What is music therapy? (with Brede Davis)

[00:00:00] Bronwyn: Hey, mental workers. You're listening to the Mental Work Podcast, your companion to early career psychology. As always, I'm your host, Dr. Bronwyn Milkins and today we are talking about music therapy, which I am so excited about.

And our guest to help us explore it all is Brede Davis. Hi Brede.

[00:00:24] Brede: Hello, it's so so so exciting to be here.

[00:00:27] Bronwyn: Such a pleasure to have you on. Breed, could you please tell listeners who you are and what your non therapy passion is?

[00:00:34] Brede: Yes, so for a brief summary, I am a registered music therapist. I graduated at the end of 2020, so I've been in practice for just over three years. Obviously music is a massive passion , and yeah, apart from that I'm massively interested in people in general, um, and all of the aspects of our lives and really, I guess, thinking about them from that sort of philosophical perspective, or what else is going on there. Uh, and when I'm not overthinking everything, I love, the standard fun stuff, going, going for walks, seeing friends, all of that, all of that general enjoyable stuff.

[00:01:13] Bronwyn: Amazing. Maybe, could you tell us, what instruments do you play?

[00:01:18] Brede: Oh yeah, so, Voice was my first instrument, so that's what I did my undergrad in, so I was following that path of like classical singing, and along the way piano makes a lot of sense to me, for work I mostly play guitar plus a range of percussion instruments and then I've got a harp at home as well which is like just the most beautiful instrument and I love it so much because anything you do on it sounds beautiful, so it takes away a lot of the stress of playing an instrument, I think, because you just know that whatever you play, it will sound beautiful.

[00:01:53] Bronwyn: Yeah. And listen, as you were missing out, I can see this beautiful harp in the background. It just looks stunning.

[00:01:58] Brede: Thank you so much. Yeah.

[00:02:00] Bronwyn: That's all right. And I like having the background info on you, Brede because I just want to mention a few other things that you do, which is you are the co chair of the Australian Music Therapy Association's Culture and Diversity Advisory Group. Is that still current?

[00:02:14] Brede: Yes, true. Thank you. I always forget all of those extra things. In my head it's all just one thing of music therapy, but yeah, I'm um, co chair for that group. Um, I'm also part of a, like, peer run group for music therapists who have health conditions or disabilities of some sort, and, yeah, last year I was, I just finished my term in the Victorian branch of music therapy, um, as their external relations officer, which was a fancy, a fancy term for I answered some emails. Um, and, uh, up until last year I was working in a school, so I was also part of a group for music therapists in schools.

[00:02:55] Bronwyn: Amazing. And I don't know if this is embarrassing to you, but I don't think it should be embarrassing because I think it's something to be proud of, but I also have the background goss, that you were a finalist in the Allied Health Awards. So in the categories of Music Therapist of the Year and Early Career Excellence in Allied Health.

[00:03:11] Brede: Yes, that's right. Thank you.

[00:03:14] Bronwyn: I think that's worth mentioning. So it sounds like you do a pretty amazing job at what you do and you're very passionate about it.

[00:03:20] Brede: Thank you. Yeah, I think I... I know that the way I work, I'm one of those people who's either doing everything or not so much. So I thought for my first few years out of uni, I wanted to really just dive in and do as much as I could, get involved in lots of different spaces so that, when I get to a point where I need to slow down, I've got a lot to draw from.

[00:03:44] Bronwyn: Totally. That makes sense. So, Brede could you just give our listeners an overview of what music therapy is? Because I think listeners will be familiar with music and they might've heard of music therapy, but they're not sure what the therapeutic aspect of it is.

[00:03:59] Brede: Yeah, that's a really great question and one that can be very hard to summarise. So yeah, obviously Everyone, we're familiar with music and that's been around for longer than we can measure. We've got our voices as these inbuilt instruments and there's record, like, records of instruments dating back super far, uh, and music has played an integral role in health and community connection beyond the scope of, um, recorded history.

But then music therapy as a formalized discipline came about toward the end of World War II, as far as I know. Uh, and in an Australian context, our registration and CPD are all overseen by the AMTA, which is the Australian Music Therapy Association, in line with AHPA so not APRAH but AHPA and NASRHP. Um, there's about 800 of us in Australia, mostly we're along the sort of east coast capital cities, and the sort of places we work, private practice is really common, especially with the NDIS.

And then some other common settings would be hospitals, schools, community organisations, early intervention, residential aged care and wherever else we fit in. That's kind of an overview of, who we are and where we are. Um, and the sort of quick definition of what we do. Um, the definition we often give is that it's the use of music to achieve non musical goals. But some of us will also advocate for addressing directly musical goals, like if someone really wants to learn an instrument but they need an adapted approach, a music therapist might be the logical option for them.

[00:05:35] Bronwyn: What are the main things that you do? So you said that some people advocate for the music lessons and adapting that approach. What are the things that you're passionate about delivering in music therapy?

[00:05:45] Brede: Oh, I think as far as what I'm passionate about, I, I love the creativity of I love being in a field where we've got this This base of allied health training and this base of musical training and yeah, there's enough, there's enough research out there to support what we're doing, but it is also like a small enough and growing enough profession that there's a lot of scope for us to take that in new directions.

And I might talk a bit about maybe with using music for non musical goals, I'll talk a bit about how that can play out differently depending on the setting because yeah, we really try to flow with whatever goal someone has around their health, their development, their well being, so that we can adapt and change our methods as we go. And yeah, it would just be too much of an injustice to try and summarize everything. so this will be a few examples based on my experiences my perspective.

So maybe for a physical setting, maybe in like rehabilitation, if someone's learning to like walk again, a music therapist might support this process by playing guitar in time with or just faster than their current pace. And then because of like the rhythmic entrainment or the ways that our body is synchronized with music, that can make it a lot easier to maintain a steady pace or slowly increase pace as our body's naturally synchronized with the music.

[00:07:13] Bronwyn: Have you seen those videos that have been filmed with people who have Parkinson's disease and they'll pop music on and then there's sometimes a person who dances with them and they are dancing so well and the shuffled gate turns into really smooth movements and they're really enjoying the music.

Likewise, folks who have like some sort of acquired brain injury and you pop music on and maybe they're having trouble speaking and then they can sing. It's, it's quite amazing.

[00:07:42] Brede: Absolutely. Yeah. So because music is processed differently in our brain. And so, yeah, in those cases where maybe someone's like, maybe in the case of dementia, it can help bring back, bring back some memories. Um, and obviously that's something you've got to be careful with. Like, you don't want to just pop on some music and then there you go. You want to make sure that if it brings up something really intense, you're there to be there. Um, but yeah, it can be a really, really powerful link to past experiences or yeah, like past things you could do in the past. So yeah, being able to dance because a certain song is playing, being able to like regaining speech because a familiar song is playing and the, the intonation of what is being sung... the tune of that can register differently in your brain to if someone was just speaking it. So that might be someone's link back to regaining speech.

[00:08:41] Bronwyn: And were there other settings that people have different goals in that you might use different therapies with, like different activities?

[00:08:50] Brede: Oh yes, yes, great idea. So something I've done a lot of is using music to support communication. Um, because the, the, our brains process music differently to speech and the way that lyrics are written and sung can emphasise specific words or sounds in a more engaging way than if you're just listening to someone speak them. So some of the people I've worked with have developed certain, developed comfort with certain sounds or words through singing the lyrics to a preferred song and then transferring that to speech.

It can be done by singing along to pre recorded songs, but I think the, the benefit of a music therapist is that it's. I think especially effective when you've got that live accompaniment so you're meeting the person where they're at and that because you're adjusting the music to suit the person.

An example that comes up a lot for me because I do a lot with kids and I work with a lot of kids who love the Frozen movies, um, if they're working on an O sound we might sing let it go a lot because the word go comes up at the end of lots of phrases and that gives you so many opportunities to practice it. So, I might start by singing the song, like singing all of the lyrics to the song, uh, and then slowing down and leaving space for them to fill in gaps. Like I might sing, let it, and then leave it a space, and they might say go, if they don't I'll fill it in, and then the next time that phrase comes up, we'll try that again, and then what can happen is that once they fill in that go, then often what can happen is that builds up to them feeling more confident to sing along. And just trusting that I'll meet their pace if they need to go slower or faster. And then as they get more confident, I'll fade my voice out over time. So that might just be reducing my volume or mouthing the lyrics, or maybe just joining in at the start of phrases. And eventually, sometimes they'll be singing the whole song by themselves without me needing to fill in any words.

And I've worked with some, some kids who that has been where their speeches come out the most. So, and it's amazing to, to see their confidence when that happens. And also, also to see the adults around, the look on their face when they're like, wow, I've never heard them say a word and they have just sung an entire song. It's like, it just opens up this extra layer of understanding.

[00:11:16] Bronwyn: Yeah, it's really incredible. Could you tell us a bit more about maybe some of the mental health benefits of music therapy? I'm thinking like, for confidence, anxiety, depression, like, is there any research or have you seen any benefits in those areas with music therapy?

[00:11:33] Brede: Yeah, absolutely. So I think that coming back to the music itself, that can be such a powerful way to build confidence. Like, I think that there are so many inherent qualities within music that can support people's health and well being, but, like, so many things these days, music has been shaped into this, like, commodified art form with these expectations of dedicated training and certain forms of skill and talent. And so a lot of people have been shamed out of thinking that they can be musical, being told that they're too loud or they're not good enough to play an instrument.

So in music therapy, it can be really liberating for someone to have a space where they can just sing or play and connect with that musical self or, you know, share the music that they love with someone who is excited to hear it. Or someone who's interested in that music and what that means to them. I think music therapy can deconstruct those barriers to music and make it more of this like tool and experience for everyone that we can adapt and use in personally relevant ways to support mental health and wellbeing.

[00:12:44] Bronwyn: That's awesome. Like, do you ever have young people maybe finding it difficult to communicate to you how they're feeling, but they'll bring in a song and they'll be like, this lyric really captures it? How I'm feeling?

[00:12:57] Brede: Absolutely. And that can be. I imagine that's something that transfers to psychology really well as well. Like, maybe, maybe I've got a mental health referral and they come in like, hey, what's going on? And there's absolutely nothing. I might be like, okay, what's something, what have you been listening to lately? And they play that. And I think, especially with adolescents, often they'll be, whatever they're listening to is so often really relevant to their situation.

[00:13:27] Bronwyn: Yeah.

[00:13:28] Brede: So yeah, you can go, ah, what is it about this song that you like? Or, ah, can we look at the lyrics together? Ah, it talks about this experience. Is that something you can relate to?

And it can be a real starting point to bring that out and like you were, I think you're suggesting as well, where if they're bringing in a lyric, that can be another great way. Something we might do is like a song collage together. So you might go, Yeah, so maybe if they've brought in that one lyric that really stands out to them, you could go, ah, do you want to look through some other songs that you like and see what else is there?

And you might go through 10 songs and choose their two favourite lyrics from each song and then like cut and paste them all together and see what sort of narrative you get from that and they might use that as like, uh, a piece of writing. To express themselves or that might form the start of a song that they're going to write. There's so much within the music that we're listening to.

[00:14:36] Bronwyn: Yeah. No, I think that's really incredible. And one thing that I've heard that music therapists do, I'm not sure if you might do this, but I've heard that some of them will write music or write lyrics or like raps with, with their clients. Is that something that's common for music therapists?

[00:14:53] Brede: Yeah, absolutely. I think creating music is such a big part of what we do and we can, we can structure that really differently depending on who's in the room. So I've definitely worked with some young people where it's like they, they know what they want to do. They just need an audience. So they're getting on YouTube, they're finding a back and beat. Yeah. They're, they're rapping on the spot, they've got everything set. Um, or you might work with some who they have no idea what to write about, so you might have a bit of a conversation and then turn that into lyrics. Or yeah, you might look at lyrics of songs that they like, or you might do like a fill in the gaps thing where you find a song they like and just take out a few keywords.

Like um, the seven years old song that went around a few years ago, That one was really popular for lyric substitution because you could be like, once I was seven years old, I, and then they can fill in the lyric

[00:15:47] Bronwyn: Oh, that's a great idea.

[00:15:49] Brede: yeah, so you're sort of creating like a, an introduction to my life song with the bones of an existing song.

[00:15:57] Bronwyn: Wow. Thanks for giving us that overview, Brede I'm sure we've just scratched the tip of the iceberg with music therapy, but I just wanted to move on to what got you into this really unique area of therapy. I think it's a, it seems to be like a bit of a calling area for music therapists, and I'm curious what drew you into working in music therapy.

[00:16:20] Brede: Yeah, I think that's a really interesting question because I actually had never heard of music therapy until about halfway through my undergrad. So yeah, so it was very much. Right place, right time in terms of finding out what it was.

But basically for me, music and psychology had always been my passion areas. So after high school, I was tossing up between doing my undergrad in music or psychology. But since music has always made so much sense to me, the idea of not studying music felt so wrong. So I knew that I wanted to go to uni in a bigger city and I didn't know that big cities had lots of choices. So I just went, okay, I want to go study in Melbourne. I'll go to Melbourne. The Conservatorium at the University of Melbourne and fortunately for me that is one of two schools in Australia where you can study music therapy.

So, so yeah, during my undergrad, um, I was able to do two classes called music psychology and music and health which are part of the music therapy masters but they're also offered as a general subject to undergrads and through those I learned about this thing called music therapy and it was just such a light bulb moment to realise that I didn't need to choose between music or therapy.

So by the time I finished my undergrad I was pretty sure that this was the path I wanted to follow, but I also knew that there can be a huge gap between theory and reality, so I took a year off in between to work in disability support just to make sure it actually made sense for me to choose a profession where I'd work so closely with people, and after being totally thrown in the deep end there I decided I could probably handle whatever came to me as a new music therapist, so I applied for the course and that's how I got here.

[00:18:01] Bronwyn: And could you tell us what the typical training and study pathway is? Like, do you just do the course and just in air quotes I'm sure it's a very difficult and, and very filled course. Um, but do you need any further like supervision requirements or professional development afterwards, or can you go straight out?

[00:18:21] Brede: Yeah, yeah. So at the moment, if you're studying in Australia, there's two approved master's courses at University of Melbourne or University of Western Sydney. Since I studied at Melbourne, I'll talk about that path. Typically to get in, I think most people do an undergrad degree in music as well as tertiary psychology subject, but you can also come in with a psychology or related undergrad if you can prove that you've got a high enough level of musical skill.

So, you complete your degree, um, you send in your application and, at least when I applied, that also included sending a video where you're playing three songs on your primary instrument, and then three songs where you're accompanying yourself on guitar. And then, as part of the application, they'll also take into account things like your, um, history working or volunteering in community and health related fields.

After that, if you're shortlisted, you'll do an audition where you'll perform some of those songs you can go through an interview to discuss why you want to be a music therapist and I think they've also recently added questions where you can talk about how your lived experiences could contribute to the field, because that's a, yeah, yeah, there's I think an increasing focus there, which I think is fantastic.

[00:19:35] Bronwyn: Yeah. That's awesome.

[00:19:37] Brede: So then, oh yeah, so once you're in the course, um, you study a pretty broad range of topics around development and experiences across the lifespan. Lots of different music therapy methods, case studies, um, as well as, I think, especially in the Melbourne course, there's quite a few research subjects as well.

And then you do four clinical placements as well. So three of them, they're allocated to you. So for me, my placements, my first placements were at a school. My second one was Um, with two supervisors in Darwin and Catherine working across palliative care, early childhood and some trauma workshops. And then my third placement was with older adults in aged care settings.

And then for your final placement, they kind of give you some practice for finding and creating work. And you basically cold call an organization that hasn't had a music therapist before and set up a program there.

And

[00:20:42] Bronwyn: My God, that sounds intense.

[00:20:44] Brede: Yes, and doing that in 2020 was a bit of a challenge because, yeah, there, I was originally thinking of, that I wanted some experience in, in a hospital in Melbourne, um, because I, I did a hospital placement in Darwin, but it was a much smaller setting.

But yeah, hospitals were not keen to take a music therapy student during stage four lockdown.

[00:21:08] Bronwyn: Yeah. Oh my goodness. How did you get through that?

[00:21:11] Brede: Well thankfully my local community centre came through and I set up a bunch of online programs basically going, okay, I can't actually go to the physical space to see what people might want, so I came up with a bunch of options and just posted them on the community centre's page and then the ones that people signed up for most were like sort of music and imagery relaxation groups plus some family sessions and some one to one sessions.

So yeah, so that's, that's what happens in the course. And then once you're, once you're through that, you have fulfilled the, the requirements to be a provisional music therapist. Um, so in your provisional year, there's a few extra requirements around supervision and some CPD stuff. And then once you complete your provisional year, you are a fully registered music therapist.

And we, yeah, that includes, we do CPD every year and then. There's a few other requirements like I think every five years there's some recency of practice where you have to prove that you have been working enough, and it's all, yeah it's all overseen by the Australian Music Therapy Association.

[00:22:23] Bronwyn: Wow. that's much more rigorous than I thought it was. Thank you for telling us that.

I'm just wondering, what are some qualities you think that people need to be a music therapist? Because I'm thinking you would need to be adaptable. Somebody's like, can you play this song? And you're like, okay, sure. Um, like, yeah. What do you need to be a good music therapist?

[00:22:44] Brede: Yeah, I think that being adaptable is pretty essential. Being creative would have to be a big one as well, which I guess we're, we're inclined to because we've already got that musical background, but yeah, there's definitely a lot of just working things out as you go, like you'll, you'll walk into the room and they're like, I want to sing this song. And you're like, I have never heard this song in my life, but a lot of songs follow a really similar chord structure. So hum me, hum me the first line and let's get the lyrics up and we'll probably be able to do it. Obviously if they've got perfect pitch, um, or if they really want the original, then you just go, let's play the original and listen to that.

So yeah, there's a, there's a lot of creativity and I think that, I think that really works in our favor because we can fit in with so many different. aspects of health support. Yeah, I think whereas a lot of other allied health professions, there's maybe a specific part of health that is the main focus. We've got a specific tool that we use to address different aspects of health.

So when I was working in a school, the focus of my work shifted a bit based on who else was in the team. So If we didn't have enough speeches, I might focus more on communication, or if we didn't have enough people in the well being team, then I'd have more of a mental health focus.

So I think that can be really fun as well, being able to go, okay, where does it make sense for music therapy to focus? Like you know, you might have a new referral and you can go, okay, what supports do you have in place? Where are the gaps? let's Put our music therapy focus in that direction.

[00:24:32] Bronwyn: The placements you were describing, they're pretty pointy end stuff, like palliative care, trauma, and you might be seeing people with neurological conditions, or stroke, or cancer. That's pretty heavy stuff emotionally, like, how do you cope with that?

[00:24:49] Brede: I personally come from a background where I had a bunch of therapy as, um, as a teenager. So I think in my headspace, I already felt somewhat prepared for more challenging experiences. Obviously there was a lot during my placements that was totally new to me, but I think I, I felt prepared for Big situations.

Um, I was really lucky in my palliative care placement. My supervisor was really understanding of where I was at and she really, she was very supportive of my decisions. Like some some days I could feel that actually I am all over the place today and I don't think that I would be a useful person to have in the room for this particular session and luckily my supervisor was really supportive of that and she was like yeah that sort of insight is really important because obviously you want to be there as much as possible but if you're not in the right headspace then that's going to be potentially detrimental to the person you're working with, so it's really important to be able to know. When you're needed in the room and when you're not needed in the room.

And actually another way that music therapy can be really powerful for people's autonomy is that unlike a lot of the therapies that they might have to have to go through in a hospital setting or a lot of the classes they might have to do in a school setting, often music therapy.

is a very voluntary place. So if there's a music therapist in the hospital who comes in to say hello, you know, that music therapy session might be really supportive it's not like, you know, we, we need to come in and take your blood now. We need to do this test right now. It's music therapy is an option. Do you want that? And being able to actually reject something could be so, so important for someone's overall experience.

[00:26:58] Bronwyn: Yeah, I agree. Like having worked in a hospital setting myself before, there were some days when I would have to say to patients, we need to do this paperwork. I'm so sorry, but we got to do this. And I really respect people's autonomy and I think it does suck when patients are constantly told, no, you have to do this, you have to do that.

So you're right. I think it can give people a huge sense of autonomy and control just to be able to opt in or opt out.

[00:27:25] Brede: yeah, and, and there are so many things that you can't really opt out of because they are those 100 percent essential parts of the system. So it's so important to be able to, to have those opportunities for choice in spaces where you may not have much choice. And that's actually something I, I really love working on rejection goals.

Like, like, I think a lot of the communication work I've done, there's been a big focus on identifying preferences.

Like maybe I'm working with someone and we're doing a lot of um, song choice together, so we're, practicing expressing preferences through choosing preferred songs, and then through that we can weave in some rejection as well.

So maybe, maybe you're suggesting a couple of songs that you know that they really don't like, so then if they still choose a song. You've got a bit more clarity of, oh okay, are you choosing that because you think that you're meant to choose something right now, even though you don't like either of these?

maybe let's add in an option where you can say I want something else, or I don't want anymore or I might see that we've, we've sung a few songs together and they seem to be a bit less interested, so maybe I'll say, oh you finished, and I might sign finished, or I might Point to a visual that says finished or stop or I'm done and then over the course of a few sessions it might come up that when when they're ready to stop they'll just say or sign or point to finished and then I'm like racing around the building to see whoever else they work with to be like look they just told me stop eight times in a row isn't that the greatest thing they've never like

[00:29:11] Bronwyn: I honestly think that's so awesome, Brede because sometimes we do come across people who maybe have people pleasing tendencies or they don't feel like they can have a voice to be able to say what it is that they want and they don't want, and I love that you're practicing that with them. That sounds hugely important.

[00:29:29] Brede: Thank you so much yeah I think I think I think it's really important to obviously, like, give as many invitations as possible so that people can participate, but also, make sure that it's there's this ongoing awareness that you can say no. You're allowed to say no, it's okay to say no, and if you don't want to do this, there are other options. So let's, let's do something that you do want to do, and let's work out how to find out what that thing is.

[00:30:00] Bronwyn: Yeah, and I imagine this could be helpful for people living with disability as well, and sometimes they have Carers who, or support workers. Oh, this probably draws on your support worker experience. Like, I wonder if you do take that approach when you were a support worker as well.

[00:30:15] Brede: I think that my time as a support worker, as well as just my general experiences with disability and being in the health system forever, I think that I've got A really strong focus on assuming competence and trying my best not to do that, that mind reading that we do like maybe to bring it back to that, um, example of choosing songs, you might play a song and someone goes totally quiet or turns away and it might be easy to think, Oh, they're not paying attention or they're, they're ignoring me. But if you play another song and they start giggling, then maybe. them turning away is their way of saying, no, I don't, I don't want that song. I don't like that song.

So I think, yeah, I think that I'm always really curious to try and work out, yeah, what is someone's communication style? What pace works for them? Like, I think a lot of the time people, they've, they've got the answers or they know what they want, but they just need time to bring that out. So if you're asking 10 questions at once, they're like, I don't, I don't know what respond to. I, that is way too much going on.

And maybe the, the musical aspect of our training helps with that a bit because when you're studying music, you're focusing on the pace. Like with vocal training, you're focusing on how are you moving your voice at what, at what pace does your voice move? How are you enunciating things? What pitch, what tone? Where is your voice and how is your voice, communicating a certain message? And so I think that, yeah, that might be something that comes into our work, that sort of musicality of interaction, like maybe we're having a conversation and you need eight bars of rest between any response, but that's fine because some songs have a lot of silence in them.

[00:32:14] Bronwyn: Yeah. And I imagine it could be helpful for Um, your clients in learning about themselves as well, like maybe through their work with you, they might identify that, Hey, like, I don't like loud music, or I prefer this gentle instrument. And I prefer this to go fast and this to go slow. And if it's too loud, then I can do this, or I can say stop to help regulate myself.

[00:32:39] Brede: Absolutely, yeah, there's so many qualities of music that we can relate to qualities of life. And then, yeah, also so many ways we can practice those life things within music. Like you mentioned, you mentioned stop. And, you know, maybe if you're working with someone who there's, there's some stuff going on with impulse control or safety awareness, you might do a lot of drumming together where you can go, go and stop and go.

And so you're just practicing that again and again in a way that's a lot more motivating and engaging than if they're waiting at the traffic lights and their carer or their parents are calling out stop stop it's like no you're you're learning to attend to stop in this really fun way

[00:33:24] Bronwyn: Yeah, can we talk about that for a bit because, so as a psychologist, I mostly do talk therapy, and so I rely a lot on people's, you know, insights into how they're thinking and feeling and their reports of what they do when they feel and think particular ways. And I'm wondering, could you tell us like how music therapy might be better suited to some people who maybe like talk therapy isn't the best option for them?

[00:33:52] Brede: Yeah, I think that's a really perfect example of where music therapy might come in as a really relevant option because there isn't that reliance on verbal communication. There are so many ways we can bring that emotional state out or bring that person's experience out without needing words.

If they listen to a lot of music, it might be sort of like we were talking about before where you get them to share a song that represents how they're feeling today. You might ask for a song that represents how they want to feel today, or you might have a pile of instruments on the table and or on the floor and they can choose an instrument represents their mood and maybe they will, maybe they pick a maraca and they shake it really really fast and you know maybe they're just doing that because they like doing that or maybe they they chose that because the maraca looks all put together on the outside but inside there's a million things shaking around and that's how their brain feels today.

[00:34:52] Bronwyn: Yeah, I love that.

[00:34:54] Brede: Yeah look, I'm probably overthinking a lot of the time but I think a lot of the time it is that deep.

[00:35:00] Bronwyn: Yeah, that's so cool. Have you ever had participants or clients who come to you and they're like, I tried psychology, I tried therapy, I didn't like it. So I'm here to see you and I'm hoping this will be different.

[00:35:12] Brede: I haven't had that exact situation but because it it's a lesser known therapy and it's less traditional in some ways. It can feel a bit less confronting for some people to engage with.

[00:35:25] Bronwyn: Yeah.

[00:35:26] Brede: I'm not going to therapy. I hate therapy. I don't want to talk to a therapist. But then they see you with your guitar and they're like, oh, you're not a therapist, which is, you know, obviously a whole other conversation about professional recognition.

But in terms of specific person, that could be great because you can work together musically and those therapeutic things are naturally going to come in because that's the way that you work as a music therapist. And slowly over time, as you build rapport, things might start to appear more overtly therapeutic or they might not. Either way, through that rapport, they're getting a different understanding of what therapy can be. They're, they're interacting with the therapist and maybe getting another perspective on what their rapport with a therapist could be, what, what they're allowed to bring up in therapy.

And that can kind of then serve as a gateway into other therapies if those are needed. With a psychology example, it might be that they've been referred for mental health reasons. They're not in a place to do talk therapy, they need something more embodied, they need to be moving and connecting with their body and expressing things through sounds and instruments and eventually through that, then it becomes relevant to bring a psychologist in who can have that more explicit talk focus.

[00:36:53] Bronwyn: That makes so much sense, like, I know in a lot of hospitals, there's usually an art therapy program. I know in Melbourne there, there's one hospital, it's at the Royal Melbourne, that they have a big music therapy program.

[00:37:05] Brede: Yeah, the Royal Melbourne has quite a big team as far as I know, and As far as I know, quite a few of the hospitals in Melbourne have music therapists.

[00:37:14] Bronwyn: that's so great.

[00:37:15] Brede: it's very cool. It is also, I think, because we've got one of the training courses here and we're one of the big cities, I think about 30 percent of music therapists are in Victoria. Um, don't, don't quote me on that, but yeah, it does mean that Melbourne is quite a good city to be if you want to work with a music therapist.

[00:37:34] Bronwyn: Yeah, I live in Perth and I've only met one music therapist in the wild. And I think I scared them off and I was like, Oh my God, you're here. I want to talk to you. And then I think, and then I never saw them again. But that was really exciting.

[00:37:48] Brede: I believe we've had. A decent number of WA students in the last few years, um, because the Melbourne course does like a distance learning version. So hopefully you'll run into more soon.

[00:37:59] Bronwyn: I hope so. Are there any common misconceptions about music therapy that you hear and that you're like, Oh, that's not true?

[00:38:08] Brede: So many. Um, I think the most common misconceptions just come from people not realizing that allied health is our space or that we are allied health professionals and that the things that we do are informed by a bunch of research from music therapy and other health fields. So, because people aren't familiar with music therapy, I think they'll often categorise us into something more familiar, like music education or music entertainment, which, yeah, is understandable because going back to what we were saying about one of the reasons music therapy can be a good bridge to other therapies, is that often the stuff we're doing in sessions does look really fun, and so if you're not aware of everything that's going on below the tip of the iceberg, then, yeah, Yeah, you, you, it would be really easy to think that, yeah, you're just there to have fun. You're there to play music.

so yeah, often you'll get a referral that's like,, we want to work with a music therapist because we love music and we want to have fun, which is, you know, awesome because it gets you into the door, but it's kind of like coming to see a psychologist because you heard about talk therapy and you like talking to people.

[00:39:19] Bronwyn: Yeah.

[00:39:20] Brede: It's it's like, sure we can talk, but. Why do you want to talk? Or what do you want to talk about?

[00:39:25] Bronwyn: Yeah totally. That's a really good analogy. And yes, that makes perfect sense.

[00:39:29] Brede: I think that we work with that. Like, you know, if, if someone's, if you've got a referral that is, I like music and I want to have fun, you can go, okay, maybe it would make more sense for you to do music lessons, but maybe this is actually related to a broader health and wellbeing thing.

If you like music, then maybe we're working together as a way for you to engage with something that you're passionate about. And then that can flow into enhanced well being and self esteem or self concept and sense of mastery. And then if you want to have fun, then that's obviously totally valid because most of us need to prioritize that more. But some benefits of that could be relaxation and reducing stress or feeling more comfortable and confident in yourself. Counterbalancing difficult life experiences and generally sort of playing with those boundaries and priorities of what you need in your life.

So yeah, that might be a way that you take those intentions and work out how they're therapeutic, or you might start with that idea of, okay, yeah, great, let's play music and have fun together. And then while you're with them, you might notice other things that they haven't realized could be addressed in music therapy. Maybe there's someone who you notice during the sessions that their focus just seems to be all over the place, which is probably something I notice a lot because my focus is always all over the place.

Um, so yeah, so maybe you notice that and you bring it up and they mentioned that it is something that they've been wanting to work on. You could then adjust what you're doing in the sessions to be more focused on focus. So like that could be like an auditory discrimination game where you're working out what instruments you can hear or like a treasure hunt where you're giving musical directions so they have to focus you know if I'm playing really fast then you're going in this direction or if I'm playing really slow you're going in this direction or you might again going back to the music that they love you might say okay like let's do this activity and we're going to do it for the duration of this song. So you're using the songs to kind of structure, building up focus, or you can do like leading and following drumming games, or generally like maybe creating a playlist together with music that supports their focus, thinking about the sort of music that they find difficult for focus, and really, yeah, I guess working focus into what you're doing together.

[00:42:00] Bronwyn: That's awesome. Um, Brede are there any other misconceptions about music therapy?

[00:42:05] Brede: Oh yes, so I've given an example about entertainment and then I think education would be the other big one people think of because again people are a lot more familiar with the idea of teaching music than using music therapeutically and this can also be a tricky area because I think especially if you're working with younger people there's a lot of early childhood learning that crosses over with the early childhood development stuff that we'd be focused on, It gets even more complicated because someone might be learning musical skills in music therapy.

[00:42:40] Bronwyn: Oh, that does make it complicated. Yeah.

[00:42:42] Brede: Yeah. And, you know, even just through being around music so much, you're bound to pick up some more musical skills.

[00:42:51] Bronwyn: So you can't be like, no learning here. Yeah.

[00:42:53] Brede: Exactly. Exactly. But the big difference is all about the intention. So if someone wants to develop their fine motor control or the sort of strength and dexterity in their hands, then it might make a lot of sense to start learning piano together. But you'd be learning to play in a way that really focuses on, you know, the specific parts of their body that you're, that you're strengthening, or that you're developing that, um, strength and dexterity with.

And another example might be if someone is writing, if they've been writing some lyrics to process some big situations, it might be really relevant for them to learn a few chords on guitar so that they can accompany themselves. Unlike a music lesson, you wouldn't be going through everything about the guitar or you wouldn't be sort of aiming to get to a certain level of skill. We'd go, okay, let's learn a few chords. Let's learn maybe a few strumming patterns. But at this stage, you only need to know enough to be able to sing this song that you're writing.

so yeah, The crossover with education can be tricky when we're focusing on musical skills, but it's always about why are we learning that skill, and what else is happening while we're learning that skill.

[00:44:08] Bronwyn: That makes a lot of sense to me because I've never seen a music therapy session, but I have seen art therapy sessions in hospitals and participated in them when I was a psychologist. And like one thing that an art therapist might do is if a patient asks for some art instruction, let's say they're asking for instruction in colour, the art therapist might say, okay, well draw this colour here, just shade it. Then try this other colour. And what do you notice about them? Like, do they seem complimentary? Do they seem different? And like, could you try it a few different other combinations? And they're really wanting to help the patient, not, be too inhibited in their creativity, so they're like, you, you try, here's a little bit of direction, but then it has that overall therapeutic focus, kind of, I hope you don't mind me using the analogy with art therapists.

[00:44:58] Brede: No, no, absolutely. Like, we, we both fall under that category

[00:45:02] Bronwyn: Yeah. I didn't know whether you were like enemy professions or something.

[00:45:06] Brede: no, no, no, definitely, definitely allies within allied health.

[00:45:09] Bronwyn: Yeah, cool. Good.

And you're like, no, no, those art therapists, we don't talk to them.

[00:45:16] Brede: no, absolutely. Oh, no, therapists are. Awesome. And I think there is, yeah, there's, there's so much crossover in those creative modalities. So I, I love hearing about art therapy ideas because so much of that can then be transferred to music.

[00:45:31] Bronwyn: Oh, good. Yes. I'm glad that you guys are friend professions.

[00:45:35] Brede: absolutely.

[00:45:37] Bronwyn: Um, Brede we're kind of coming up towards the end. So I've got probably one more question that I think would be helpful for listeners to hear, which is When might I refer one of my clients to a music therapist and how would I do that?

[00:45:57] Brede: Yeah. So if you are seeking a music therapist, um, the website for the Australian Music Therapy Association is the kind of the go to portal for anything intro music therapist, intro music therapy. Um, so on the website they do have a find an RMT directory.

You can also do a Google search for music therapists in your area and people who are more organised than me and have set up a website you should be able to find some of them. I think because a lot of us work in NDIS, if you look at the NDIS Facebook groups or talk to support coordinators, they might know someone.

And if you can't, if you find a music therapist, but they don't have availability, you can always ask them if they know anyone who's got space, because since we are quite a small profession, often we may be aware of, okay, yep, I, I don't have any space, but I know someone else is a bit closer to you and has space, or I know someone who, like, I don't work with that particular age group but I know someone who does.

Um, and I'd say the, an important thing to double check, at least in an Australian context, is that because it's not a super well known profession, there are definitely some random people out there who are calling themselves music therapists or something similar, so if you're looking for a music therapist in Australia what you're seeking is a registered music therapist, because that way you know that they've gone through the relevant training, they're doing their ongoing CPD, and they're aligned with all of those professional standards and ethics that are required for our registration.

[00:47:37] Bronwyn: I would really like that because having heard what you have gone through, I would really want somebody who's trauma informed, who's neurodiversity affirming, who works in a social model of disability, that kind of thing. And it sounds like you guys are really good at that.

[00:47:50] Brede: Absolutely, yes, yeah.

[00:47:54] Bronwyn: Good. Um, that's all the questions I have on my end Brede but is there anything that you think listeners really should hear?

[00:48:02] Brede: Yeah, so there is absolutely way too much more that I could talk about, but, um, we'll have to save that for another day. And one more thing I'll add this time is that, for any psychologists or other allied health workers who want to bring more music into their own work, One way to do that is definitely to reach out to a music therapist for supervision or consultation and that way you could get some ideas that are directly relevant to your setting.

Or you could also generally learn more through like the books or academic articles written by music therapists. Um, quite a few music therapists have social media pages or mailing lists that you can sign up to where they might describe some particular methods or ideas. And again, the AMTA website is a good starting point for learning more.

[00:48:55] Bronwyn: Yeah, that's awesome. I'm really glad you brought that up because as someone who loves music, I'm really passionate about music. I just think it's such a gift, like it's such a unique form of individual expression. It's so beautiful, so important culturally. I could go on, but I've always wondered Oh, I wonder if I could bring music into my sessions, but there's a real gap in music therapy, for psychologists, like the professional development, like I would love a webinar that was how to bring music therapy stuff into psychology without taking your role over.

if I could see that they are like receptive to this and I could be like, oh, I could do this, but then would you consider going to a music therapist? Like you really seem to enjoy this, that kind of stuff. Um, so if you ever want to do a webinar on that in the future, I would, I would totally support that. Um, or if there's any other music therapists listening, Do it.

[00:49:45] Brede: I think, I think that is a great idea. And honestly, people are becoming a lot more aware of music therapy now. So there is, like with many allied health fields, there's way more demand than there are people available. And so I think it's really important for us to be able to skillshare and be able to support our colleagues in other fields to Use a few methods here and there that are, you know, within their scope of what they're able to do.

Because if you can bring a musical method into your work then that means that whoever you're working with, they don't need to build rapport with a brand new person

[00:50:21] Bronwyn: That's true. That's true.

[00:50:23] Brede: But of course, it is, it is still definitely important to, to, to have music therapists doing the music therapy.

[00:50:30] Bronwyn: Yeah. I think like, I think as psychologists, we're very like big on like sticking to our scope. I personally wouldn't use music therapy methods in it because I would be like, Oh, that's outside of my scope. The literally the only time that I've had music come in is when I've been doing grief work with people and they might bring songs that really resonate with them about grief. which has been lovely. Um, but that's been initiated by clients rather than me.

[00:51:00] Brede: At least for the foreseeable future, there are not enough music therapists for the amount of people who could benefit from music therapy. So I think it would be brilliant to have music brought into more fields. And yeah, I love your idea of doing some sort of, webinar and finding ways to, to bring musical methods into other allied health professions

[00:51:22] Bronwyn: Yeah, I would love that.

[00:51:24] Brede: I think so often you just need a little bit of confidence and a little bit of understanding of where you could go with something musical and then you can do amazing things.

[00:51:33] Bronwyn: Yeah, if I had that instruction, I would be like, Oh, this is great. Yeah, totally. Okay.

Brede thank you so much for sharing your experiences. We really did just, tip of the iceberg stuff. I know there was lots more music therapy, such an interesting field. You're welcome to come back on the podcast... we might, we could even do a music therapy part two, who knows? Um, but thank you so much for coming on. It's been such a pleasure to have you. What do you want listeners to take away from this episode?

[00:52:00] Brede: Ooh, okay, I think, first of all, thank you so much for having me on. It was such a delight. there, there've been so many of your episodes that I've listened to and thought, oh, this is so relevant for music therapists. So I guess maybe something I'd want people to take away is that there is a lot within music therapy that's relevant to psychology, and there's a lot within music therapy that can be relevant to other spaces that aren't strictly musical.

Maybe the. The biggest thing to take away is the idea that music therapy exists. Music therapists have a lot of, a lot of skills and resources that can fit into a lot of different places. Yeah, I think the, the biggest takeaway would just be that awareness because you can't, as part of a comprehensive support team, you can't bring in a support if you don't know about it and you can't bring in a therapeutic idea if you've never heard of it.

 So I think it's really, really, really exciting to be speaking to an audience of psychologists and early career professionals. It's, yeah, just super awesome.

[00:53:00] Bronwyn: Awesome. Breed, if listeners want to find out more about you or get in touch, like let's say they want to refer clients to you as well, because I know you're in private practice now, um, could you tell us about where listeners could find you and where they could refer to you?

[00:53:13] Brede: Yes, so unfortunately, I am a bit of a grandparent with my online presence, and I shouldn't say that because there are a lot of grandparents who have a far stronger online presence than I do.

[00:53:24] Bronwyn: That's really true. There are a lot of grandparents who have good social media game.

[00:53:29] Brede: Yes, yeah, So you're right, I've got into private practice this year. So at some point this year I will actually make a website so that I'm a lot easier to find. But for now, if anyone wants to reach out, um, my email is just music.brede@gmail.com for anything music therapy related. And then I made a professional Instagram a couple of months ago and the tag for that is contemporarycognition, but I have not decided yet what I want to do with the page because as you can tell, I've got lots and lots of ideas. So yeah, listeners, you are very welcome to follow me and let me know what you want to know about and then I can post that on the page and that can be how we work out what direction my page goes.

[00:54:11] Bronwyn: Amazing. I would encourage listeners to do that and I'll pop all those links in the show notes. Thanks again, Brede, for coming on. It's been a real pleasure to learn about music therapy.

And listeners, thank you so much for listening and if you enjoyed this episode, and you want to make sure that somebody else can enjoy it, do share it with them. That's the best way to get the word out about the podcast, and it would really help us out. Okay, have a good one and catch you next time.