Music Technology in Therapeutic and Health Settings

Wendy Magee seems appropriately hesitant in her preface to this text, given the rapidly changing landscape of technology in current music therapy practice. She notes the difficulty in writing a book about technology that might be out of date by publication. Besides being the leader in music therapy technology research and publishing over the past decade, she has also assembled an expert group of authors to contribute, including Robert Krout, an early leader in writing about technology in music therapy. Given the inherent challenges of writing about technology, Magee and her coauthors manage this admirably by providing “big picture” ideas for readers to apply to their own clinical practice, accounting for the broad range of relationships clinicians have with technology. Part 1 focuses on current trends in technology application in therapeutic settings. Although technology as a broad force has become integrated into our society, Hadley and colleagues provide a needed overview and discuss how characteristics such as age, sex, years of experience, and country of practice largely influence which music therapists tend to use these tools in practice. Additionally, similar demographics affect the clinical populations tending to interact with technology during music therapy sessions. This raises many important questions about why these differences exist, and what can be done to ensure a more distributed use of technology for both clinicians and educators.