Using Slideshows for Visuals
I had many amazing practicum experiences in my music therapy clinical training at Seattle Pacific. I had opportunities to lead sessions in many different settings with all kinds of populations. My musical and clinical repertoire expanded greatly over those four years. When I started my internship at MTCCA, I noticed some differences in methods and techniques between my new supervisors and former supervisors. Something I noticed immediately about the music therapists at MTCCA is that they always use visuals!
So many of our clients are visual learners and benefit from visual cues with familiar characters and shapes. Many of our sessions happen virtually over Zoom, so we utilize screen sharing to prompt our clients with visual presentations we’ve created on Google Slides and PowerPoint. These slides can have lyrics for therapeutic singing, prompts for songwriting, or pictures that coordinate with themes in a song.
I’ve created some improvisation exercises inspired by my colleagues’ use of slideshow visuals. I created a piano improvisation intervention in which I prompt the client to improvise a theme for a movie character. I chose to begin with the client’s favorite movie, the Jungle Book. Each slide presents a different character from the movie, helping cue the client to play in a new style.
Using slideshows for visuals is an amazing way to utilize pre-learned associations to teach new concepts in an interactive and engaging way!
-Emma
