British Association for Music Therapy - Music Therapy Week 2015 (June 22-28th) - Hong Kong Practit

I feel like i should do a bit of contribution to this special week too!

For those who are unaware of the development of music therapy field in Hong Kong, I would like to just briefly talk about it so you have a little bit of background knowledge!

Although music therapy is not very established in the health care system (JUST YET!!! ), I would like to say there are many opportunites if you are up for the challenge to apply for funding and lobbying!

There are more and more awareness from media coverage. People are interested in understanding how it works and what are the pathways to become a registered music therapst etc. There are more organisations looking into purchasing out-reach services. These organisations include elderly care, hospice services, special schools etc.

So back to the sharing ...

For those who have been following some of my work knows that I have been working at the Queen Mary Hospital Cancer Care amongst the palliaitive care unit, a few organisations and at my private clinic.

​​​​It has been very exciting few week for me as there's several things happening...

1) I will be starting to work in a WARD SETTING as suppose to activity r​​oom very soon. This means that I will be seeing patients who are in more critical condition. My role will be ​​using music therapy as a stre​​ss relief tool for the patients as well as their family member.

2) I will be starting a few individual and group work with mental health patients in an organisation. This is very exciting as this client group has always interest me a lot.

3) I have been hearing very positive comments from a parent of a 4 year -old boy with developemental delay. He has been seeing me privately for almost 40 sessions now and that I can see tremendous improvements from him in many areas - cognitive, behavioural, emotional and musicality! I am guessing it's time to discharge him real soon! I am gonna miss this little boy!!!

Personal Development

I have been praciting for 2 years now in Hong Kong. I have learnt so much about improvising in our mother tongue- cantonese. Cantonese is a very awkward langague with many tones. Hence it is not easy to accompany the improvised lyrics. The other characterisitcs of cantonese is that it can be very rhythmic.

Because cantonese is so musical already, the lyrics actually predicts the melody. and makes the harmony playing preditable.

Another characteristic of the cantonese langague is that it is very rhythmic ! By grouping vocabularies and words together, repeat it, phrasing it differently that makes the improvisation very interesting!

I think I can start writing a few articles on music therapy and song writing in cantonese !

So I guess this is it for now! If you have any questions, please do not hesisate to ask me!

Carol Cheung

carol@musicforlifehk.com

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