ANDERSON — The therapists from Plainsong Music Services had been working all school year at Southview Preschool with a little boy who had some impulse control issues.
But when given an opportunity to perform with his 250 schoolmates on the recently released “Welcome Spring” compact disc, he was able to follow instructions.
“It was really neat to watch him thrive with music,” said Plainsong’s owner and board certified music therapist Kirby Gilliam.
The CD was launched May 13 with the young celebrities making their red carpet debuts at Jackrabbit Coffee.
“We wanted them to feel like celebrities because they helped to make the CD,” Gilliam said.
Money raised from the CD will be split between Plainsong and Southview. Plainsong will use its share for the development of its new state-of-the-art sensory room.
“We all have sensory needs, so anyone can benefit,” Gilliam said.
The CD isn’t just a fundraiser, Gilliam stressed. Each song leads the singer to a new learning experience, whether it’s behavior modification or how to spell the word “mother,” the Anderson native said.
“The whole idea was to bring us together and do music. We don’t do that enough,” she said. “With each song, we were working on goals. It was all very functional and helped them to grow.”
Andrea Bliscik, a Plainsong music therapist who works at Southview, wrote six of the 13 songs on the 22-minute CD. One was co-written with Gilliam, and the remainder are familiar tunes with words altered to emphasize the season or certain behaviors.
“I have some experience writing kids songs, so that is where I sort of naturally fell into this side of the project,” she said. “I wanted to give the kids songs that were exciting and were unique and you couldn’t hear anywhere else. The students that we work with at the school are always excited about music therapy time, so being able to capture that for them and their parents and the community was really exciting.”
Nearly each of the preschool’s 250 students performed on the CD.
“For the students who were non-verbal, they got to play instruments, even if they were not singing,” Bliscik said.
Trisha Rios, a Title I pre-kindergarten teacher who works with children ages 4 and 5 at Southview, also works at Plainsong and served as a liaison for the CD project.
As with just about everything Plainsong does, working on the CD proved to be therapeutic for some children, she said.
“We have students who don’t talk that much,” she said. “They really come alive when we do music. Music is a great connector for people.”
She said each class was given its own song and took about a month to rehearse before going live on the CD. Though the children are heard and not seen, Rios said, she did make up some movements to go with the words.
“It helps them to remember the words when they have some movements,” she said.
The biggest challenge, Rios said, was to minimize fidgeting and talking by the children as their song was recorded.
“My class had to do a few takes to get everybody not to talk. It’s hard not to talk when you’re 4 and 5.”
This article appeared in The Herald Bulletin on May 21, 2022.