Living in Illinois (or anywhere in the midwest) often means coping with unpredictable weather: the kind of weather where one day it is 52 degrees and sunny and the next we have an ice or snowstorm leaving the roads basically impassible. Over a foot of snow is usually a pretty good sign to cancel lessons/sessions, but what about those times where the weather isn’t awful, but it isn’t great? What then? I have a couple ways to cope with situations like these: 1. Let the Family Choose – When in doubt, you can contact them to see what they are comfortable with. If you can make it to work but don’t know if families what to make the trek or go out in the -10 weather, simply ask them what they want to do. I find that families sometimes appreciate a phone call or text message to check-in when these circumstances arise. 2. Listen to Your Gut – Do you feel safe on the roads? Are you uncomfortable going to work in those weather conditions? If you don’t feel Read More
Tag: tips
The Traveling Music Therapist – 12 Apps I LOVE
Whether I am on the road, in my office, or with clients, I almost always have a device with tons of apps I like to use for a variety of purposes. The following apps I’m going to talk about are apps for business and travel. Enjoy! 1. Triplog – mileage tracker. I loved this app when I started using it because I could press “start trip” and it would use GPS to track my miles. However, I have poor GPS signal in several of the rural towns I go to so I have taken to manually inputing my miles. This is a great apps for people in larger cities or areas with great signal strength 2. iCal – I have my google calendar synched with my iCal so that all my events pop up and sometimes even have alarms 3. Chase – I do not live near my bank and am always on the go so I use my Chase app ALL the time 4. Maps – I have given up trying to use my Tom Tom for the Read More
The Traveling Music Therapist: What’s in the Car
Every week, the amount of “stuff” I have in my car simply grows and grows, and it eventually needs to be cleaned out (usually every Friday… or so). Some things stay (and always will) while others (like Starbuck cups) get thrown out. Below is a fairly inclusive list of what you may find in my car any given week. Get Ready… it’s pretty awesome. Water bottles (empty and full) Starbucks cups Lunch Wrappers First Aid Kit (2 actually) GPS Phone Charger Pens and Pencils Paper Mileage Log Hand Sanitizer (for after EVERY session) Headband, Hair Ties, & Bobby Pins Umbrella A Case of Water Assorted Instruments Phone iPod Sanitizing Wipes Ice Scraper Random CDs Mints/Gum Car Cleaning Supplies Art Supplies AND MORE What things do you keep in your car as a Traveling MT? Read More
Spontaneous Songwriting – Video Blog
To wrap up 2 weeks of songwriting resources, I put together a video blog with a couple tips, tricks, and examples. I hope you enjoy these ideas and you can use them in your sessions! Read More