and clinical challenges and reflection.

This is the final course in the series designed to introduce and orient students to a variety of treatment settings over two years and prior to pre-professional practicum. Under a clinical supervisor, students partake in a graduated process beginning with observation and culminating in their assessment, planning, implementation, and evaluation of their music therapy programs in a practicum setting. In this course, students translate knowledge from other courses to develop skills in professional practice, teamwork, effective music therapy/clinical competence.

The pre-professional practicum course is the culmination of this music therapy education program. This course is designed to give students an extended clinical experience, preparing them to be professional music therapists. It is a time for the student to apply, integrate and solidify their knowledge and skills in music therapy under the supervision of a music therapist, and to develop their competence with a specific clinical population. Students become an integral part of a treatment team in terms of assessment, planning, facilitation of therapeutic process, documentation and professional teamwork. By the end of the course, the student is expected to be working as a full professional.