Song Conversion Sunday: Week One - I Don't Want To Wait by Paula Cole

Welcome, everyone, to the beginning of a new blog series! I've decided to go back into the world of song analyzing for the purposes of enriching my therapeutic music experience (TME) library and to shake up my repertoire for use with my clients!!

So, here's how this is going to work...

Week One: 
Step One: Choose a song using the super scientific random method that I've developed - AKA, go to one of the many places where I have sheet music books stored, close my eyes, choose a book at random, and open up to a random page in that book.

Step Two: Go to the beginning of that particular piece of music (I, for example, opened up on page 111 in my current book, but the piece starts on page 109) and sightread the piece vocally. (This step is MUCH simplified if I already know the song - which I do this week! Hooray!!)

Step Three: Find the song on YouTube so I can hear it as well as play it (after sight reading to see how accurate I was the first time around - gotta keep those sight singing skills up!). Also search to see if the sheet music is available for others to purchase...

Step Four: Analyze the music that I hear/sing/make for the therapeutic elements of music that I find to be the most important. (Here's the template for this process.)

Step Five: Analyze the song, using this method to organize thoughts and start identifying therapeutic uses and possible goal/objectives...Also, change up different things to make it more visually appealing and easier to identify different songs based on the pictures.

That's the step I am on right now. I'm going to dive more deeply into the musical structure and elements to figure out things that work for this song, and then I'll be back - it will take no time at all for you, but for me...

There are already so many avenues that I could take with this particular musical piece (by the way the Possible Therapeutic Use of Song is at about 4 o'clock on this graphic organizer).

Next week, I'll move into the second part of this Song Conversion process and will start to experiment with the elements of music and the possible therapeutic uses to develop some TMEs. I don't know how long I will go with this particular song, we will see.

By the way, my original source for this song was my Paperback song series books - the 90's version. If I can get a picture, then I'll show you what it looks like...well, can't seem to do that, so look for the reference in the center of the graphic organizer above here. I bought mine from West Music - there are many, MANY versions of these little fake books, and I love them all!

 Comments, challenges, questions, and interactions are always welcome! Thanks for reading!!

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