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Cover Osservare in musicoterapia
Series «Il mestiere si impara» · 1/5

Observing in Music Therapy

Telling what you see from what you think · In Italian

The first skill of the music therapist, the one all others rest on. A volume for learning to recognize the systematic traps of the clinical gaze, to read the person in their body, the music in its parameters, the relationship in its sound exchanges — and to observe the observer, because the measuring instrument for all of this is you.

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Why this volume exists

Two trainees attend the same session. In the evening, one writes "Maria was happy, she participated a lot"; the other writes what Maria did, when, and compared with which habit. The difference between the two is not talent: it is a discipline that can be learned.

Because in music therapy, observation is not what you do when you are not playing: it is what you do while you play. And you study it the way you study an instrument.

What you find in the PDF (51 pages)

Part I — The gaze
The difference between looking and observing, the systematic traps of the clinical gaze and their defenses, the technical vocabulary of observation
Part II — The objects
What is observed: the person, the music, the relationship — and yourself
Part III — The methods
How to build a grid you can fill in five minutes, video up to micro-analysis, how the observed becomes written word
The tools
Three ready-to-use model grids, a video-analysis protocol, a set of ten classroom exercises
In closing: Maria's initial observational summary, filled in from start to finish — the document that opens the story of the whole series

Who it is for

  • → Music therapy students and trainees at their first observations
  • → Music therapists who want to make their clinical documentation more solid
  • → Teachers and supervisors looking for grids and classroom exercises
  • → Anyone starting the series: this is the foundations volume, and the suggested entry point

Download the PDF — it's free

Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. Share it freely, citing the source. The volume is in Italian.

How to cite: Caneva, P. A. (2026). Osservare in musicoterapia. https://canevapaolo.it

Go to Resources and download →

Questions? Mentoring is the right place.

In the same series

2 Designing Music Therapy Projects 3 The Project Workbook 4 Evaluating in Music Therapy 5 Other People's Tools → All free resources

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between an observation grid and a validated assessment scale?

You build the grid yourself, tailored to the project: it observes what that project promised to change, plus the minimum background needed for context. A validated scale measures everyone with the same yardstick and speaks the team's language. They are not competitors but layers: the grid is the tailor, validated instruments are the standard sizes.

How long should an observation grid be?

Short enough to fill in within five minutes at the end of a session. The typical beginner's mistake is the maximalist grid — twenty behaviours, dense sampling, three pages — perfect on paper and dead by the second week, because it is incompatible with making music. Sustainable, steady observation beats perfect observation abandoned.

How do you separate what you saw from what you thought?

By keeping them in two different places on the page. «Maria was happy» is an inference; «Maria smiled and sought her neighbour's gaze» is data. Inferences are not forbidden — clinical work is made of them — but an inference recorded as a description can no longer be corrected.

Do sessions need to be filmed?

Not all of them. One session a month, filmed well and genuinely analysed, is worth more than every session filmed and none watched. And the camera is shown and named: a device people discover afterwards is a breach of trust no data is worth.

May I use the grids with my students?

Yes. The volume is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence: you may print it, bring it to class, adapt the grids and share them, citing the source, without commercial use, and releasing any adapted version under the same licence.