Music Activities for Seniors

Who doesn’t love music? Undoubtedly, your parents or grandparents love it-and so do you (even if you do have different tastes in music). Why not take advantage of one of the only hobbies that connects all ages and identities? Music activities for seniors can be a powerful way to bring people together and build the holiday spirit.

Why Focus on Music Activities for Seniors?

There are many reasons to focus on music. The first is simple – music is enjoyable. It taps into our emotions and memories.

The right music can shift a person’s attitude entirely, changing a bad day into a good one.

Music lovers aren’t the only ones that benefit from music. To some extent or another, even the most unenthusiastic individual can react to music.

In fact, music tends to affect us on an unconscious level. This may be why dementia sufferers can still indulge in music and even recall it. The ability to respond to music seems to persist, even as the condition worsens.

Music is so significant that music therapy is now used in many settings.

But, you don’t need to focus on music therapy to see advantages from music.

Regardless of the style, listening to your preferred music activates endorphins in the brain, helping relieve stress. Music also offers other advantages, such as alleviating fear, relieving stress, and improving the immune system. Music sessions are particularly helpful for:

• Seniors who are no longer physically independent
• People dealing with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia  
• Elders who have a suspected or actual loss of autonomy
• People dealing with serious diseases, such as cancer, asthma, cardiac disease, Parkinson’s disease
• People suffering from fatigue, depression, and/or anxiety

Music sessions are seen to provide the following benefits to people in general:

• Enhancing social behavior
• Develop communications
• Entertainment and consolation
• Alleviate detachment and alienation
• Decrease unrest
• Unique experiences related to pleasant periods of life awaken
• Mood improvement
• Relieve thoughts of grief and grief

Music Activities to Try

Many of these music activities for seniors are designed for group settings, like at a nursing home. However, you can easily adapt them for your family or even just for a single senior.

You don’t need to follow the approaches as written either. Why not use them as inspiration for finding your own approaches?

Drum Circles

This will include a circle of locals who perform drums in synchronization together. Drum circles offer an outlet for elders to use music to communicate with each other.

Coordination between drummers is needed to create a harmonizing rhythm. This helps to promote coordination and coordination.

In the drum circle, there may be a leader who directs the rest of the group and helps to keep people in sync with one another.

Alternatively, such circles could be much simpler, where the members are playing their own freestyle rhythm. Hand out a drum to each elder for him or her to perform for the game, and let the fun begin!

Drum circles are much harder for isolated seniors, but you could use technology to connect multiple drummers. Or, why not have the senior drum along to a YouTube video? While the experience wouldn’t be quite the same, it would still have many benefits.

Cardio Drumming

Cardio drumming includes seniors playing drums as a type of arm workout.

Cardio drumming encourages seniors to perform while playing together. There’s normally some type of background track being played. Seniors can sit while they pound their drums or they might stand for a full workout.

Real drums can be used for this type of drumming circle, but that’s not the only option. If you don’t have drums on hand, then try using a beach ball or a workout ball in a bucket. This can be hit with drumsticks and gives even more of a workout than a regular drum.

Focus on upbeat music for this one, as this make it a fast-paced and enjoyable workout experience.

You could join in too or even make this a workout for the entire family.

Freestyle Drumming

Freestyle drumming is exactly what the name suggests, where players are simply messing around on drums, making their own sounds. Playing music at the same time gives seniors a sense of rhythm and direction, while still providing plenty of flexibility.

This approach has multiple advantages, including greater imagination, lower tension, and an enhanced sense of well-being and harmony. To socialize and maybe have some laughs, try arranging a regular jam session for the seniors in your area (use Zoom if there are social distancing restrictions in your area). 

Echo After Me

This type of music activity for seniors works a little differently. It follows a call and response pattern, where the senior attempts to play the same note on a xylophone that you are playing with a different instrument.

The process helps to keep their mind sharp, as they need to distinguish the notes from one another. You’re also helping them to develop motor coordination.

If mimicking notes is too difficult, you could get your family member to follow a rhythm instead. You wouldn’t even need an instrument for this one, as they could follow a rhythm by clapping, tapping, or drumming on a table.

Know Scales

You can also teach musical chords or scales on any musical instrument.

A xylophone is a perfect place to start as this is very visual and is easy to use (this one is a perfect place to begin). Seniors simply need to bang sticks on the appropriate keys. A keyboard is another simple approach, although you could use whatever instrument that you have on hand.

Xylophone Play Along

You can play popular tunes for citizens in the background to play along while using their xylophones.

While you could do this with any instrument, the xylophone has some advantages. Not only is the instrument easy to use, but it also has an unusual sound. Xylophones won’t often be used in the music you’re listening to, so seniors can easily hear the sounds they’re playing.

If the music is in a lower key, then the lower notes on a xylophone will be the best. Move to the higher notes if the music is in a higher key.

Musical Exercise

This simple activity merely requires wrist bells to be worn during arm workouts. It’s a fun holiday idea, although it would work well at any other part of the year too.

Introducing music to the exercise class can help too. Suddenly you’ve made the whole experience more interesting than a simple workout.

Musical activities for seniors like this are especially fun in a class, but you could do the same thing while following along to a workout video too.

Hand Bell Choir 

You can easily organize this interesting activity by providing hand bells to the seniors (like these ones). Teach people how to use the hand bells to create music together.

Host an activity with a weekly hand bell chorus where people can practice. Organize a friendly hand bell choir show for family members until everybody knows their role.

Once again, you could try this using Zoom or similar technology – if an in-person class isn’t realistic. While technology doesn’t always work as it should, any problems can be amusing and make life a little more interesting.

Hand Bell Simon

Make your grandparents replicate the hand bell sequence you perform. Do you remember Simon? It was a 1970s and early 1980s computer memory game in which the game presented a series of musical notes that you had to recreate. The unit added in one new sound per round that you needed to replicate.

Interestingly, you can find this same game as a memory game app these days.

Anyway, you can take the same approach using hand bells. You’ll need two sets. One set will be placed in front of you and the second set in front of your grandparents or elders, meaning the similar bells are directly opposite each other. Then commence by ringing one bell and having their equivalent bell rung your grandparents. Then ring the bell again, include another bell, and remind the seniors to do the same thing.

Sing Along

Encourage your parents (or your entire family) to sing and play along the tunes with you!

Maracas are a fun instrument to use here (you can find a good set here), as they are compact and simple to pack. Any other small instrument could work just as well or even a makeshift instrument, like an upside-down bucket.

You just need to pass out the ‘instruments’ and get people to rock along.

You could also skip the instruments if you wanted to. Just let everyone sing or dance to the music instead. The main goal is to get everyone involved. Exactly what this looks like doesn’t matter too much.

Conga Line

Your grandparents and other elderly neighbors can line up and have fun as they dance and rock their maracas to songs. The Conga line, which became increasingly famous in the 1940s, is very common to seniors. Simply play lively Latin music for the exercise and have your family accompany you around the space in a line while they shake their maracas.

And, of course, you could turn to other types of dancing too. Why not simply turn the music up and let everyone rock along in their own way?

Dancing together like this does rely on you all being in the same physical location. If that’s not an option, you might try to adapt one of the other activities on this list. It can be fun to even just get people up and dancing to a song that’s on the radio.

Creating a Sing-Along

Sing-alongs are a great way to get seniors engaged with music and there are no instruments to worry about. Everyone has the chance to simply let loose and have some fun.

This can be as straightforward as picking a song or two and promising the senior that you can sing along to it together. Doing this together helps make everyone feel less self-conscious.

You could print out the words to unfamiliar songs or have them playing on screen. Or, focus on songs that your family member already knows and enjoys.

Don’t be afraid to think outside the box either. Many people love singing along to musicals, including Disney musicals. Holiday music is another fun option. Most of us know the words, whether we want to or not.

The music your family member grew up with is another good choice. Just be sure to look for music that is linked to good memories (avoid songs that will make your family member feel sad instead!).

Just Play Songs

Taking advantage of songs doesn’t need to be difficult. Even just listening to music can be surprisingly powerful.

The easiest approach here is simply playing music around the house. You could also give the senior a way to listen to music themselves, such as through a CD player or their smartphone.

Headphones can make it easier for the senior to hear the music and mean that you don’t need to listen.

Apps such as Spotify and Pandora allow you to download songs, supplying you with several playlists to choose from. Sometimes, free variants of these services come with commercials, but they are not too invasive.

Developing a Playlist

Another suggestion is to collaborate with seniors to build a playlist that is specifically tuned to them, one that can make them feel nice. The process can be a fun one.

You can use speakers or headphone splitters so that you and the senior can listen to the same song at the same time.

Many of the online services, like Spotify, make playlist creation easy. Some will also suggest songs to you or automatically play related songs. Those processes can be a fun way to discover new favorites.

Sharing playlists with friends is often easy too, which helps to share the fun.

Final Thoughts

The music that you’re focusing on will make a difference.

The most powerful music activities for seniors rely on songs that they are familiar with, ideally songs linked to positive memories. For example, if your mother liked The Bee Gees when she was younger, some of their music would be a perfect match

You can also focus on genres that you know your family member likes. After all, playing jazz won’t help much for family members who prefer classic music.

Finding the right music will take some trial and error. Everyone has their own music preferences.

Thankfully, accessing music is very easy these days. You could turn to YouTube or streaming music platforms. YouTube is often the best choice, as you get music videos at the same time (as long as you can put up with the ads).

You could also look for old CDs, music DVDs, or even records. These are getting easy to find now that most people are focusing on digital options instead.