Singing and discussion is a typical music therapy method that can be used for adolescent populations as well as for the elderly. The music stimulates clients’ responses to the lyric parts. Sometimes the music itself encourages the expression of thoughts and feelings associated with the songs.
Typical procedures of this method are as follows: The therapist usually opens the session by singing songs familiar to the clients. After singing several songs, the therapist leads a discussion related to the themes of the songs.
Once each client has expressed and discussed his or her own thoughts, feelings, and ideas, the therapist improvises a song with the words from the clients.
This can be a very positive conclusion to the session (in fact, the therapist makes a song to be positive) so that each client might carry over his or her feelings and emotions in productive ways.