Improvisation skills for clinical work: Musical frameworks, extemporation, transitions and thematic development

Creativity and flexibility are the hallmarks of effective improvisational technique. It is also becoming increasingly apparent that providing musical structure can be significant in enabling clients with poor communication, reciprocity and resistance to engagement. This workshop will offer some practical experiences of music making that utilise techniques. Creating a musical frame using an idiom or style, developing the ability to improvise in the style of a song or existing piece, developing the ability to introduce brief or lengthier transitions (Wigram 2004), and building up an improvisation based on a short theme or ‘leit-motif’ will all be included in the workshop activities, using both piano, and other instruments. While interventions utilising improvisational music therapy should never be driven by clinical procedures, applying therapeutic method, and also recognising method and technique will increasingly allow music therapists to explain more precisely how and why an intervention was helpful.