Opening the Box: Cracking the Code of Mental Health in the Music Industry
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Abstract
Professional musicians face a high-risk landscape of occupational stress, performance anxiety, and severe identity fusion. This creative project addresses these vulnerabilities by developing a self-guided creative processing workflow designed to de-escalate the autonomic nervous system and bypass cognitive resistance. Drawing inspiration from creative music therapy, free improvisation and historical serialist constraints, this practice-based research establishes a mathematically constrained system that translates autobiographical data such as geographic coordinates, calendar dates, and descriptive words, directly into scale degrees. This serialist scaffolding blended with free improvisation acts as a tool for cognitive offloading, and silencing the inner critic. The system was applied to write, rehearse, perform and record three original compositions: "Trust Fall", "This Isn't Goodbye" and “The Witch”. By transitioning through composing, rehearsing, and recording phases, this project explores how musical constraints foster emotional liberation and improvisation allows for autotelic healing. The project contributes a practical, preventative framework for music professionals seeking to safely reclaim their instruments as self-directed sanctuaries of healing.
Publication Date
7-1-2026
Campus
Valencia (Spain) Campus
Keywords
creative project; composition; improvisation; traumatic processing; performance
Award
With Distinction
Recommended Citation
Young, Sydney, "Opening the Box: Cracking the Code of Mental Health in the Music Industry" (2026). Contemporary Performance (Production Concentration). 364.
https://remix.berklee.edu/graduate-studies-contemporary-performance/364