Becoming a Board Certified Music Therapist (MT-BC) is more than liking people, loving music, and wanting to make people feel better. It’s a regulated profession with high standards and a rigorous training program.
The credential Music Therapist – Board Certified (MT-BC), is granted by the Certification Board for Music Therapists (CBMT, cbmt.org) to identify music therapists who have demonstrated the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to practice at the current level of the profession.
Board Certified Music Therapists must:
- Complete at least an undergraduate degree or its equivalence in music therapy from an approved program
- Complete an internship of at least 1040 hours
- Pass the Board Certification exam
- Comply with continuing education requirements (100 credits every 5 years)
I first discovered music therapy while attending Governor’s School of North Carolina for Choral Music during the summer of 1997. I had grown up loving music and performing and also enjoyed working with children. Another student told me about music therapy and it appeared to be a field that combined my passions. During my senior year of high school I attended a vocal competition at East Carolina University and fell in love with the School of Music, the faculty, and staff. When I discovered they offered a degree in music therapy, I was confident in my career path!
The program was very difficult and, at times, I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it. Each semester was crammed full of classes in music theory, music history, performance groups, private lessons, psychology, special education, statistics, research, and music therapy core classes that taught me how to apply everything I learned in the clinical setting.
It was a very demanding and intense program and not all that started finished, but I did. I graduated in 2002 with a Bachelor of Music in Music Therapy from East Carolina University.
Later that same year, I started my 9 month 1,040 hour clinical internship and was ready to apply all of the knowledge I learned in college. However, I quickly learned that much more of my knowledge was going to come from my internship. I credit my internship just as much as my college education because it forced me to apply all that I learned and to learn how to adapt, because nothing ever goes exactly as planned.
After my internship ended, I was ready to sit for my board certification exam. All of that knowledge and experience was evaluated by a long and difficult online test at a tax office outside of Charlotte, NC. I passed and earned my MT-BC credential in 2004. I was finally able to start my career as a Board Certified Music Therapist.
Over the many years I’ve worked in the field I’ve discovered areas that are of particular interest to me that were not covered in depth during my schooling. Thankfully, the music therapy community is wide and strong and I have been able to continue learning through all of the continuing education opportunities offered. These courses have kept me active, fresh, and up to date on new and exciting clinical research in our field.
The field of music therapy is vast, vibrant, rigorous, and ever growing.
As music therapists, we are regulated in training requirements and scope of practice by the Certification Board for Music Therapists (cbmt.org), and our code of ethics and continued research efforts are spearheaded by the American Music Therapy Association (musictherapy.org).
So unlike some have come to believe, music therapists are not simply kind musicians who like playing music for people.
Rather, we are clinicians who understand how to use music to bring about real change.
And we are trained in just how to do that.