Hospice Music Therapy: "I'll See You in My Dreams" 

Music Therapy Heartbeat Recording
Something special music therapist Brian Hilderbrand does for SSM Health at Home’s hospice patients and their families is personalized song recordings featuring a patient’s heartbeat. In order to create these special recordings Hilderbrand and the patient work together to identify a song that is meaningful; they may even write an original together. Next, he uses a modified stethoscope and microphone to record the patient's heartbeat on his computer. Then he goes to work. “Once I have the recording, I analyze the heartbeat to get a few steady beats that I loop to create a percussion track,” said Hilderbrand. “Then I record other instruments and vocals and layer them over the heartbeat. If someone chooses a piece of classical music or something I cannot recreate myself, I layer the heartbeat into an existing recording."