Felicity Baker qualified as a music therapist at the University of Melbourne in 1992. She has since completed a research Masters (1999, Melbourne University) and a PhD (2004, Aalborg University). She has many years of experience providing music therapy programmes for people with traumatic brain injury and is widely published in this area. She is currently head of the music therapy training programme at the University of Queensland, Australia, and editorial board member of the Nordic Journal of Music Therapy. Tony Wigram holds the Chair and is Head of PhD studies in Music Therapy at the Institute for Music and Music Therapy at the University of Aalborg, Denmark. In addition to his teaching, he is Head Music Therapist at Harper House Children's Service (Hertfordshire, England) and Research Advisor to the Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Trust. He is a Research Associate at the University of Melbourne, Visiting Professor at Anglia Polytechnic University, and Adjunct Professor on music therapy courses in Belgium, Italy and Spain. He has published extensively in his specialised areas of diagnosis and assessment, vibroacoustic therapy, Rett syndrome, applied improvisation skills and music therapy education.
Practically oriented, instructive, inclusive and forthright, this book focuses on techniques for writing songs with clients and is geared chiefly toward music therapy clinicians, students and educators. This methods book attempts to explore and emphasize the value of songwriting within a therapeutic context and, ultimately, to define the methods and techniques used, both for teaching purposes and for the analysis and explanation of clinical processes and outcomes. This welcome effort to fully recognize the inherent value of songwriting and to systematically standardize its uses in the field was long overdue, as music therapists have long incorporated songwriting in their clinical repertoire of methods. Reading this book undoubtedly strengthens one's confidence in the procedure of songwriting with the client and in its overall effectiveness as a method of facilitating therapy. As a music therapist who, like so many others in this field, integrates songwriting in her clinical work, I feel that I derived much theoretical and practical information from Songwriting. As a methods book, I found it to be efficient, informative and interesting both to the student and to the practicing music therapist, with a refreshing variety of techniques that may enrich the songwriting repertoire of even the most experienced clinician. -- Nordic Journal of Music Therapy I considered dipping in and out of chapters but ended up reading from cover to cover. I found it interesting and intriguing to progress through the diversity of therapists' orientations, practices and contexts, wondering how it would all come together in the end. There are inspiring ideas and moving case examples expressed in many of the chapters. -- British Journal of Music Therapy