Frank Glasson and the Presidio Brass are changing all of that for the San Diego schools. A trumpet player by profession, Frank is also president of Local 325 of the American Federation of Musicians and director of Presidio Brass, a brass quintet. The veteran musician has performed with the San Diego Chamber Orchestra, the San Diego Opera, and San Diego’s Westwind Brass, as well as ensembles in Europe, Africa and Asia.

Glasson saw that music was steadily disappearing from the San Diego schools and wanted to do something about it. He believes that the constant influence of television, movies, computers and CDs could erode the senses of youth to the more refined music. He enlisted the help of the other members of Presidio Brass — Ray Nowak, Mike McCoy, Sean Reusch, and Scott Sutherland, who play the trumpet, French horn, trombone, and tuba, respectively.

Working under the umbrella of the nonprofit San Dieguito Performing Arts Association, Presidio Brass developed the “Musicate the Mind” program for the San Diego schools. Musicate is an educational and musical outreach program, developed specifically to fill the musical void in the schools. With Glasson’s wife Robyn coordinating the events and developing contracts with the San Diego schools, Presidio Brass presents various customized programs for the different grade levels that fits any educational or outreach school requirement.

Glasson and his ensemble want to create relationships with the San Diego schools students, not just play music for them. Within that relationship, he hopes the children will grow to appreciate live music and keep it alive by becoming tomorrow’s supporters of live instrumental music. He plans to eventually do 200 programs per year all over Southern California.

For kindergartners through fifth graders, Presidio Brass introduces the brass instruments, their development, and historical context. The quintet members also give some basic musical concepts in a fun and engaging manner.

For fourth and fifth graders, the ensemble can integrate music into the core curriculum by teaching language arts, mathematics, social studies, and science through the language of music.

For middle and high schoolers, they present their Residency-for-a-Day program, which exposes San Diego schools students to the brass quintet. The hope is to inspire students to promote and cultivate their own musical abilities. Additionally, they want to give encouragement and instruction to those already playing instruments, knowing that such support is crucial.

For high schools, Presidio Brass gives master classes and concerts for their school orchestras and bands.

Though Glasson and the Presidio Brass quintet are in other school districts as well, the San Diego schools and their students will benefit greatly from this unique outreach musical program.

Today more young people and students in the United States are looking to enter in music field or make mark in which they can merge artistic or music talent and idealism in satisfying and meaningful ways. Teaching music to these young talents can provide you a better scope and career satisfaction. In recent times, this profession has gained enormous popularity and the ratio of people enrolling in music education course has also increased dramatically. In fact, today it is one of the few dynamic occupations that offer vast opportunities.

The career path you take as music teacher can vary greatly and simply depends on the kind of teaching that interests you most. You may work as a full time or part time in a studio, or in an elementary or secondary school, college, university, or music conservatory.

School Music Teacher- As a school based music teacher, you can be mostly involved in providing music instructions to different classroom students. Though the exact curriculum you cover is generally dictated by the school district and the grade levels with which you are working. You may also be responsible for devising school musical productions or coaching the school band.

Music Store Teacher- Working as a music store teacher is great if you want to tell your friends that you work in the music biz. The most interesting aspect of working as a store music teacher is it offers you the opportunity to put up your own studio. A degree is not always required for this position but you must possess exceptional training in both areas of music and teaching. Besides this, the earning opportunities may vary based on location and qualifications, with some earning as much as $100 an hour.

Music Consultant/Supervisor – Working as music tutor or supervisor is one of the few career options that certainly require an extensive knowledge in music and teaching. You must be a good decision maker and adviser as well. Adding to this, as the profession demands for an extensive knowledge, an advanced music degree and a good background in teaching is must. Working as a music consultant or supervisor, you may earn as much as $70,000 a year, depending on qualifications and location.

University Music Administrator – If you are looking forward to work as a university music administrator then this profession demands an extensive background and knowledge in music and teaching. As you will responsible for administering university music, you will be required to possess good leadership skills and a good background as a music professor. In terms of salary, it can reach as much as $180,000 a year based on qualifications and location.

Apart from all this, you can also make career as private music teacher. The job outlook for private music teachers is good enough. In fact, due to budget restraints, many colleges and universities these days are hiring more private music teacher as a part-time or extra faculty members instead of full-time teachers.

Today making a career as a music teacher can definitely be considered as one of the legitimate ways to make money in music and still look like a respectable member of society. It is one of the few professions that help you reinforce the fundamentals for yourself and look things from a new and better perspective.

For many of today’s musicians, working as a private music tutor has many benefits over working within an educational establishment. Firstly, you are a lot freer to choose where, when, and depending on how well you teach, WHO your students are. This will also let you continue whatever employment or other commitments you already have. Building up your student base slowly allows you to commit time to each of them to find out their learning style and prepare for their lessons without feeling overwhelemed suddenly with 30 new students starting next week.

Starting out, the idea of being an “expert” can feel rather daunting… especially for those of us who learned by gigging, and may not be the best sight-readers. Others among us have studied music and/or education to higher levels. But no matter where you stand between these two, those first few steps into teaching music as an income is terrifying.

Two main advantages I have seen in my time working as a private music tutor are

1. You have a lot more potential to work the hours you choose, and where you choose. Allowing your other commitments time where they need it.

2. If you teach children, generally, they are far more likely to behave and be responsive to teaching when either on their own as there is no one to show off to. School music lessons – especially in junior high school can be pretty hard to control.

3. You can vary the genres and methods you use as you see fit, not as a strict school curriculum requires.

4. You can focus all your attention on one student who WANTS to learn… if they don’t, why are you teaching them – your morale will take a huge blow, and your time would be better invested in working with an interested student.

Monetary benefits will come into the equation somewhere… let’s face it; they have to in this world. However, if all you can see are pound signs and have no real interest to teach, work with others, or enjoy music… perhaps private tuition is not for you.

In my personal opinion, private teachers can make a very comfortable living, and with some commitment and effort can easily make £40 upwards per hour.

It is not unheard of for tutors to have a waiting list of students who want them as their tutor. Once you find yourself in this position, although it isn’t time to relax, it is most definitely time to congratulate yourself. You can now (within reason) charge what you REALLY feel you are worth per lesson/hour, as you have people desperately waiting for your time.

If you didn’t increase your price at this stage it would be foolish. You have developed a product (your tuition service) that is in such a need the demand out numbers the supply – the number of lessons you have available per week.

Building your “studio” into this size is an achievable target, but one not as many as could reach it actually do. Those who do are employing valuable marketing techniques whether they realise it or not.

One of these marketing techniques is so subtle, many don’t even realise they are doing it when they are advertising in their local newspaper or shop window. This is a basic example, but stick with me; this idea can be applied at any time in your teaching career. By advertising in a local newspaper, you are already targeting the first most likely people to use your tuition services… your local community. Unless you are famous for being an incredible musician, people will neither just ask if you would teach them, or travel to find you in the hope you teach music. This one simple ad is telling the local community “I live in this area, and I have spaces available to teach music lessons.” I would save the expense and time on that website until further down the line if you live in a small town, the paper would provide a far higher return on income when you are starting off.

To develop this further, think what your ads say about you? Do they say professional, or do they say “I can play a few tunes on the piano, let me teach you cos I really need the money”

Here are my top 5 mostly marketing techniques for musicians aspiring to earn a decent income from private tuition.

1. Choose a name for your “studio” this can be anything from “Maria’s Singing Tuition” to “Bass riff School”. Choose one and use it in ALL your advertising

2. Make sure you include contact details on everything – advertising is an obvious one, but what about your pupils’ notebooks in case they ever need to cancel a lesson?

3. Make at least two copies of your teaching schedule. One that stays with you (especially if you are as forgetful as me), and one that everyone else in your household can see. This allows them to know when not to disturb you, or when you’ll be home.

(A third copy is ideal to keep with your musical instrument as a reference.)

4. Make sure that the two copies in point 3 have contact names and numbers for all your students. Should you ever have an emergency, this allows all your pupils to be contacted by another person in your family should you not be able to attend.

5. Don’t be afraid to tell people that you teach music – especially if you have spaces available. Word of mouth is the best form of advertising, and when you combine this with the power of NETWORKING, you can only succeed.

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Music education makes you smart. Smart people educate themselves with music. Both are true to an extent. What is it about music that increases you brains efficiency? From a teacher’s standpoint, the answers are quite obvious. Because music education is such a broad topic, let’s condense it to the studying of an instrument… more specifically the piano.

Teachers have noticed through the years that students seem to get sharper mentally with every lesson. Even the ones that don’t practice a lot seem sharper at the end of a lesson as compared to the beginning… although many teachers can think of a couple of past students who seemed to get more sluggish with every lesson. Thankfully, those types of pupils were the exception rather than the rule. So what aspects of mental capacity are improved by piano playing?

Hand eye coordination vastly improves with instrumental training on the piano. You can better judge distances between notes while playing of notes simultaneously, and there are a whole list of coordination demands that come from the gradual improving of fine motor skills.

Reading skills expand. If you think of music as a language, you are constantly improving your musical vocabulary with more compositions and technical exercises.

Memory, both visual and touch, is given a workout. In this regard, the phrase “use it or lose it” comes to mind. Musicians who constantly memorize new pieces just seem to be sharp in the memory capacity, provided they have a fairly healthy lifestyle.

EQ is forced to develop when performing the works of other composers. You really must feel and understand what a composer felt when composing a work; you will have trouble performing the work effectively for others if you don’t.

Apart from studying the piano, the study of theory and history go hand in hand with the study of any instrument. Knowing about the history of a composer helps you to interpret a piece and improves your music knowledge base. Interpretive improvement is also achieved through the comprehension of a piano piece’s structure. This understanding is obtained through theory knowledge. Music theory is often compared with math and it can be improved gradually, provided the student has a sound foundation.

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Perfect pitch, also called absolute pitch (AP) is an accurate recall of any concert pitch note that one hears played by an instrument. This skill also allows a perfect pitch individual to sing a particular note that is requested of him or her, provided the AP person is also blessed with a good set of vocal chords.

Should you feel inferior if you do not have this ability? Absolutely not! Of course it’s not fair that some people have AP while others don’t. However, mature individuals know that life is not fair. This unfairness is compounded by the fact that perfect pitch cannot be acquired through practice, although some would argue that this is debatable.

Some websites claim that one can acquire the skill of AP through practice. Although it is noble to be open-minded to new techniques for improving oneself, I have not yet seen one conversion of a non-perfect pitch musician into an absolute pitch musician, although the length that some people go through in order to acquire perfect pitch is often mind-boggling.

One common way some individuals try to get AP is by repeating a note continuously for hours in the hope of memorizing the note’s particular pitch. This accomplishes three things:

1. It makes the person trying to achieve perfect pitch look like they’re having a severe nervous breakdown;

2. The act of repeating a note continuously takes time away from quality family and fun activities;

3. Repeating a note continuously requires the purchase of some sort of pain medication from the resulting headache that it most certainly ensues.

So why is there so much hoopla over this accurate recall of specific notes on an instrument? The truth is that many musicians get along just fine without perfect pitch. How, you ask? Well, they develop their relative pitch; the ability to judge the distance between notes by recognizing interval distances. An interval distance is a specific distance between two concert pitch notes on an instrument.

The skillful use of interval distances can give a musician accurate dictation skills. As a composer, an extremely developed relative pitch is a must if absolute pitch is not attainable.

Go forth with no fear, dear non-absolute pitch colleagues! Compose, arrange and perform with the best of them because developed relative pitch is a powerful tool and a viable substitute for AP.

By the way, some websites claim the theory that babies are all possibly born with perfect pitch. This is fascinating, but like so many theories surrounding AP, it is very difficult to prove. Perhaps it’s time we throw out some theories of our own:

1. Owls might have absolute pitch;

2. Chimpanzees would love perfect pitch, but they can’t get it because they have too much potassium in their blood;

3. Avalanches can scare you into having AP, especially if you’re buried alive by one;

4. Falling off a large cliff gives you perfect pitch, but only while you’re falling. When you hit the ground, the perfect pitch suddenly disappears.

As a final thought, AP and good relative pitch are only effective tools when combined with one final and important component: hard work.

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Music as a healing force goes back several centuries. Apollo was worshipped by the Greeks as the god of both music and medicine. Healing and sound were considered a highly developed sacred science in the Egyptian and Greek education systems. Soon after World War I and World War II, community musicians of all types, both amateur and professional, serenaded veterans, suffering both physical and emotional trauma from the wars. The medical profession is now embracing the value of music in the healing or palliative care of a wide variety of patients: the chronically or terminally ill, the disabled, the neurologically impaired, and the mentally challenged. Music therapy programs are popping up in hospitals and treatment centers around the country.

Heart disease is the primary cause of death in the United States. Those who suffer from heart disease either die prematurely or suffer a marked decrease in quality of life. Increasing evidence is proving that music is soothing for the heart. Marconato and collegues reported in the Arq Bras Cardiol. in 2001, decreased stress levels and increased personal satisfaction, higher consumption of fiber-rich food, lower cholesterol intake, and a better perspective on life in people on receptive music therapy . White in the American Journal of Critical Care in 1999 showed that in patients with an acute heart attack, music therapy was associated with reductions in heart rate, respiratory rate, and myocardial oxygen demand. Guzzetta went further and reported in Heart Lung in 1989, that the incidence of cardiac complications was found to be lower in patients admitted to the coronary care unit with a presumptive diagnosis of heart attack, if they were subjected to music and relaxation therapy. Thorgaard and associates reported in the European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing in 2004 that specially selected music had a positive effect on the well being of patients and their opinion on the sound environment during invasive cardiac procedures. Other studies have demonstrated health benefits of music during and after cardiac surgery.

Music has other benefits too. “Simply put, music can heal people.” — Senator Harry Reid, Nevada. As a therapeutic modality, music interventions are able to promote wellness, manage stress, combat depression, alleviate pain, relax or sedate, express feelings, enhance memory, improve communication, and promote physical rehabilitation. Therapeutic music enhances an individual’s self-awareness and spiritual growth, brightens their perspective on life and this results in increasing his or her quality of life

German author, Johann G. Seume expressed, “Music is the key to the female heart.” Love is intimately connected to music. Henry Ward Beecher (1813-87), American clergyman sang, “Of all the music that reaches farthest into heaven, it is the beating of a loving heart.” Music helps conquer loneliness. Lawrence Pat Conroy, said,” Without music, life is a journey through a desert.” Music can help combat depression and anxiety. George Eliot (1819-80), British writer announced, “There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.” Music has its spiritual benefits too. Every religion has incorporated music in its fabric. Basketball coach, Red Auerbach, who was elected to the basketball hall of fame in 1969, preached, “Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” Music helps laborers lessen their burden and helps their time pass faster. It also acts as an uniting force in all aspects of life.

Musical therapist and teacher , Pastor Hal A. Lingerman, said, “Just as certain selections of music will nourish your physical body and your emotional layer, so other musical works will bring greater health to your mind.” And as he correctly remarked, not all music is created equal. Several studies have shown that relaxing music (Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart) results in a significant reduction of heart rate and also a significant reduction of heart rate variability, both benefitting the heart. The human heart rate tends to synchronize with the tempo of the music. Fast tempos drive up heartbeats, breathing and blood pressure, and may be detrimental to the cardiovascular system. Enjoy slower tempo music and relax – and as the American writer, Henry Miller penned, “Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don’t take it too seriously.”

Guitarist Frank Zappa, winner of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997 said, “Remember, information is not knowledge; knowledge is not wisdom; wisdom is not truth; truth is not beauty; beauty is not love; love is not music; music is the best.“ Integrate music into your daily life regimen. It will enhance your life. And more importantly, it may help soothe and even heal your heart. So do not be surprised if your doctor says, ”Listen to two slow classical tunes and call me in the morning.”

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If you are going to use a piece of recorded or composed music for almost any reason, you need to check and make sure whether or not you should be paying for the copyrights on that music. It is very important to make sure that you are paying for the use of copyrighted music. Not only does it help artists that are making their living by producing music, but it also protects you from future lawsuits if you are found in violation of copyright law. Since this law is internationally recognized by all but a handful of countries, there is almost no where on earth where the intellectual property rights on a piece of music aren’t recognized.

If you are using a piece of music for anything besides personal listening, you need to obtain a license for it. This means if you are performing as a cover band at a club or making copies of an album to sell. Most of the time you’ll get a license for your cover band activities; very rarely will you be able to make copies of music if you aren’t affiliated with the original production company. To pay for copyrights on music you need to contact licensing agencies in your region. These agencies represent all the artists and labels across the country. It is to these agencies that you’ll apply for a license and it is also to them that you will pay your licensing fee.

There are instances where you can publicly perform a song without paying for copyrights on the music. If you buy the sheet music of a piece you are generally automatically granted amateur performance rights for free. This means that you can Ben Folds at your next piano recital without worrying about committing a felony. If you are a cover band playing at local clubs, most of these clubs have blanket licenses for performing non-original live music. Check with your venue before paying for copyrights on music.

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No longer do we have to buy a full CD just to get the one song we like. IPods and the internet are allowing for a more mixed collection of the music most important to us. The many downloads on the internet and sites strictly dedicated to giving us a huge selection of music. We can pick and choose the songs that mean the most to us.

Music can make us happier when w are happy and lift our mood when we are not. A true music lover understands the transformation that music does to us. Not all out there utilize the calming affects of music and should launch into the life changing effects that music can do. Inspiration, understanding and acceptance can all be pulled out of music hen we are open to the idea that music can change us. Music can be used to increase productivity, decrease anxiety and allow us a new outlook on life. People need to embrace this and pay more attention to the effects of the music they listen to in their lives.

Good music can change our outlook and affect our soul. It is said that a positive outlook on life can change the happiness you feel. Believing in the changes music can have on emotion and behavior can lead to a more productive positive outlook on life. Music is essential and everyone should reap the positive affects and desire it invokes.

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I am in the “October” of my life and I think , I finally understand a least man-made music and his conception of it.  Asking questions and reading books or any literature on the subject has sort of satisfied my quest for the “whys” of music.  I have been practicing how to do this or that for years and years but the “whys” can set the creative mind to take off, so no more “can’t get no satisfaction….” Since the infinite is to deep for me, lets deal with man made music.

I have come to the conclusion that all man made musical instruments have to be in the range of the human voice, a little higher or lower that’s O.K. If not, they will become obsolete.

The human voice has kept man made music earth bound and the amazing things it that it range or distance is on the average only two and one half octaves! That’s Johnny Cash territory and not Andrea Bucelli who really likes to stretch it, and its made him famous. The human voice is a marvelous instrument, the king and queen of all!

The well trained voice is fantastic with its ability to achieve its wide range of notes, like a diamond with its many facets. The fantastic Australian guitarist Tommy Emmanuel has composed a beautiful piece for guitar entitled “Angelina” but during the piece he hums in harmony with his finger picking and its beautiful. Check it out on Youtube.

My point again is the ultimate superiority of the human voice.  Show me any instrumentalist, as good as he may be, that can match the drawing power of an Andrea Bucelli or your favorite who if he or she is real good can fill a stadium! So the bottom line is I like to sing and have Tommy Emmanuel be my accompanist, whaoo!  That would be awesome!

The human voice has another big advantage. The power of the spoken word. A great Speaker, let alone a great singer has a powerful tool at his disposal. It can get you emotionally.  Listen again to the late Harry Chapin sing his wife’s composition “cats in the cradle” or Roy Clarke’s “Yesterday when I was young” These examples of favorite powerful songs are not sung very often because the singer has a hard time emotionally singing it. That words are that powerful. If you are not affected you will have to fake it, I guarantee it!

Well I have enjoyed this, but it time to start training the king. Hey, it very takes a lot of discipline, but its worth it! Thanks for reading.

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Good for you! It looks like you finally found a music therapist! Now, in the words of Uncle Ben, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Music therapy is a profession working diligently to establish itself as a credible and legitimate therapy, so someone calling herself a music therapist has a lot to answer to. The average person hasn’t even heard of music therapy and surely isn’t familiar with the ins and outs of the field, so let me give you a leg up. Your music therapist should roughly resemble the following description.

EDUCATION: A music therapist will have an actual degree in music therapy (sounds so new age, doesn’t it?) from an accredited school of music, within a legitimate university. (This generally rules out most online programs.) This could be in the form of a bachelor’s degree or a bachelor’s equivalency and they might also have a master’s degree or even a PhD in music therapy. Higher education is all the rage these days. By the way, this means that she auditioned and was accepted based on her musical skill on a particular instrument, meaning she was pretty much on par with all those other elitist music students (I was one, so I can say bad things about us).

INTERNSHIP: MT students are required to complete a 6 month internship at a site that has been approved by the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA, musictherapy.org). Not only are they monitored and evaluated by the site’s music therapists, they also complete undergrad coursework during the internship for their professors back at school. Each university handles this a little differently…some schools will award just a plain music degree at the end of the student’s on-campus coursework, and then further bestow the music therapy degree once he finishes the internship. Others withhold any degree until the internship is complete. Either way, you can feel confident that your hand-picked therapist has worked her butt off to get an internship. The world of music therapy is small and the world of approved internships is even smaller and increasingly selective.

Often a student attempts to secure an internship with a population they are interested in. For example, I happen to enjoy psychiatry and thus, completed my internship in a psychiatric hospital. (Did I mention that I am, in fact, a GOOD music therapist? Thus my ability to comment on this topic.) Anyway, you definitely want to ask your MT about her internship (no matter his or her age-there are lots of “non-traditional” MTs out there who could have very likely entered the field at the astonishingly old age of 50 or get this-even older!).

BOARD CERTIFICATION: After MTs complete their internships, they are eligible to take the music therapy board certification exam. That’s right…your music therapist should be able to tell you all about her horrible experience at the “local testing center” where she was required to take her exam (mine was at a dirty H&R Block in a bad part of town). The exam is a comprehensive review of topics ranging from data collection and statistics to music theory to counseling models. If you pass, you get exciting initials to put at the end of your name (you also get to pay $80 a year to maintain those initials…not so exciting). Those initials are MT-BC, which stands for music therapist-board certified. It is absolutely essential that your music therapist carry those initials or at the VERY LEAST be preparing to sit for the exam. (She could be in music therapy no man’s land…between the end of her internship and the completion of the exam). If she doesn’t pass the test, you need to pass on her. Harsh, I know, but this world is rough.

ADHERENCE TO STANDARDS OF PRACTICE AND CODE OF ETHICS: A board certified music therapist is expected to practice according national standards and ethics. The standards provide a benchmark against which to measure a music therapy practice. I won’t insult you by explaining what ethics are. Anyway, as a consumer of music therapy, this is basically what you can expect to experience regarding the standards of practice:

Assessment-Your MT should complete a well-rounded assessment of the client, including at least the following: history, interviews with caregivers, and behavior both in and out of a musical setting.

Recommended Treatment Plan-After the assessment is complete, the MT will decide whether or not MT will be beneficial to client (usually yes, but sometimes not). The basis for this decision will be evident in the assessment report, of which you should absolutely have a copy. Such paperwork is not a secret and if your therapist ever declines to show you this assessment, dump her immediately. This treatment plan should also give the amount of treatment recommended (usually on a weekly basis) and what goals will be addressed over what time period (these goals should reflect what you were seeking, at least in part). A GOOD MT will give you the opportunity to agree or disagree with the projected course of treatment before anything can be implemented.

Appropriate Termination-A responsible music therapist will terminate therapy when goals are met or no further progress can be made.

CONTINUING EDUCATION V. RE-EXAMINATION: Once you are in a long-term relationship with a music therapist (ooh, commitment!), you will notice that she disappears every year or every other year around Thanksgiving. This is because she is attending a conference…the national conference to be more specific. And depending on where you live, she may disappear more often to attend smaller regional or state conferences. THIS IS A SIGN OF A GOOD MUSIC THERAPIST! She is undoubtedly participating in continuing education and more importantly for you, is combating burn-out. MTs are required to re-certify every 5 years either by accruing 100 hours of continuing education classes (CMTEs-continuing music therapy education) or by re-taking the certification exam. Now, what I am about to say is an extreme personal opinion-be wary of a MT who chooses to re-take the exam over completing the 100 hours of CMTEs. I say this because a person who chooses the exam is not necessarily keeping current with emerging research and/or new techniques and interventions. Over time, she will become a dinosaur…like the creepy librarian at my high school who put duct tape lines on the floor to keep us from looking at each other’s computers. Forgive your MT for her absences, for you shall be the benefactor.

YEARS OF EXPERIENCE: Lastly, there isn’t much that can substitute for experience. Only being a 5 year old therapist myself, I realize that I am risking a loss of business for those of us around my age. However, for anyone that has ever worked, you know that even ONE year of experience can put you light years ahead of those graduating behind you, so don’t totally count out the “young and inexperienced.” They do have the most recent research and “best practices” stored somewhere in their brains, even if they don’t know what to do with it yet. My point is, if you have someone that fits into all the above criteria and has at least one year of experience under her belt, she is probably going to work out just fine.

A FEW QUICK TIPS:

If your MT rarely plays live instruments and relies mostly on recorded music, get rid of her.

If your MT keeps no paperwork, turn her out on her ear.

If your MT is performing and not interacting, get your light saber and look threatening.

This article is by no means an exhaustive list of what makes someone a good music therapist. It is simply to give you, the non-music therapist, an idea of what to look for and expect. It would probably take me 30 articles to go into detail about the importance of interpersonal skills, to preferred models of practice, to something simple like payment and reimbursement. Like I said, the above is just a skeleton…lots more goes into making a whole body

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