Buy that instrument: Graduating music therapists equip their imaginary music therapy room – theoretical and practical implications

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Frequently, graduating music therapists face the challenge of buying instruments to equip a music therapy room. With the constraints of a basic budget, critical decisions are inevitable, thus revealing underlying perceptions of what is perceived as less and more important in music therapy. The objective of the study was to find the main instrument choices of graduating music therapists and more specifically to see whether these are related to target clientele, to the therapist’s gender, to musical background, and/or to cultural/national background.

Method: 41 graduating students were required to spend a virtual budget of 2000 Euros (≅ 2200 US dollars), to equip an imaginary music therapy room for a clientele of their choice. Spending patterns were compared according to target clientele, gender, musical orientation, and cultural/national background.

Results: The most frequently chosen instruments were guitar and drums. No differences in spending patterns were found in relation to target clientele, gender, and musical orientation. Some differences were found in relation to cultural/national background, and more specifically, to the music therapy program in which participants were trained.

Discussion: It seems that music therapy programs might have an overriding influence on students’ approach to instruments and their possible functions in music therapy.

KEYWORDS:

• Musical instruments
• gender differences
• music therapy room
• cultural differences

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ To avoid the clumsiness of gender inclusivity (e.g. he/she, his/hers) when referring to music therapists, the majority of whom are female, the feminine form is used throughout this paper.

² We included electric keyboards in this category because we assumed that given the restricted budget that made it difficult to “buy” a piano, many participants, regardless of their musical orientation, chose this as a default option. Other electric instruments (e.g. electric guitar, drum set, various types of cables) were categorized under “band- oriented instruments”.

³ To give a sense of the amounts of money “spent” in this study to the non-European reader, we converted Euro values into US dollar values. We used the average of currency rates that were used during the months that the data was collected (April 2015 to October 2015) when 1 Euro was worth 1.1 US Dollars.

⁴ We defined this as at least a third of the total sum of money available (≥ $733) spent on this group of instruments.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Avi Gilboa

Avi Gilboa is a music therapist experienced working with autistic children, hospitalized children, and children with ADHD. He is currently Chair of the Music Department and senior lecture in the Music Therapy program at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. His fields of research include theoretical and clinical issues in music therapy, and social aspects of music.

Laurien Hakvoort

Laurien Hakvoort is a senior registered music therapist, as well as a fellow of the R.F. Unkefer Academy of Neurologic Music Therapy. She is a lecturer and senior research fellow at the Music Therapy Department of ArtEZ University of the Arts. She also worked for 17 years as a music therapist in forensic psychiatry and runs her private practice, Muzis.