A rewarding career in music therapy

Prior to Guildhall, Heather earned a first-class honours degree in Vocal and Opera Studies from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. She has worked as a freelance opera singer and sang as an oratorio soloist. Heather also started and runs an outreach opera company called Flat Pack Music.

A brand new career as a music therapist

“MHA’s motto is 'Live Later Life Well' – and that rings so true for me. Offering a service that supports these wonderful people in the final years of their lives. The charity has an award winning music therapy service which operates with Neuropsychiatric symptoms in mind – it is so exciting to be working with a pioneering music therapy team with so much research and evidence based practise happening.

MHA have a music therapist in all of their care homes where there are residents living with dementia. I am based at four of them around Manchester and under normal circumstances I would be spending a day a week at each home providing one-to-one music therapy and group sessions. Due to Covid restrictions I have been seeing five clients on a one-to-one basis each day at the same home and holding a group therapy session on each suite. I really look forward to going to work every day and come home with a huge smile knowing that I am doing my dream job.”

Putting Guildhall training into practice

“The piano skills and harmony knowledge I learnt at Guildhall on the MA have already been hugely beneficial. Most of my work at the moment is using known songs (Covid has meant we are unable to use shared percussion instruments). A lot of the repertoire we sing are war-time songs and pieces from musicals so luckily my love for this style of music has come in very handy. I know a lot about good vocal technique so I can comfortably use my voice all day carefully without it becoming tired. The course’s psychodynamic approach has been helpful so far as I am able to think about the relationship within the room as well as the cognitive abilities of the residents.”

Choosing a music therapy course

“I have always loved singing and performing. Performing for a live audience always gave me such a thrill – especially seeing the audience’s reaction to music. I was unwell for a long period of time and during this time I found that music kept me going. I began to research other career paths that meant I would be able to help people who were unwell. I had been teaching a young girl who was living with learning difficulties and her mother suggested music therapy. I instantly began researching music therapy and it seemed a perfect fit for me – being able to help people using music.

The course at Guildhall is very diverse with lots of musical input as well as theory and psychology. You have a wonderful opportunity of having one-to-one instrument lessons in both your first and second study – no other course offers that. The tutors are from different backgrounds so I felt I would gain input from different music therapy models. I would have called myself a non-pianist before I started and Guildhall seemed welcoming to me as such. I was also really interested in the psychodynamic way of working and wanted to train somewhere where I could learn more about this and see if it was a way I wanted to practise.

You also have three placements at different settings over the two years so you get a really varied experience working with different client groups.”

Practical work-experience to boost skills

“In first year I spent two terms working in a school for children with Special Educational Needs – I worked with non-verbal primary school children living with autism. In the final term of my first year I went to a main stream primary school where I ran a transition group with some year 6 children where we focused on the move to secondary school.

In second year I worked in three different care homes providing music therapy for older adults living with dementia and Parkinson’s disease. I was very anxious as I had never thought I would work with this client group, however, Ann Sloboda (Guildhall programme leader) is very good at placing people based on their personality and musical skill and I absolutely loved this placement from day one. I very quickly realised that this was the client group I wanted to work with.”

The rewards and the challenges of postgraduate training

“I had been very worried about my harmony knowledge and skills as well as my piano playing. There is a module in first year called keyboard skills where we not only looked at keyboard skills but also learnt about harmony. I found this class so challenging and every week I thought I was struggling – we would improvise with harmonic goals in mind and think about modes (something I had never done before). The exam at the end of this module also seemed impossible when I first started. However throughout the year I began to notice my musicianship skills improve.

I am now able to do things that I wouldn’t have dreamed of being able to do at the start of the course – like transpose to fit the key that a client is singing in, ending improvisations with cadences, improvising songs and accompanying at the piano. I am always surprised by my musical ability now – my musical ear has improved so much and I really didn’t think that would ever be possible.”

Looking to the future

“Music therapy seems to grow all the time and I would like to help raise awareness of its benefits in the mainstream media. This is something that is starting to happen with TV programmes like Our Dementia Choir which is hugely exciting. After seeing how wonderful and beneficial it can be I want to continue to support this.”

Applications for our MA Music Therapy programme for 2021 close on 1 October 2020. Apply now.