Felicity Baker, PhD is Associate Professor and Australia Research Council Future Fellow based at The School of Music, The University of Queensland. She is co-editor of Song Writing Methods, Techniques and Clinical Applications for Music Therapy Clinicians, Educators and Students and co-author of Music Therapy in Neurorehabilitation: A Clinician's Manual. She reviews for a number of music therapy and interdisciplinary journals and is editor-in-chief for The Australian Journal of Music Therapy. Felicity has a strong interest in recovering the expressive potential of the voice following traumatic brain injury.
Introduction: Songwriting as therapy, Felicity Baker, The University of Queensland, Australia and Tony Wigram, Aalborg University, Denmark. 1. Improvised Songs and Stories in Music Therapy Diagnostic Assessments at a Unit for Child and Family Psychiatry: A Music Therapist's and a Psychotherapist's Perspective, Amelia Oldfield, The Croft Children's Unit, Cambridge, UK and Christine Franke, Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, Essex University, UK. 2. You Ask Me Why I'm Singing: Song creating with Children and Parents in Child and Family Psychiatry, Emma Davies, The Croft Children's Unit, Cambridge, UK. 3. Teenagers and songwriting: Supporting in a Mainstream Secondary School, Philippa Derrington, Cambridgeshire Instrumental Music Agency, UK. 4. Giving a Voice to Childhood Trauma through Therapeutic Songwriting, Toni Day, The University of Queensland, Australia. 5. Collaborations on Songwriting with Clients with Mental Health Problems, Randi Rolvsjord, Sogn og Fjordane University College, Norway. 6. Songwriting to Explore Identity Change and Sense of Self-concept Following Traumatic Brain Injury, Felicity Baker, Jeanette Kennelly, The Royal Children's Hospital, Australia and Jeanette Tamplin, Royal Talbot Rehabilitation Centre, Australia. 7. Working with Impairments in Pragmatics through Songwriting with Traumatically Brain Injured People, Felicity Baker. 8. Assisting Children with Malignant Blood Disease - and Their Family - to Create and Perform Their Own Songs, Trygve Aasgaard, Norwegian Academy of Music and Oslo University College, Norway. 9. Songwriting with Adult Patients in Oncology and Clinical Haematology, Emma O'Brien, The Royal Melbourne Hospital, Australia. 10. The Music Therapist as Singer/Songwriter: Applications with Bereaved Teenagers, Robert Krout, Southern Methodist University, Texas, USA. 11. Songwriting with Oncology and Hospice Adult Patients from a Multicultural Perspective, Cheryl Dileo, Temple University, Philadelphia, USA and Lucanne Magill, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, USA. 12. Songwriting Methods - Similarities and Differences: Developing a Working Model, Tony Wigram. Index.
Practically oriented, instructive, inclusive and forthright, this book focuses on techniques for writing songs with clients and is geared chiefly toward music therapy clinicians, students and educators. This methods book attempts to explore and emphasize the value of songwriting within a therapeutic context and, ultimately, to define the methods and techniques used, both for teaching purposes and for the analysis and explanation of clinical processes and outcomes. This welcome effort to fully recognize the inherent value of songwriting and to systematically standardize its uses in the field was long overdue, as music therapists have long incorporated songwriting in their clinical repertoire of methods. Reading this book undoubtedly strengthens one's confidence in the procedure of songwriting with the client and in its overall effectiveness as a method of facilitating therapy. As a music therapist who, like so many others in this field, integrates songwriting in her clinical work, I feel that I derived much theoretical and practical information from Songwriting. As a methods book, I found it to be efficient, informative and interesting both to the student and to the practicing music therapist, with a refreshing variety of techniques that may enrich the songwriting repertoire of even the most experienced clinician.
