What about the music? Music therapists’ perspectives on the role of music in the therapeutic songwriting process

Abstract

Outcomes-oriented studies and lyric analyses have been extensively used to understand the effects of therapeutic songwriting. There is a notable absence of investigations that focus on the role of the music and the music creation process within the therapeutic songwriting process. This study contributes to this gap by investigating 45 music therapists’ perceptions of the role of music in the therapeutic songwriting process. Modified grounded theory methods led to the construction of three themes with 18 subthemes: 1) music conveys messages and emotions, 2) music has clinical purpose, and 3) music enhances self-expression. A key outcome of the findings is that analysing music alongside the lyrics ensures that the song’s meaning and the inner world of the songwriter are accurately interpreted.

Keywords

songwriting music therapy role of music perspectives of practitioners grounded theory

The importance and function of music for individuals and society has been of interest to scholars for many decades and has impacted on how music therapists understand the importance and role of music within their practice. Therapeutic songwriting has recently received attention in the literature (Baker, Wigram, Stott, & McFerran, 2008, 2009), but research studies on the role that music plays in the process have been largely neglected. As outlined later in this paper, songwriting studies tended to focus on the importance of lyric creation as if the music is irrelevant, or at least less important. This did not suggest authors view music as unimportant, but rather have chosen to study songwriting’s therapeutic outcomes generated through empirical studies or insight gained into therapy-participants’ issues of concern or experience via lyric analysis methods. Perhaps this avoidance was due to challenges in selecting suitable music analysis methods particularly in recent years where musicking (Small, 1998) and participation (Pavlicevic & Ansdell, 2004) were regarded as necessary components of music therapy practice. Such analysis processes are time consuming, and perhaps the question researchers pondered when deciding to focus solely on lyric analysis was what additional clinical knowledge would be gained from undertaking a music analysis, and whether the time invested in conducting an analysis was justifiable and warranted. Further, if the music was unimportant, why do we bother to create it? Why not facilitate the creation of a poem and terminate the process at that endpoint? Clearly practitioners recognized that the music has clinical relevance and purpose or therapeutic songwriting would not be practised so frequently (Baker et al., 2008). To broaden our understanding of the role of music in songwriting, this study sought to capture practitioners’ perspectives via in-depth interviews.

Functions of music in humanity

While a full review of the functions of music is considerably beyond the scope of this paper, it is important to highlight those perspectives that have influenced music therapy theory and practice, and the evolution of therapeutic uses of music. The first of these functions is emotional expression (Merriam, 1964). Two perspectives dominate the literature, the emotivists who understand music as eliciting emotional responses in the listener (expressionists) and cognitivists (referentialists) who argue that music represents an emotion without the listener actually experiencing that emotion (Evans & Schubert, 2008). Saarikallio and Erkkilä (2007) showed that music is used to regulate moods and emotions and Schwartz and Fouts (2003) indicate that music assists people to cope with life by tuning out. Music can stimulate aesthetic enjoyment (Merriam, 1964), where music is experienced and evaluated as being on the continuum of beauty, and experience of pleasure or displeasure (Brattico, Brattico, & Jacobson, 2009).

Music participation has a role in culture. Merriam (1964) proposed that music functions to enforce conformity to social norms, validate social institutions and religious rituals, contribute to the continuity and stability of culture, and contribute to the integration of society. North and Hargreaves (1999) established that music serves to explore, express and heighten identity while also communicating people’s personal values and beliefs to the world. Larson (1995) suggests that music provides possibilities for people to try out new ways of being, different personalities and identities.

The power of music is significant when shared between people, and one reason why the Community Music movement has been so successful. Music plays a role in bringing people together for a shared musical experience where they become part of something that is bigger than them (Ruud, 1997). In one example, Bailey and Davidson (2003) discovered that group choir experiences of homeless men led to emotional, social and cognitive benefits.

Merriam (1964) proposed that music functions as a form of communication, a medium by which people ‘can share emotions, intensions, and meanings’ (Hargreaves, MacDonald, & Miell, 2005). However, authors such as Cross (2005) suggest that when compared with language, music is imprecise, ambiguous, with the listeners unable to be confident of correctly interpreting the intended meaning or message. What Cross argues is that music has an advantage over language with this inherent ambiguity because when performed in or to groups, each individual can interpret its significance individually without risking the collective group experience.

The importance and function of music becomes more complex to discuss when we introduce lyrics into the equation. Benson (2001) suggests that composers combine words and music to provide two potential channels of communication with which to express the meaning or message. Here, the cognitive precision of the lyrics (verbal) complements the music (non-verbal) which aims to create a mood or emotional depth. This would be the case when composers deliberately compose music that follows the syllabic accent patterns of the language (Patel, 2007). However, this is not always the case in popular music where there is a deliberate misalignment of the verbal and the musical stress which ‘adds dynamic energy to the music’ (Patel, 2007, p. 156).

Therapeutic songwriting and the role of music

Therapeutic songwriting is an intervention that involves creating lyrics and music within the context of a therapeutic relationship to address a range of therapeutic needs (Baker & Wigram, 2005). Prior to 2000, almost all of the literature on songwriting was in the form of case vignettes or in-depth case studies. More recently, there has been a surge in qualitative and quantitative research studies, which have primarily focused on either analysing the lyrics or assessing non-musical outcomes. Lyric analyses garnered a deeper understanding of people who are living with traumatic brain injury (Baker, Kennelly, & Tamplin, 2005a, 2005b), HIV (Cordobés, 1997), mental illness (Grocke, Bloch, & Castle, 2009), eating disorders (McFerran, Baker, Patton, & Sawyer, 2006), and persons in oncology wards or palliative care (O’Callaghan, 1996; O’Callaghan, O’Brien, Magill, & Ballinger, 2009; Robb & Ebberts, 2003a). Through studying their lyrics, these songwriters’ experiences of illness, disadvantage, recovery, discovery, reflection, grief, or hope can be brought to the fore.

Recent studies have also sought to determine outcomes and benefits from the songwriting process using non-musical measures. These measures include quality of life (Grocke et al., 2009) and coping skills (Silverman, 2011) in people with severe mental illness, language function, orientation, and memory in people with dementia (Hong & Choi, 2011), emotional change in people who are chemically dependent (Jones, 2005), and depression and anxiety in children undergoing bone marrow transplantation (Robb & Ebberts, 2003b).

By comparison with lyrics, the role of music within the songwriting process has been afforded very little attention in the literature. Grocke and Castle (2012), O’Callaghan (1997), Turry (2007), and Viega (2013) suggest that the music contributes to the expression of emotions and affects mood. It can intensify the positive feelings or the negative feelings expressed in the lyrics (Grocke & Castle, 2012; Viega, 2013). Viega (2013) utilized an arts-based research methodology to analyse 11 songs created by adolescents who have had adverse childhood experiences and who identify with Hip Hop culture. Through his analysis of the aesthetic components – musical elements, compositional elements and techniques, and affective-intuitive qualities of the overall sound – Viega demonstrated how the music was integral to the expressions of ‘faith and love’, ‘protecting vulnerability’, and ‘abandonment’. For example, for songs of abandonment, the music supports the lyrical content via pitch correction and stereo panning techniques; it intensifies the songwriters’ feelings of detachment and disconnection from their emotional core (p. 259).

Grocke and Castle (2012) examined the musical and lyrical content of seven songs composed by people with enduring mental illness using Grocke’s (1999) Structural Model of Music Analysis. Typically the group-composed songs were simple in structure, repetitive, rhythmically consistent, limited in melodic range and predictable in harmonic structure. Most songs musically expressed positive feelings and, although not made explicit by the authors, seemed to align with the positive themes of the lyrics (Grocke & Castle, 2012). O’Callaghan suggests that through the music, therapy-participants in palliative care can release emotions ‘through the musical expression of intrapsychic issues’ (p. 36), with the musical elements validating the therapy-participants’ emotional expression. Turry (2007) reported that the vocal lines and vocal quality of improvised songs created by a woman with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma facilitated the expression of strong emotions. For example her ‘breathing, phrasing, volume, and pitch variance revealed emotional intensity’ (p. 298).

Music has the potential to stimulate moments of insight either for the therapist, the songwriter, or both. Comparing songwriting with poetry, O’Callaghan (1997) argued that music significantly contributes to experiencing moments of personal insights for her songwriters in palliative care. The collaboration with the music therapist enables therapy-participants to make choices not just in the verbal domain, but also in the musical. Through the music experience, therapy-participants reflect and discuss the feelings evoked, and gain insights into their feelings. Returning to Turry’s (2007) study, the analysis of songs afforded insight into the woman’s personality, changing emotional state, and psychological processes (p. 2). Although claiming that analysing words and music as separate entities is inappropriate, he does undertake an in-depth analysis including music, non-verbal sounds, lyrics, the relationship between the lyrics and music, and the therapist’s perspectives via multiple methods of listening. Musical components reflected tension (e.g. tempo, intervals) as well as comfort and stability (e.g. repetition) and he recognized when the quality of the woman’s voice and vocal lines were ‘emotional[ly] driven or more driven by the aesthetic considerations’ (p. 297).

Exploring adolescent identity via music manipulation and shaping is key to Viega’s (2013) work with adolescents. Here, the musical composition process and the overall product enable adolescents to explore new identities and discover resources within themselves. By manipulating, layering, and providing an aural space through panning and mixing techniques, adolescents can experiment, modify and refine the sound so it best reflects who they are or who they may want to be at that moment. Turry’s (2007) work also touches on identity when he discusses the role of register in song creations as manifestations of challenging/adult characters (lower register) or child-like characters (higher register).

Creating the music to accompany lyrics and/or recording the songs for wider distribution leads to feelings of achievement for the songwriters (Baker, 2013a), indicating music’s integral role in developing self-esteem. O’Callaghan (1997) suggests that by including music, her therapy-participants are able to utilize their creative abilities more than just reciting the lyrics alone and experience a sense of achievement. When people with enduring mental illness (Grocke, Bloch, & Castle, 2009) or women who have experienced childhood abuse (Day, Baker, & Darlington, 2009) create group songs, they experience a sense of achievement in being able to record and create a CD in a professional recording studio. As songs are creative works with artistic value in society, when those who view themselves as non-musicians are able to create such musical artefacts, pleasure and achievement are derived from the creation experience (Baker & MacDonald, 2013a).

Aasgaard (2002) believes that the song’s text (lyrics) is the most important component of songs created by children with cancer, particularly with respect to achievement and ownership. Using structured songwriting approaches, Aasgaard studied 19 songs composed by five children. He observed that children rarely mention the music but instead talked about the lyrics and their meaning. Aasgaard, however, does not suggest the music is superfluous to the process and does state that the song’s form and style are essential features when interpreting the meaning and expression of the children’s songs.

In summary, the scant literature focusing on a small number of clinical populations highlights that music is important in communicating the emotions of the songwriter, stimulating moments of insight into the self, fostering identity transformation, and enhancing self-esteem. Collectively, the aforementioned contributions to this largely neglected area of research are important and provide a platform for further exploration of the role music has in therapeutic songwriting. To expand the existing body of research, this study analysed the perspectives of expert music therapists working with diverse groups of therapy-participants about their songwriting practices. The specific research question – ‘What role does the music and the music creation process play in the therapeutic songwriting process?’ – formed the basis of this report.

Method

Grounded theory methods of data collection and analysis (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) were employed to address the research question. Given that invited MT-participants were reporting on their experiences with diverse populations, multiple perspectives emerging from the data were anticipated. It is important to note here that the data were drawn from extensive in-depth interviews covering a broad range of topics on songwriting. This report therefore only pertains to the question under investigation. This study was approved by the University Ethics Review Board approval number 2010001529 and MT-participants provided informed consent to participate.

MT-participants

Forty-five MT-participants (32 female, 13 male) from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Qatar, South Korea, United Kingdom, and United States were recruited via three methods: 1) Twenty-one music therapists (MTs) who are regarded as experts in songwriting were invited to take part in the study. 2) A posting on the American Music Therapy Association’s ListServ calling for volunteer MT-participants resulted in a further eight MT-participants volunteering. 3) Snowballing: 16 MT-participants were recruited via recommendations/referrals from other MT-participants. Forty-three MT-participants partook in a semi-structured interview (mean = 101 mins, SD = 27 mins) conducted between January 2011 and January 2012, either face-to-face or by Skype videoconferencing. Due to difficulties with technology and/or timezone differences, two MT-participants contributed data by answering the same interview questions in written form. Clinical experience ranged from 4 to 35 years (mean = 14, SD = 9). The populations serviced and the clinical orientation of the 45 MT-participants are reported in Table 1.

Table 1.

Populations serviced and clinical orientations of 45 study participants.

		Analytical	psychodynamic	humanistic	Music-centred	Behavioural/ CBT	Neurologic MT/ developmental	Community Music Therapy
1	Palliative care, Dementia, Older adults			X				X
2	Adolescents in detention; SUD; bereavement			X
3	Paediatric burns			X
4	Childhood trauma, dual diagnosis/SUD			X
5	Childhood trauma, ADHD, anxiety/conduct disorder	X		X	X
6	Acute psychiatry; SUD; intellectual disability			X
7	Aged care, paediatric hospital		X
8	Dual diagnosis, adult oncology, at risk youth	X		X
9	Adult psychiatry, SUD,					X
10	Children with special needs, ASD			X		X	X
11	Children and adolescents with ASD and/or physical disability				X
12	SUD, child and adolescent refugees, male prison			X
13	Child and adult psychiatry, ADHD, Aspergers		X
14	At risk youth			X		X
15	Children with ASD, developmental delays, special needs			X
16	Traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, stroke, Palliative Care			X
17	Traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury			X
18	Adult Palliative Care			X		X
19	Childhood trauma/abuse		X
20	SUD	X		X
21	HIV				X
22	Major depression, anxiety, SUD, dissociative					X
23	Women in prison, at risk youth			X				X
24	Bereaved adolescents, muscular atrophy			X
25	Adult Palliative Care/bereavement			X		X
26	Immigrants, paediatric oncology, children with ASD			X
27	SUD, adult psychiatry					X
28	At-risk youth	X		X	X			X
29	Children with disabilities/early intervention/ aged care			X
30	Personality Disorders/ Psychiatry	X
31	At-risk youth			X	X	X
32	Children with special needs						X
33	Children with ASD, at-risk youth	X		X
34	Adult psychiatry			X				X
35	Adolescents with ASD			X			X
36	Bereaved adolescents, adolescent oncology		X
37	Adult psychiatry, SUD, at-risk youth			X
38	Palliative Care/bereavement					X
39	Paediatric oncology/paediatric hospital		X
40	Hospice/Palliative Care			X			X
41	At-risk youth		X
42	Child/Adolescent refugees, Aged care, Psychiatry			X
43	Paediatric oncology							X
44	Mothers of children with disabilities		X	X	X
45	At-risk youth ADHD psychiatry ASD, SUD, refugees			X				X

Interviews and analysis procedure

In-depth interviews were conducted between January 2011 and January 2012 and the audio recordings transcribed by a professional transcription company. The questions posed were:

In your songwriting practice, how important is the music creation process when compared with the lyric creation process?

In what ways is it important or not important?

What do you see as the main function of the music in the songwriting process when compared with the lyric creation process?

Using these three questions as a starting point, I engaged the participants in a dialogue and added questions as needed to encourage elaboration and exploration of their perspectives in more depth. For example, in response to some participants’ responses I asked: ‘If you ran out of time and all you got were the lyrics, what would be missing from the songwriting process’, and ‘So what is important about providing people in the bereavement groups with a recording of their song? What does it give them?’

Analyses were informed by constructivist grounded theory methods in that knowledge was generated through an iterative inductive process, primarily driven by the data and influenced by my own reflexive practice (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). Throughout the process, I was aware of the double hermeneutic – that her interpretations were based on the participants’ responses to questions which were in turn influenced by their interpretations of my questions (Brogden, 2010). The analysis process aimed to construct themes that explain the importance of music creation in the therapeutic songwriting process.

MAXQDA software was used to manage the data analysis process. Data collection and analysis were performed simultaneously. The following steps guided the analysis:

an open coding process where the initial transcripts were read, and relevant sections of the text extracted and inductively labelled with concrete concept descriptors

codes were grouped together by searching for codes with words, phrases and sentences that had similar meaning, and labelling the groupings with more abstract labels

abstract codes with similar meanings were then sorted into groups and formed larger categories, which were also assigned abstract labels

steps 2 and 3 were repeated twice as the segments were re-read, and codes and became more connected with the data

one music therapist experienced in songwriting but not a study-participant reviewed the first iteration of findings. Feedback was incorporated into the revision and refinement of the findings

a second music therapist who is also a songwriting researcher and one of the study-participants reviewed the subsequent iteration and offered additional insights, which were incorporated into the final iteration.

Findings

Ninety-four segments of text were initially coded using 83 codes and broadly grouped under 53 categories. A second round of analysis resulted in further grouping and renaming of the categories to form broader themes and categories within those themes. This stage resulted in 13 broad themes and 37 categories. A third iteration led to the construction of five themes and 19 categories. Based on feedback of additional colleagues, a final stage of analysis led to further merging and renaming of themes, and refinement of the categories resulting in three themes and 18 categories (Table 2).

Table 2.

The role of music in the songwriting process.

THEME 1: MUSIC’S POWER TO CONVEY MESSAGES AND EMOTIONS
Code	Sample Participant Quote
Music can assist in decoding the lyrical material	There’s a million different ways that a lyric can be interpreted and there’s a danger in saying ‘well this lyric means this’, when actually that’s only part of it. The music may tell a different story. (Pt#28)
Music can bring into sharper focus the emotional expressions of the lyrics	Whether it’s something basic like minor versus major – you can really use the music to refine the kind of moods of the different sections of the song, so it can just really, again, heighten and clarify their feelings, or put them into sharper focus. (Pt#38)
Music communicates the client-participants’ inner world	If the words are the concrete outward representation of what is going on, the music is kind of the inner workings maybe. (Pt#14)
Music adds emotional backing to the lyrics	The role of the music to me is to give emotional life to the lyrics. To give emotion and feeling a depth, that words cannot by themselves. (Pt#36)
Music heightens the climax and resolution of lyrics	We wrote this song, it was called ‘Release Me’, and I had to sing it for her. She made me literally yell ‘release me’ when we were recording it, really high-pitched and she played the recording back and she said ‘that’s it, I can go now’… it [the music] just kind of crescendoed to this screaming thing at the end… (Pt#16)
Music can compensate for limitations in language expression	Sometimes their words do not say very much, because they don’t have sufficient language abilities. But the quality of the music tells us what they feel about the emotions. (Pt#32)
Music expresses and holds the feelings	I think sometimes it’s simply like the container for the words, and I think other times it’s the instigator for what happens, and other times it expresses the feelings that the words don’t show. (Pt#26)
THEME 2: MUSIC HAS A CLINICAL PURPOSE
Creating music fosters experiences of achievement and self-esteem	You know, people see it as a valuable package that can be shared and that has higher meaning … So it’s just words versus, hey, I have this thing that I created and that I helped …It’s a piece of art. It’s got that higher creative aesthetic that the society attributes to it. (Pt#40)
Creating music strengthens ownership of and connection with the material	It’s important [creating the music] in terms of how much it becomes their song or how much they are going to take from that process … I wonder if I just came up with the music and said ‘this is how we are going to sing your words’, would they connect with it as much? I don’t think that they would … I think it’s creating that ownership. (Pt#2)
Music can overcome blocks in the therapy process	Because if you get stuck in the dialogue, you’re able to play your way out of it. So I play it and I sing it and that always helps us to get unstuck. (Pt#27)
Music stimulates emotional responses that trigger further reflections and explorations	So when the music’s added underneath, it provides a new experience with the meaning of the words and the content on the page deepen some things that they hadn’t really thought about before. (Pt#14)
Code	Sample Participant Quote
Creating music increases engagement and investment in the process	The music provides structure and space and gives people that extra motivation to give a little bit more or to put themselves out there. (Pt#6)
Creating music offers relief from the intensity of lyric creation and lifts mood	The first verse is often difficult not just to get into the rhythm of writing but often deals with heavy stuff – so shifting the dynamics from all those heavy words to music would just give it a rest or lift the mood. (Pt#22)
Music brings intimacy to the group songwriting experience	I think being in that same musical space together – it brings you in entirely, it can be so much more than just reciting lyrics … I think it really brings them together and it can be loud. (Pt#2)
THEME 3: MUSIC AND INDIVIDUAL EXPRESSION
Music (genre) can connect people to their sociocultural identity	It’s [the music] significant because it’s connecting them to a particular artist even or a particular style of music that has more strong cultural implications like rap music or whatever it is … So they may be a little bit more connected to their identity. (Pt#37)
Music enables people to express and try out new identities	Hip-hop provides natural structures – it gives you a rhythm to ground that exploration, it gives you a soundscape, an atmosphere to enhance the character you want to be in the moment. (Pt#28)
Music that represents a person’s musical identity increases its meaning and authenticity	What’s important in hospice is that it’s [the music] authentic to the person’s style and voice. … I have to make it stylistically sound like their music … (Pt#40)
Music enables a socially valued means of sharing of self with significant others	My understanding with working with adolescents is if I’m going to create a song, I want other people to hear this song. I’m going to take it, I’m going to play it for other people. (Pt#28)

Theme 1: Music’s power to convey messages and emotions

When lyrics are superimposed over a musical structure, the music can increase understanding of the song’s narrative, the lyrics’ semiotic meaning, the significance of the lyrics, or the feelings embedded in the lyrics. Songs created by therapy-participants may contain metaphors, ambiguous or vague lyrics making deciphering, decoding, and interpreting meaning challenging for audiences. Musical components (e.g. melody, tempo, harmony) contribute to conveying meaning when the message may be otherwise unclear. Therapy-participants may initially feel that their lyrics are meaningless or that the meaning is hidden until the music is added and they are transformed, suddenly have relevance, and allow their voices to emerge.

Therapy-participants’ songs often contain certain lyrics that have more importance and significance than others, which they typically try to ‘bring into sharper focus’ (Pt#38). Through the careful manipulation of the various musical components, important words within a lyric are musically brought to the fore, drawing a listener’s attention to certain lyrics. Similarly, music can establish a mood or atmosphere that enhances the emotional expression of the lyrics. For example, the melodic line served to create the emphasis needed to interpret the emotional strength of a lyric expressed by a therapy-participant with sickle cell disease. When the lyric ‘believe in yourself, believe in your dream, believe in what you mean to me’ was set to music, the use of rhythm and pitch in the melodic line ‘created a space for the listener to catch up and to really grab on it and to be impacted’ (Pt#21) (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

‘Believe in yourself’ musical sample.

Music functions as the expression of the inner, emotional world of the therapy-participants. The concreteness of the words communicates the story or issue and the music more fully expresses how the person feels about that issue, its degree of personal significance. Further, music can communicate the inner conflict and mixed feelings.

Because music is experienced moment by moment, it has a unique ability to capture the feelings of tension and resolution expressed in the lyrics through the careful construction of musical elements including harmonic progressions, melodic contours, and rhythm and tempo features. Music can create an experience that brings lyrics to life, by giving them direction, substance, depth and height; music adds an emotional backing to the lyrics.

In circumstances where language abilities are inadequate and lyrics are unable to fully represent or express the therapy-participants’ feelings, music can fill the gap of missing information needed to convey the complete message. Here the listener and the songwriter are able to express and interpret the meaning and significance of the song when the therapy-participant is unable to fully express using lyrics only.

Music is able to express, illuminate, clarify, and hold the therapy-participants’ feelings. This may be an important experience if they need to feel safe and supported, or to sit with the feeling in order to experience a cathartic effect. Choosing the right song to use in song parody is therefore critical if it is to ‘hold’ the therapy-participants emotionally. If the chosen song expresses and ‘holds’ the intended emotion, then the song parody exercise may have a strong and positive therapeutic outcome.

Theme 2: Creating music bolsters the therapeutic process and outcomes

Creating a song implies shaping ideas and experiences into lyrics and then pairing them with music, a process that has a clear beginning and end. The experience of ‘completing’ a task may be unfamiliar for therapy-participants, so creating a finished product leads to a feeling of achievement. Because society holds songwriting in high regard, creating a song has significantly greater prestige than writing a poem. There is a tendency for therapy-participants to be more motivated, engaged, invested in and open to put ‘themselves’ into the therapy process when they know they will create a song versus creating a poem. Creating music offers possibilities for therapy-participants to have some light relief from the intensity of verbal discussions integral to the lyric creation process. As therapy-participants explore feelings or experiences, strong responses such as internal tension, anger or sadness may be evoked. The music offers some time-out and serves to lighten the mood or atmosphere of the therapy room.

Because music conjures up emotions, images, memories and associations, it can stimulate lyric creation by overcoming blocks in the process. Creating music has the effect of stimulating emotional responses that deepen reflections on the issues expressed in their lyrics. The music ‘stirs the person and speaks to the person’ (Pt#14). Sometimes this leads therapy-participants to delete sections or may stimulate a movement in a different direction.

When therapy-participants are involved in creating music it strengthens their sense of ownership of the work, what the song expresses, its content, its artistic qualities, and their connection with the process and product. The sense of ownership also relates to therapy-participants’ experiences of exercising control over the end point for their song.

The musical performance of the song is important in bringing intimacy into the group songwriting experience. When a group join together and sing their song creation, feelings of intimacy and mutual respect may be heightened. This same experience would not occur without the musical component.

Theme 3: Music and individual expression

Creating music that matched the musical styles of therapy-participants’ sociocultural group was a way for them to connect with their sociocultural identity. Creating the right musical style and conveying that musically can take precedence over musical beauty, which is, after all, a subjective concept. Further, the musical genre used in creating a song connects therapy-participants to their identity and in doing so they derive more meaning from the process and the product.

As people create their own music, their ‘sound’ and the creation process enable them the freedom to be themselves. If the songs they create represent therapy-participants’ identities or voices, the songs’ meaning and authenticity are strengthened. In addition, exploring different music genres during the songwriting process allows adolescents to ‘try out’ different identities or characters they may want to emulate at that moment in time.

Songwriters are highly regarded artists in Western society, so when therapy-participants create music to accompany their lyrics there is a high probability that they will want to share it with others. Music enables a socially valued means of sharing the self with significant others. Given this, the quality of the music and/or the recording is important.

Discussion

The findings suggest that the musical component of the songwriting process and product offers something uniquely important within a therapeutic context. When looking at these themes and categories collectively, the role of music can be viewed as having three layers of influence (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Music conveys messages and emotions.

Starting from the inner layer, the music is critical in facilitating self-expression in the songwriter. This is where the transformative power of the music influences the person’s self-expression where they are mostly driven to create a song that fulfils their own need/s. The use of music to reinforce or explore a sense of self is central whether or not they wish to share that with others (Baker, 2013a, 2013b). This is in contrast to the professional songwriter where a need to create a song which will be aesthetically appreciated by others and lead to royalties takes precedence over self-expression (with the balance between self-expression and creating a ‘hit’ song not always being mutually exclusive). Indeed the song creations of many therapy-participants may not be aesthetically beautiful to anyone but those that created them. Mapping this out further (Figure 3), it could be assumed that self-expression within the music is not something completely irrelevant for the professional songwriter as many artists view their ‘sound’ as reflective of their culture and identity (Zollo, 2003) and expect that music listeners who identify with that same culture will appreciate their music and purchase it. At the same time, these artists may not be utilizing the songwriting process purely to work through their issues (as would be the case in a therapy context). In a study by Baker and MacDonald (2013a), non-musician retirees and university students created songs that were personal expressions of past and present contexts. Here, the study-participants created songs that were not intentionally created to work through personal issues that hampered their quality of life. However, the participants did experience self-growth and gained insight from the songwriting experience. What is proposed here is that the degree of emphasis on music for self-expression versus music for the enjoyment of others may be dependent on their reasons for creating it (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

The purpose of the music with different types of songwriters.

Moving to the second layer of the model (Figure 2), the music has a clinical purpose, guiding the session and the songwriter’s involvement in the song creation to ensure that the self-expression of the inner layer can happen. Music plays the role of overcoming blocks and stimulating new reflections and explorations. It provides relief from intensive periods of therapeutic processing, a form of mood regulation (Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007) and coping by tuning out (Schwartz & Fouts, 2003) from the cognitive aspects of the songwriting process. By engaging in the creation of the music, the songwriter is more engaged and invested in the process leading to stronger ownership and connection with the song, and potentially a more authentic self-expression. Previous research indicates that strong ownership of song creations by non-musicians is connected to a song’s degree of meaning, its expression of identity, and experiences of flow (Baker & MacDonald, 2013b).

Music was found to bolster the therapeutic process and outcomes by fostering a sense of achievement, and increasing personal engagement with and investment in the process. Music was important in offering relief from intensely emotional lyric creation experiences. It assisted the therapeutic process by triggering reflections and overcoming blocks in the process, a point supporting the ideas of Viega (2013) and Aasgaard (2002). Finally, participants who write their own music experience more ownership than those who create song parodies, highlighting more explicitly the importance of music in the process.

The outer layer of the model (Figure 2) refers to music’s role in conveying meaning and expressing emotions. Listeners utilize music’s power to express and convey messages to understand the meaning and intensity of emotions expressed in the lyrics and the inner world of the songwriter. Within the clinical setting, the songwriters are people whose language skills may be less sophisticated than the professional songwriter, so one cannot rely on the lyrics to interpret the meaning. The relevance to music education is apparent here; classroom teachers may be working with students of different ages and with different degrees of language skills. The music therefore can support the full expression of the songwriter’s emotions or enhance the listener’s understanding of the song’s narrative to compensate for the language limitations of the songwriter.

Study participants highlighted that music is essential in enhancing the emotion expressed in the lyrics. It heightens the tension and resolution of issues expressed and more generally adds an emotional backing to the lyrics. MT-participants’ discussions of melodic shape and the use of tonality imply a referentialist perspective. In contrast, some MT-participants’ views about music holding feelings aligns more with the expressionist views that therapy-participants experience those emotions as the music is played (Evans & Schubert, 2008). The question remains, however, as to how effective original song creations are in representing or expressing an emotion given that they are created by non-musician therapy-participants whose musical skills and time available to craft highly expressive music may be limited. This raises the question as to how one can compare perspectives between the professional musician and the therapy-participant who presents with a range of personal and social challenges.

These findings suggest that examining the music created is an important part of the songwriting process and should be studied in conjunction with lyrics and therapeutic outcomes (Turry, 2007; Viega, 2013). There is a risk that if clinicians and researchers rely solely on lyrics and outcome measures, critical aspects of the participants’ inner worlds will be misinterpreted or overlooked, leading to an inaccurate assessment of their therapeutic process and outcomes. This raises the question as to whether music should be analysed simultaneously with the lyrics, before the lyrics or after the lyrics. In improvised songs created within a music-centred approach (Turry, 2007; Viega, 2013), it might be logical to analyse the two simultaneously, but perhaps not for circumstances where either the music or the lyrics were created first. For example, if lyrics were created first, it is conceivable that the music created was influenced by the lyrics. Would it therefore be appropriate to analyse the lyrics first because they were created first?

While this study highlights the importance of music from the perspectives of music therapy practitioners, one study limitation is that therapy-participants’ voices are missing. Findings may be different but equally insightful if their perspectives were included in the analysis. One interview question, which should have been asked, is whether each study participant typically practised within a music in therapy model or a music as therapy model. Participants’ orientation, however, was determined and those practising in a music-centred model are likely to be identifying more with the music as therapy model. These study participants may have different perspectives as to the role that music plays in the songwriting process than those practising in other models. This is worthy of further investigation.

Conclusion

In conclusion, music plays an important role in therapeutic songwriting in conveying meaning, enhancing the emotional dimension of the lyrics, affecting identity building, building connections with others, and furthering the therapeutic process and outcomes for therapy-participants. To date, clinicians have focused their attention on lyric analyses with no consensus emerging as to what music analysis methods are most reliable or rigorous (Bonde, 2005). The results of this study demonstrate that music is important in generating information about the songwriters’ inner worlds and their intended meanings. Therefore, it is critical that the music is analysed in detail and that time-efficient methods of doing so are developed. Further, this study raises important questions regarding the role of self-expression in the songwriting process and how this may differ depending upon whether the songwriter is a therapy participant, a non-musician, an amateur songwriter, or a professional songwriter. This study indicates that music as a tool for working through a personal crisis or self-growth is the primary aim of therapeutic songwriting with music’s creation to enhance or intensify the experience being more important than creating an aesthetically pleasing product for enjoyment by others. This is in contrast to the professional songwriter who may gain benefit from the opportunity to self-express through music but whose primary aim is to create a song that will be enjoyed and purchased by others.

Footnotes

Funding

This research was funded by an Australia Research Council Future Fellowship (grant no. FT100100022).

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