Just in case you missed them, here are the stories from May in the Daily Muse. If you want to be on the cutting edge of music news for the therapist, parent and teacher, then you can follow the daily entries by subscribing to Music Makes Sense on Twitter or by "Liking" the Facebook page for Music Makes Sense. Enjoy, and thanks for reading!
(5-31-11) Another example of music empowering someone's life:
Born at 24 weeks, blind and then later diagnosed with Autism, Tony Drake wasn't expected to live through the night. Now, 23 years later, Tony has overcome many obstacles to become an outstanding blues guitarist and singer. Here he performs "Sometimes You Love Me" with the Roy Roberts Band, May 21, 2011.
(5-30-11) Like the show or not, Glee is rapidly re-shaping what is considered popular and preferred music. Even some Broadway tunes can now be used for music therapy in high school settings!
see more Funny Graphs
(5-29-11)
"Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue." ~ Plato
(5-28-11) Internal Medicine News has a nice article about music therapy with dementia patients. The author has an accurate description of music therapy and makes some references to new research. I really like the fact that the article includes links to the original research material! You can find the story here.
(5-27-11) If a ball bounces down a huge xylophone in the middle of a deserted forest, does it make any sound?? Susan Seale at Make Me Musical shared this amazing video on her blog. She has several great blogs and a knack for finding superb videos! This video is apparently a commercial for a cell phone encased in wood! You can find it here.
(5-26-11) I know you've been there...a music therapy session with a client but you have forgotten to bring that special cord that connects your MP3 player or iPod to the stereo! Now you have to rely on the little speaker in your phone since you also didn't bring in your laptop for the session. Or you remember that the one song you need isn't in your iTunes library, but is an MP3 file on your computer instead. But, don't panic, maybe you are one of the trendy people who have moved to the "cloud!" The cloud is that ethereal space located in some 4th dimension (or somebody's basement in Taiwan!) where you can store gobs of information for little or no cost. You may even already have a cloud storage from Amazon, Apple, Microsoft or Google! Therein lies part of the problem. Too many different cloud banks! (no pun intended!) Wouldn't it be nice to have all your music, no matter what the file format, saved in one place? They you could access it from anywhere at anytime and play it through a computer or connection that belongs to somebody else when you forget your own equipment!
Audiogalaxy presents itself as just the answer! Save all the music on your computer, no matter what file format, to one cloud-based storage site that you can access from anywhere! I think something like this would make things a lot easier for everyone, but especially music therapists. Has anyone tried this already? Let us know how you like it!