Ralph's Blog

why?

ralphyb — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 23:54:14 +0000

Why on earth do people go onto the jeremy kyle show? Don’t they realise they always come out of it looking like idiots?

wow

ralphyb — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 23:07:28 +0000

It’s been a busy month, not been on the blog for AGES!

But wow, I’ve come back to it.

Thoughts on playfulness

ralphyb — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:25:46 +0000

According to Smith, Cowie and Blades (Understanding Children’s Development, 3rd edition, 1999, Blackwell Publishers) there are two approaches to characterizing children’s play, the functional, and structural approach. Talking about how play functions might involve mentioning it’s general ‘activeness’, either physically or mentally, and how it can easily be suppressed by other emotions such as hunger, fear, anxiety, curiosity and fatigue. Play is a function ad infinitum, without external goals. If an external goal is present (such as a need to eat, and seek comfort) then the play will cease (chpt 6). A structural approach to play could describe how play is made up entirely of familiar behaviours such as running and manipulating objects, and then continue to ask how the behaviours are structured, i.e. by being repeated, fragmented, exaggerated, or re-ordered. The example in the book is of a child running down a hill, which by itself is not necessarily playing, but, if the child ran up the hill and repeated it, that might be described as playing.

Smith (et al) also talk about the ‘four fold sequence of play’ :

1) Functional play (practice play), which includes mouthing objects, banging them against other objects and pushing objects.

2) Constructive play, this could involve lego/etc. to assemble basic constructions.

3) Dramatic play, imaginary play such as putting a doll to sleep, or being a wizard.

4) Games with rules.

Now, how does this relate to music therapy?

The functional approach to describing play seems to relate to music therapy with ease, by thinking of ‘playing’ rather than ‘play’ we can discuss activeness and participation and perhaps also think about the things that suppress the desire to play in a music therapy session. And does playing in a music therapy session function without external goals? Does playing a musical instrument by itself come without external goals?

What about the structural approach, is playing a musical instrument made up of familiar behaviours? Is it simply manipulating objects? How do repetition, fragmentation, exaggeration and re-ordering align with this?

Is there a four fold sequence of playing within a music therapy session?

1) Functional playing (practice playing), in sessions I’ve seen it’s common for children in sessions to mouth objects, banging them against other objects and pushing them.

What would the others be?

2) Constructive playing.

3) Dramatic playing.

4) Playing with rules.

Michael Jackson

ralphyb — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:42:51 +0000

Huh? It seems like MJ is dead, ALTHOUGH, wouldn’t it be an incredible start to a comeback if he wasn’t actually dead, and he came back for the O2 gigs… No, but really he’s dead.

I think I’m gonna miss the showmanship, and the music will last longer than any stories of his eccentricities.

The Tubax

ralphyb — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:56:08 +0000

Council Tax

ralphyb — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:10:26 +0000

Fantastic. I visited the council offices today to tell them I was a student and now our house has 25% less council tax to pay.

Visited the library too, payed my fine and took out some books. The next essay I have to do for my course is on ‘Perspectives on Health, Illness, Disability and Wellbeing’ (which the spellchecker doesn’t recognise, hmmm), it’s a fairly open-plan essay so I’m going to write about playfulness and how it is a) related to wellbeing and b) encouraged/developed in music therapy. The library had most of the texts I’ll need for this essay in the child development section including; Winnicott, Playing and Reality; Axline, Play Therapy; Hellendoorn et al (ed), Play and Intervention.

ralphyb — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:49:34 +0000

http://www.myspace.com/chipmcneillsax

Some great original compositions and solos on this myspace page.

I studied music at the university of Illinois for a year and met the guy. A very cool bloke.

sax transcriptions

ralphyb — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:29:51 +0000

http://www.charlesmcneal.com/transcriptions/trans.asp?SelectField=ALL

Loads of saxophone transcriptions in PDF format, fab website.

ralphyb — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:50:06 +0000

“Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.” – Charlie Parker

What a player, what a quote.

learning slowly how to use this blog

ralphyb — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:38:55 +0000