Music-making after a brain injury

Aiden Post with a one-handed saxophone after acquiring a brain injury

March marks Brain Injury Awareness Month, a campaign to raise awareness of the impact of brain injuries caused by sports, accidents and long-term disabilities.
 
For anyone who has lost the use of a limb, it can be a challenging and upsetting time with a loss of those activities that can usually be counted upon to lift mood. For some people, this might be sport. For others, creative pastimes like playing a musical instrument. Musicians often see music as a key part of their identity. When that’s taken away, it can create a loss of confidence, and musicians with adaptive needs often report a profound sense of grief. A slow but sure return to music-making brings the emotional benefits of reducing stress hormones and increasing dopamine levels but also supports social reconnection when playing in a group.
 
Music-making brings significant benefits for a patient’s physical recovery too. It is one of very few activities that activate the whole of the brain at the same time, including the Motor cortex (for movement); Auditory cortex (hearing); Visual cortex (reading music); Cerebellum (coordination); Prefrontal cortex (planning & attention); and Limbic system (emotion).
 
The road to recovery is often, however, a long one.
 
We’ve listed some of the ways music-making can help address the challenges associated with a brain injury:
 

• Loss of control and coordination

Simple finger tapping and clapping exercises can help both with control and with rhythm. Timing can be improved by using a Metronome timing drill.
 

• Slower processing of information

Reading music or listening to the instruction of a music teacher can take longer to process so slow tempos may help, with high repetition of steady beats to support improvement of memory retention.
 

• Fatigue

Sessions of short periods of time (of no more than 20 minutes) with regular rest breaks are recommended.
 

• Lack of strength

Musical instruments that have been adapted for one-handed playing, enabling equipment such as straps, stringed instrument bow holders, or stands that will take the weight of heavier instruments such as trombones are all options for adapted playing.
 
Digital instruments are also available which require a lighter action compared to a traditional musical instrument such as the Artiphon Instrument 1 (an entry level solution that looks like the neck of a guitar but can create a variety of sounds), the LinnStrument (that can be played through any midi software); and Chapman Stick (which plays like a guitar).
 
The OHMI Instrument Hire Scheme offers over 400 different instruments and pieces of enabling equipment for musicians with adaptive needs and, for musicians who are unsure about which adapted instrument or enabling equipment might be best suited to their needs, OHMI Connect is a free online resource to help inform their decisions.
 

• Being patient but committed

"Progress may not be immediate but waiting will only allow the healing to go by" are the words of advice from Illinois saxophonist, Aiden Post who suffered a traumatic brain injury as a result of a road traffic accident. One-handed clarinet player Tina Holmes-Davis in Georgia, shares the sentiment of embracing music-making as it is now, and not what it was: “My playing is not always perfect, but I can do it. My disability becomes invisible when I have the clarinet with me, and I'm simply a player in the clarinet choir like any other!”
 
Have a question about your return to music-making after a brain injury? Feel free to get in touch with the team at OHMI.