An assessment model for the musical material produced during the course of music therapy

Abstract

Assessment is described as the collection and analysis of information with an objective of planning and implementing an effective treatment program. Past research suggests that the professional recognition, level of communication in interdisciplinary teams and the results of research directly depend on the successful implementation of an assessment system. However, to date no tools that assess musical material produced during the course of music therapy are formalised or widely implemented into clinical practice. After exploration of both the clinicians’ and researchers’ needs for an assessment system and thorough analysis of the existing assessment tools used in music therapy settings, an assessment model for musical material was created. We propose that every music therapy client has his / her own manner of improvising that can be identified by Musical Profile. Musical Profile provides information about the individual manner of playing as well as the temporal evolution of musical processes. This model combines both sensitivity to individual characteristics and objectivity in collecting and measuring the data. In order to test the validity of Musical Profile it was applied to the analysis of musical content. The audio and MIDI materials analysed were collected in 2008-2009 by a group of researchers from the University of Jyväskylä. Clinical improvisations produced by six depressed clients were imported into the Matlab environment and subsequently analysed with different functions provided by MIRToolbox (version 1.5) and MIDI Toolbox (version 1.0.1). As a last step, statistical analyses were performed using SPSS software. The results show that Musical Profile can be successfully implemented into practice and that this model is capable of revealing significant differences between participants in an objective way.