The Use of Music Therapy Strategies to Enhance the General Milieu in a Rehabilitation Centre

<p>This research focused on how music therapy strategies could be used to improve the milieu in a rehabilitation centre in a New Zealand city. Residents in the rehabilitation centre had difficulty interacting with each other. I planned to use a Community Music Therapy approach to address residents' social needs. The research methodology was Action Research which involves the study of one's own practice. Cycles of learning led to the introduction of more 'open' groups and the use of the 'sharing concert' as a vehicle for promoting interaction between residents, staff, and family members, and staff and children at an early childhood centre. I examined the group dynamics, encouraged residents to move from small groups to bigger group or even open groups, and began to challenge them to take responsibility for individual tasks for their own and others' benefit. Through interactive music making, the residents improved understanding about conversation courtesy; their motivation for active participation increased as they developed a sense of togetherness, and appreciation for their community. They enjoyed interacting with the wider community also, and had the wish to 'branch out'. Further, the action research changed my understanding and leadership style: I learnt to gradually move from an aesthetic focus and into a supportive role as residents prepared for "their own concert".</p>

The Use of Music Therapy Strategies to Enhance the General Milieu in a Rehabilitation Centre

<p>This research focused on how music therapy strategies could be used to improve the milieu in a rehabilitation centre in a New Zealand city. Residents in the rehabilitation centre had difficulty interacting with each other. I planned to use a Community Music Therapy approach to address residents' social needs. The research methodology was Action Research which involves the study of one's own practice. Cycles of learning led to the introduction of more 'open' groups and the use of the 'sharing concert' as a vehicle for promoting interaction between residents, staff, and family members, and staff and children at an early childhood centre. I examined the group dynamics, encouraged residents to move from small groups to bigger group or even open groups, and began to challenge them to take responsibility for individual tasks for their own and others' benefit. Through interactive music making, the residents improved understanding about conversation courtesy; their motivation for active participation increased as they developed a sense of togetherness, and appreciation for their community. They enjoyed interacting with the wider community also, and had the wish to 'branch out'. Further, the action research changed my understanding and leadership style: I learnt to gradually move from an aesthetic focus and into a supportive role as residents prepared for "their own concert".</p>

Research on the Application of Wireless Wearable Sensing Devices in Interactive Music

Wireless wearable devices can greatly assist and promote the artistic presentation of interactive music and have attracted the attention of more and more composers, musicians, dancers, and visual artists. It can pick up data information in real time, integrate with performers, and provide immersive performance experience. It not only builds a bridge between subjective feeling and spiritual perception for performers and audience but also enables audience to directly observe art information better. This paper mainly introduces the development process of a wearable sensor system designed for monitoring interactive music movement. Firstly, an interactive music motion model is established according to the principle of human body kinematics, and the experimental scheme of measuring the swaying angle of interactive music with a single sensor device is standardized. A multisensor fusion algorithm is proposed to estimate the swing angle of interactive music. Based on the “cost-incentive” emotional model, the wireless wearable device and interactive music model are regarded as continuous variables determined by the emotional effect value and the incentive value. Extract energy, rhythm, harmony, time domain, and spectrum features of interactive music of wireless wearable devices, and reduce the dimension of a music feature space through principal component analysis, spatial projection, and relief feature selection. Finally, the practicability of the system and the accuracy of the algorithm are verified by experiments. The recognition rate of wireless wearable devices and interactive music realized based on this algorithm was improved.

Singing and music making: physiological responses across early to later stages of dementia

Background: Music based interventions have been found to improve the wellbeing of people living with dementia. More recently there has been interest in physiological measures to provide additional information about how music and singing impact this population. Methods: This multiple-case study design explored physiological responses (heart rate-HR, electrodermal activity-EDA, movement, and skin temperature-ST) of nine people with mild-to-moderate dementia during a singing group, and six people in the later stages of dementia during an interactive music group. The interactive music group was also video recorded to provide information about engagement. Data were analysed using simulation modelling analysis. Results: The singing group showed an increase in EDA (p < 0.01 for 8/9 participants) and HR (p < 0.01 for 5/9 participants) as the session began. HR (p < 0.0001 for 5/9 participants) and ST (p < 0.0001 for 6/9 participants) increased during faster paced songs. EDA (p < 0.01 all), movement (p < 0.01 for 8/9 participants) and engagement were higher during an interactive music group compared to a control session (music listening). EDA (p < 0.0001 for 14/18 participants) and ST (p < 0.001 for 10/18 participants) increased and in contrast to the responses during singing, HR decreased as the sessions began (p < 0.002 for 9/18 participants). EDA was higher during slower music (p < 0.0001 for 13/18 participants), however this was less consistent in more interactive sessions than the control. There were no consistent changes in HR and movement responses during different styles of music. Conclusions: Physiological measures may provide valuable information about the experiences of people with dementia participating in arts and other activities, particularly for those with verbal communication difficulties. Future research should consider using physiological measures with video-analysis and observational measures to explore further how engagement in specific activities, wellbeing and physiology interact.

Forming the fundamentals of social culture and cultural competence in school students in the process of mastering the content of musical pieces

Students’ mastery of the content of musical pieces in different artistic genres provides for a versatile development of their moral culture as the basis of social culture and cultural competence. The condition for the success of this process lies in the musical activity transcending to the creative level allowing access to the imaginative and emotional “overtones” in the sound of music. Involving all children and adolescents in musical creativity is possible through the implementation of the pedagogical technology of interactive music-making that involves a complementary interaction with the outside source of sound. A pedagogical experiment conducted as a part of concerts of the artistic and educational project “Music-making for all” that were designed based on the aforementioned technology demonstrates students’ successful mastery of the content of the performed pieces, as well as the development of the required characteristics of social culture in them.