Improvisation and meaning

This article presents and discusses a long-term repeated-immersion research process that explores meaning allocated to an episode of 50 seconds of music improvisation in early neurosurgical rehabilitation by a teenage boy with severe traumatic brain injury and his music therapist. The process began with the original therapy session in August 1994 and extends to the current time of writing in 2013. A diverse selection of qualitative research methods were used during a repeated immersion and engagement with the selected episodes. The multiple methods used in this enquiry include therapeutic narrative analysis and musicological and video analysis during my doctoral research between 2002 and 2004, arts-based research in 2008 using expressive writing, and arts-based research in 2012 based on the creation of a body cast of my right hand as I used it to play the first note of my music improvising in the original therapy episode, which is accompanied by reflective journaling. The casting of my hand was done to explore and reconsider the role of my own body as an embodied and integral, but originally hidden, part of the therapy process. Put together, these investigations explore the potential meanings of the episode of music improvisation in therapy in an innovative and imaginative way. However, this article does not aim at this stage to present a model or theory for neurorehabilitation but offers an example of how a combination of diverse qualitative methods over an extended period of time can be instrumental in gaining innovative and rich insights into initially hidden perspectives on health, well-being, and human relating.