Music Therapy, part 4: Intermodal Aspect

As discussed in my posts on Music Therapy, (part 1, part 2, & part 3) music is used for healing effects in its receptive, expressive and creative aspects. We can listen to music, play music, and forge meaning through creation of standalone artistic musical pieces. Any of these can be done with healing, self-evolving intentions, & they are all connected to each other. Music is also frequently used in combination with the other expressive arts, in what is called the Intermodal Aspect.

Intermodal Aspect

Music works beautifully in an intermodal (interdiscipinary) way. Example ways to use it intermodally: dance to the music; make the music piece that reflects or heightens a poem; draw a response to a musical piece; make a music/sound piece that goes with a dance, drawing, or performance; write the monologue of the song as if the song were a character, etc. Infinite interesting & creative variations here.

3 invitations to you to try out the Intermodal Aspect of music:

  1. Take some time to look at this image. After drinking it in for a bit, make any kind of musical sounds for several minutes, in which you transfer the feeling and qualities of this image into the music format, almost as though you are making a translation into another language. Convey the overall feeling tones and express details too, as if recording the whole visual experience for posterity, but in musical form.

 

2. This time, try it the other way. Listen to this piece of music, and make a visual response to it of some kind. Draw the qualities and information you feel the song conveys to you, so that someone looking at your drawing could almost hear the song, or get its core essence through your image.

3. Finally, try another translation. Here is a text. After soaking it in, make a 1 minute-long songlet of just humming, that captures the feeling of the poem.

The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Once you have your songlet, translate it back into language one more time, and make a second text version that is now drawing from that music.

 My invitation to you to play with the Intermodal Aspect of music more deeply:

1.     Write down a question you want the answer to, such as “why do I struggle with my sister so much” or “how can I move forward with my career” – can be anything.

2.     Express the question problem in music/sound. Summoning to mind the question, make the sound piece of that question for a few minutes, using rhythm, voice, instruments, as desired. Record yourself if that is easy enough to do.

3.     After finishing the little music piece, capture the music piece’s main dynamics and feeling as you remember it, in the form of a sketch, with color if you have some pens on hand.

4.     Take a moment to really look at your drawing as though it were a message left from an ancestor and you want to soak in everything that’s being communicated. Now in your journal write freeflow as if from the drawing itself’s point of view: “I am…I want…I need…” Set everything aside when you have completed.

5.     Now do a second sound piece, this time the music of “the answer” (to your original question). Whereas first you were making the song of the problem, now you are making the song of the antidote, medicine, solution.

6.     Again make a drawing of the musical piece, and write a little bit after you have looked at the drawing, perhaps zeroing in on a part (such as a section of squiggly blue lines) that intrigues you. Again use first person format: “I am…I’m here to tell you…” Feel free to ask it some questions and see what it says.

7.     Hang the first two drawings up, the problem to the left and the answer to the right. Place a third, blank piece of paper in between, and then draw the transition or bridge between them. What visual expressions (lines, shapes, qualities, directions) can integrate these two pieces so that now it is a triptych that fits seamlessly together?

8.     Look at the transition drawing (center panel) and making a music piece that reflects that.

9.     Reflect in written format what you got from your “transition” piece, what does it tell you about how you can proceed from problem to solution?   

As I hope this example shows, it’s fun to play around and find ways of working that suit you (& your clients, if you are facilitating intermodal music therapy with people) best. As long as the container is strong and safe, you really can’t lose with any kind of creative play.

May this play be fruitful for you.


If you would like to continue with the topic of music, check out my next posts on the topic of how we can reclaim music.

If you’re interested in the intermodal angle, you may want to purchase a Creative Expedition webinar replay from the shop. These are all guided, intermodal experiences (though not involving music, but dance, drawing and writing).

If you enjoyed these posts on music therapy, you may like to continue on to the Reclaiming Music Series, which is for restoring your right to play music more exuberantly.