How many songs can you play by memory? How many songs are in your notebook? In OnSong? Online? More importantly - How many songs will you play that a patient will really connect with? A music therapist will continue to expand their repertoire to reflect the preferences of their patients. Repertoire can be used in a great variety of ways. This page focuses on some of those activities, and especially on resources to help you learn guitar, tune your guitar, learn new songs, and learn about those sociocultural context associated with the songs and artists.
Activities[]
Goodbye Songs: Goodbye songs bring closure to a music therapy session.
Hello Songs: Hello songs are used to introduce an individual or group to music therapy, to make assessments, build rapport and trust, initiate interaction and participation, and establish a tone or theme of the following session.
Singalong Games: Establish structure and engage group members in singalong sessions with population-appropriate games.
Song Background Info: This collection of pages provides some context and interesting history to some common patient preferred repertory.
Transition Songs: These songs can be used between activities.
Resources[]
American Cultural History guides a cultural context to the repertoire we play. See Timeline of Musical Events, American Popular Music and the Further Reading section for more contextual information.
Baptist Hymns: This is an Apple app that has the collection of all the Baptist hymns with the four part vocal part and the piano sheet music.
Guitar Chord Database Review and learn chords. You can see a realistic diagram, including suggested finger numbers. There is A TON OF INFORMATION, so pay attention only to what you need. Keep it simple, sound clean, and look happy playing it.
Guitar/Guitar Chords Song Library This wikibook provides links to well-known songs, organized by decade, and rated by difficulty. Also see http://www.wikifonia.org
Hymns for Guitar: This website offers many hymns with guitar chords.
LDS Hymns: This is an Apple app that has a collection of Latter-day Saints hymns. Some with four part vocals and piano sheet music (some may only have words).
Popular Music Genres This wiki list navigates you to in-depth descriptions of many genres and subgenres of music. Also, see Aces and Eigths for more information of music genres.
Online Guitar Tuner For standard tuning, a chormatic tuner, and a variety of alternative tunings. "Open" tunings are perfect for non-musicians.
Folk and Rock Printable Songsheets These songs can be searched by title, artist, or first line.
"Top 50 YouTube Guitar Channels" Jeremy Casey links you to 50 of the most viewed channels for everything about guitar, lessons, etc. Casey's blog itself provides some great pointers, even with videos on changing strings or using a pick.
Ultimate Guitar: This website is a huge database of song sheets and guitar tabs.
12 Songs Every Music Therapist Should Know Rachel Rambach starts the converstion: what are the top songs you should learn?
References[]
Further Reading[]
American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MTV Great book dives into the full history of American popular music.
Contributors[]
James E. Riley, MT-BC