Aloha!
It’s time for another Friday 5! This is where I share 5 things I’m digging on each week. Some relate to music and music therapy, and some are just straight up random (but interesting, at least in my own humble opinion…). If you would like to have these delivered conveniently to your email inbox, please click here and subscribe!
BOOK
The Rise of Superman by Steven Kotler
I just finished this and it’s the first book in a while that really drew me in. The author talks about flow states, “the optimal state of consciousness in which we perform and feel our best”. As musicians and therapists, I know we’ve all felt that sensation when time either flies by or slows way down, and we find ourselves doing things that are perfect but that we can’t quite explain. That is what this book is about. I recommend buying the Kindle+Audible package.
MUSIC THERAPY ARTICLE
This is an article I posted on the Music Therapy Source Facebook page. I don’t personally know the author, Dean Olsher, but I appreciate what he shared in this piece. To say it struck a chord with a lot of people is an understatement – it got over 30 shares and 30+ likes on the MTS page alone, reaching over 4,000 people! Music Can Summon Old Memories in Alzheimer’s Patients. But they aren’t always happy ones.
GUITAR
Are you going to be at the AMTA national conference next week? If so, you should check out the Guitar Bombardment series that’s going on most of Friday. There will be a ton of great presenters and topics, I will be sharing strategies for making chord transitions easier and more interesting. This can be applied to fairly basic songs or to clinical skills like building progressions for relaxation interventions. I presented something similar at the WRAMTA conference in March and people were pretty excited. Put it on your calendar! I think I start at 5:45.
QUOTE
“Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation. One does not have to know anything about Dido and Aeneas to be moved by her lament for him; anyone who has ever lost someone knows what Dido is expressing. And there is, finally, a deep and mysterious paradox here, for while such music makes one experience pain and grief more intensely, it brings solace and consolation at the same time.” Oliver Sacks in Musicophelia
TECH
Ok, this is a really basic tech hack, but something I recently did to improve my efficiency on the computer was increase the tracking speed on my mouse and my trackpad. This results in bigger movements of the cursor with less movement on the mouse or trackpad. It took me about a day to get used to it, but now I’m lightning-fast…whoosh!
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Thanks for reading and have a wonderful weekend!
Matt