How music can change your life

How music can change your life

Music Therapy is the clinical and evidence-based use of music interventions to accomplish 

individualized goals within a therapeutic relationship by a credentialed professional who has completed an approved music therapy program.  It is a well-established healthcare profession in which various music-based methods are used to address the special needs of individuals with illnesses, disabilities and special needs. The music therapist assesses the needs of the clients, develops and implements a treatment plan based on assessment ?ndings, and evaluates the treatment process. Because music is a powerful and non-threatening medium, unique outcomes are possible with a variety of populations consisting of an interpersonal process in which a trained music therapist uses music and all of its facets?physical, emotional, mental, social, aesthetic, and spiritual?to help clients to improve or maintain their health. Music therapists primarily help clients improve their health across various domains by using music experiences. Listen to your favorite songs, and pay close attention to the back-up vocals when they're being sung along with the lead. Can you hear how the two vocal melodies differ in pitch? That's harmony, and it's highly possible that those back-up vocalists were chosen because of their strong ability to harmonize.

Singing a harmony, or rather picking one out on your own without written sheet music, is an almost inherent musical skill that many singers would die to possess. But harmony isn't just the province of singers; it's found in every single area of music. Any time a sound is layered on top of another sound and those sounds match each other in rhythm and melody a harmony is created.

Harmony is made of intervals, and as such, it can be considered dissonant or consonant. What makes a harmony pleasing or unpleasing, however, is extremely relative. In medieval times, only octaves and perfect fifths were considered harmonious, and any harmony that deviated from that was generally frowned upon. In modern western music, though, nearly everything is considered to be harmonious by someone. Fifths are still very popular in modern harmony but are now used in the most unlikely of places; heavy metal music, for example, frequently uses perfect fifths in the vocal harmony to create an eerie effect when layered on top of the more dissonant instrumentation. 

Harmony, in addition to being consonant or dissonant, can also be subordinate or coordinate. Subordinate harmony, the tonal harmony used most frequently today, is a series of harmonies that are based on each other. The harmony moves in such a way that a resolution is somewhat predictable; you can hear this type of harmony in modern pop music, musical parts that flow very easily into each other and don't leave the listener baffled as to the turn the song has taken. On the other hand, coordinate harmony is a series of harmonies that operate independently of each other. They do have some common relation, of course, but don't typically move toward a goal, or predictable resolution. Renaissance musicians often used this type of harmony, and it's capable of producing rich and moving textures within a piece of music. 

Learning music theory and harmony is not just an option you can take or leave: it is part and parcel of the "stuff of music". No surgeon would ever say "I don't want to learn all that stuff about the nervous system & the skeletal system and blood vessels and how the lungs and heart works and all that stuff