Singing InterventionHybrid Group Singing

Group singing sessions are a hybrid of in-person and virtual participation with in-person participation encouraged. Intake forms will be used to assess musical preference, prior music experience, and pertinent medical conditions to consider. Songs will be selected based on music preference of the subjects. At the start of each session, the music therapist will review the importance of singing and lead the group in taking deep breaths together. Throughout sessions, the therapist will encourage subjects to sing as much as possible, explaining that it's not about how they sound but how they feel. Initially, the group singing format will be 40 minutes of singing (includes a vocal warm-up), three times weekly, for a total of 12 weeks. The total singing time is the same as in the solo singing video arm. Based on focus group feedback, the formats could change. However, we will aim to keep total singing time the same (i.e., 120 minutes of singing per week).

Participants in this arm watch and sing to an online video series independently. The video series is created by a professor of voice with older students in the videos. We plan to use REDCap to deliver the assigned videos at set times and frequencies and display the videos in an embedded audio player for the subjects. Use of REDCap will allow us to track when subjects are watching the videos with reminders sent up to five times. We will also include 2 questions at the end on how much they enjoyed the video (scale 1-10) and how much of the 40 minutes were sung. Inserting questions at the end confirms that participants likely viewed the entire video.

12-weeks of group singing, combination of in-person and virtual sessions, 3 times weekly

12-week solo singing video series done independently, 3 times weekly