Song and rap lyric writing is another great music technique that involves creating original musical prose and poetry. Songwriting has shown to be effective in addressing a variety of emotional needs and can be a useful tool in helping adolescents express their grief and develop healthy coping skills. As mentioned, it does require more musical skill than some of the other techniques, and can be challenging for client’s of any age, so it is not a recommended method for practitioners and counselors just beginning to use music as a therapeutic tool in their work with teens.
Writing a Rap is usually an enjoyable experience for teens and can be easy to facilitated because clients readily provide the rhythmic structure. The task of the therapist is to fit the lyrics created by the client into the rhythmic structure provided by the client. Sometimes the therapist may need to reword or condense some of the lyrics to make it fit with the client’s chosen rhythm. As an alternative to providing live musical rhythms and beats, you may want to work with the client to create an electronic or recorded beat using a music application like Garage Band for rap writing purposes.
For adolescents that enjoy, and might prefer, singing over playing musical instruments, another popular songwriting activity entails improvising an original song over a musical structure like in the style of the Blues for example.
Below is a humorous example from the Conan Show of what improve singing over rhythmic music sounds like!