Music therapy is an evidence-based clinical use of musical interventions to improve clients’ quality of life. Music therapists use music and its many facets— physical, emotional, mental, social, aesthetic, and spiritual— to help clients improve their health in cognitive, motor, emotional, communicative, social, sensory, and educational domains by using both active and receptive music experiences. These experiences include improvisation, re-creation, composition, receptive methods, and discussion of music.
Some common music therapy practices include developmental work (communication, motor skills, etc.) with individuals with special needs, songwriting and listening in reminiscence, orientation work with the elderly, processing and relaxation work, and rhythmic entrainment for physical rehabilitation in stroke victims. Music therapy is used in some medical hospitals, cancer centers, schools, alcohol and drug recovery programs, psychiatric hospitals, and correctional facilities.
There is a wide qualitative and quantitative research literature base for music therapy. Music therapy is distinctive from Musopathy, which relies on a more generic and non-cultural approach based on neural, physical, and other responses to the fundamental aspects of sound.