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)
