Instruments used in Music Therapy

My go-to instrument in a music therapy session is an acoustic guitar. It’s popular, portable, and enables me to maintain eye contact with clients. While making recordings, I draw from a larger variety of instruments.

Musical instruments can also be played by clients. A wide variety of goals can be addressed through the use of instruments in a music therapy session:

  • visual tracking
  • choice making
  • motor skills
  • turn-taking
  • imitation
  • sharing
  • matching
  • self-expression
  • group cohesion
  • following directions
  • hand-eye coordination
  • auditory discrimination
  • verbs (go, stop, play, pass)
  • spatial concepts (over, under, on, off)
  • requesting (gestures, pictures, communication device, verbal)
  • performance adjectives (fast, slow, loud, quiet)
  • descriptive adjectives (color, size, shape, texture)
  • sorting skills (color, size, shape, texture)
  • quantities (number of instruments, number of beats)
  • money skills (purchasing, making change)


Archtop Music Therapy