Fun Things On a Friday: Making Music

I started a post about how my daily routine went yesterday, but I decided that I needed to focus a bit on something more fun.

So....

I wrote a song yesterday. It was not the song I set out to compose, but it is pretty cool, if I do say so myself!

Here's how it happened... 

If you read this blog on a regular basis, you know that I love to make visual aids for my clients and for other clients of music therapists. I post those things on my Teachers Pay Teachers store for small costs to others. I try to make things that I use in my clinical interactions, and I always include a song to go with my visuals. I also have therapeutic music experience plans and thematic units to go along with these visuals, but I do not offer those in my store because I want to have a bit more control over who can access that material. Usually, if you send me an email, I'll send you a copy of my TME - just let me know that you are a music therapist (student, intern, or professional), and you can have it!

All that to explain how yesterday's song came about!

Here's another tangent, but it all comes together in the end, I promise! I found some dinosaur flashcards at Target the other day, and I picked up two sets. These dinosaur cards have wonderful pictures and information about each of the 36 dinosaurs presented. I started to go through my six things routine and realized that I could do some syllable and rhythm cards to go along with the dinosaur names. So, I started making some simple visuals - the name of the animal and some rhythm cards. I finished transcribing the names and the rhythms into the file yesterday, and I started thinking about publishing it to my store.

But, the file wasn't finished. 

My homemade CD case for my Dino playlists!

I sat down with my guitar and my tablet set to record, and I started to play. I started to vocally improvise with the thought of "dinosaur rhythms" in my head. I did something that I absolutely love - I made some music. After about three minutes, I fell into a pattern that I liked. The words seemed to make sense, and I could replicate them the same way each time. I grabbed my keyboard and a scrap piece of paper and I wrote down the notes and an approximation of the rhythm in my own particular form of solfege and symbols - it's sort of a shorthand that works for me, but not for others, I guess! All that I have left is to transcribe the song into my notation software and then publish it as part of the Dino Rhythms file that will shortly be in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. I have to write up all of the ideas for the dinosaur cards, the Dino Rhythm cards and games, and for the Dinosaur playlist that I made from the music that I already own. I also want to print out all of the dinosaur TMEs that my former interns wrote so I can have an entire series of TMEs to use during this theme. I made a cover for my dinosaur CDs, and I'm going to be putting it all together into my theme boxes for use at some point in the near future.

It felt good to be trying things and singing silly songs. My sister called me as I was in the middle of listening to the recording and transcribing the music, and I had to keep going until I had finished. She had to listen to me singing the same thing over and over again as I worked out the solfege. That's one of the risks that she takes when she calls her music therapist sister early - impromptu sing-a-longs over the phone while she is stuck in traffic (Mua-ha-ha-ha-ha!). It took some time, but I finished it! I'll be releasing the file sometime this weekend, so if you are interested, check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store in a bit - look for Dino Rhythms!! I may also make a Music Therapy Morsel video to post on my YouTube channel - we'll see...

Hey, thanks for reading! If you'd like to get a copy of the TME (when I write it up for this new song), just leave a comment below. I'll send you a link so you can download the file!