Martha's nonprofit organization has received a grant from the TN Arts Commission to create musical samples/songs/compositions utilizing strong rhythmic drive and varying tempi and timbre. These compositions will be utilized for therapeutic purposes to benefit persons with disabilities and their caregivers, educators, and medical staff.
Martha's nonprofit organization has received a grant to automate a system that will create a visual based musical notation in block form that can be utilized for those unable to read music. The initial code outline was developed by Martha's friend Andy Novobilski, with Riley Shipley completing the code to finish the project.
Martha won the 2016 "Will This Float" contest sponsored by Chattanooga's CoLab organization. She pitched the idea to automate the biomedical music protocol Musical Attention Control Training (MACT) to help those with attention challenges as a result of such challenges as stroke, autism, or ADHD.
Music therapy protocols were originally based on social science, but with the advent of brain-imaging technologies such as EEG and fMRI in the 1990's, music therapy protocols made the jump from social science to neuroscience. MACT is a Neurologic Music Therapy technique that involves structured active or receptive musical exercises, using pre-composed performance or improvisation, in which musical elements cue different musical responses in order to practice sustained, selective, divided, and alternating attention functions. Martha co-authored an article in 2005 that was published in the Computing Sciences in Colleges journal that shows the viability of such automation.
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