Every morning, I put on a piece of music and draw what I hear. Not a picture of the music—a saxophone, a guitar—but a response to it: The line follows the rhythm, the pressure follows the dynamics. For six minutes, while the song plays, my hand is led by something other than the tremor. I call this practice music-response drawing, and I’ve come to believe it has something to offer the aging services field as a low-cost, accessible tool for people living with Parkinson’s disease (PD) like me.
Why It Works
PD disrupts the dopaminergic system—the pathway governing not just movement but motivation and reward. Music is one of the few non-pharmacological stimuli known to reliably engage that same system. Rhythmic movement, even something as small as a hand moving across paper, activates motor pathways that PD progressively compromises.
Rhythmic movement, even something as small as a hand moving across paper, activates motor pathways that PD progressively compromises.
Two current research efforts point in this direction. Wake Forest University is running an NIH-funded study, IGROOVE, examining which elements of musical and movement engagement—rhythm, social interaction, cognitive challenge—most improve brain health in older adults at risk for neurodegenerative disease. At East Carolina University, the Parkinson’s Foundation–funded Listen, Breathe, Move program is showing that combined music therapy and mindful movement improve the quality of life for PD caregivers in rural eastern North Carolina. Music-response drawing sits at the intersection of these findings: rhythmic listening, intentional fine-motor movement, and expressive meaning-making combined in a single daily habit.
My practice began with Steely Dan, specifically “Deacon Blues,” a song built around a saxophone line that never quite resolves. Drawing to it the first time, I wasn’t thinking about neuroscience. I was thinking about the saxophone. What I noticed afterward was that for six minutes, my tremor had been subordinate to intention. My hand that shakes was the hand that drew.
What the Practice Requires
Music-response drawing needs no training and no clinical oversight. These are the five elements I find necessary:
- Music that already means something to the person—not music selected for its therapeutic properties, but music tied to memory and identity.
- Any drawing tool the person can hold comfortably that day.
- Any surface and medium—paper is enough.
- Permission to make marks that don’t represent anything. The drawing is evidence of listening, not a picture to be judged.
- Twenty minutes, ideally at the same time each day. The boundedness is what makes it sustainable.
This is not clinical art therapy and doesn’t require a licensed therapist to begin, though board-certified music therapists and expressive arts therapists can deepen it for those who want more structure, particularly through Parkinson’s Foundation community programming.
It produces no product to evaluate. It’s closer to journaling than treatment, though its neurological effects may not be trivial.
Music-response drawing offers something rare: an intervention that costs nothing, requires no equipment beyond what most households already have, and can be taught in a single conversation.
Why This Belongs in the Aging Field
For program directors, wellness coordinators, and caregivers working with older adults with PD, music-response drawing offers something rare: an intervention that costs nothing, requires no equipment beyond what most households already have, and can be taught in a single conversation. It can be introduced in senior centers, adult day programs, and caregiver support groups alike, and it adapts to whatever music already carries meaning for the person doing it, such as jazz, gospel, opera, or Steely Dan.
It doesn’t cure anything. It doesn’t stop the disease’s progression. What it offers is a daily practice that gives an aging brain a conversation partner, and gives a person with PD something that is entirely their own.
Gary A. Krajewski is a Carolina’s Parkinson’s Foundation Ambassador and Board Member and founder of the PD Art & Music Gallery affiliated with Duke Health’s Move More program. He presents on music-response drawing and neuroaesthetics at senior centers and wellness fairs across North Carolina’s Triangle and Piedmont Triad regions.
Image credit: Gary A. Krajewski
