Wanting Some New Sheet Music - Not a "What I am Reading" Post This Week...

I have decided that it may be best to make my "What I'm Reading" posts every other week instead of every week since I can't seem to bring myself to read every week these days. So, here is a "Not What I'm Reading" type post that still has something to do with music therapy.

My current intern is very good at taking music and adapting it to what she needs in the moment. She has introduced my clients to many different melodies and harmonic progressions that have never occurred to me as options for TMEs. It's been fun to learn these songs along with my clients, and she has inspired me to head back into my music library to use the resources that I have and to find more.

I have been looking at fake books on Amazon recently. I love fake books and have gone through several of them in my career. I have the bits and pieces of several of them floating around my house, so it is time to get a new set of fake books. Right now, the most popular one is the Disney Fakebook, and I have been challenging myself to transpose things from the keys that they are originally written in to ones that I can play easily in the moment. I think I am going to get some more fake books because I want some more current music to use.

Fake books are like just about everything else in this world - becoming obsolete due to the availability of electronic devices these days. Why buy a heavy book when you can take a tablet into a session? I have enough technical difficulties and a serious distrust of other people's wi-fi to want the security of having the paper copy around. Call me old-fashioned, but a book can be read when the electricity goes out. So, I am contemplating the purchase of some newer fake books to use.

My biggest complaint about fakebooks is how they are bound together. It is never really convenient to put a huge book on a keyboard (which is what I have to play on here at home). It usually has to be held open with one hand while playing with the other. I saw some suggestions to go get the original spines cut off and have them replaced with a spiral binding. I think that sounds like a good idea, and I will investigate this a bit more for my current and future fake books. A spiral bound book would stay open on its own. I could figure out how to do it myself, but it will be more time efficient and financially efficient if I could find someone else to do it for me. I have many books that could benefit from this type of transformation.

So, now it is time to head back into my fake books and learn some more repertoire to add to my therapeutic music experience database. It is time to figure out my next foray into the world of music beyond my own imagining.

For now, I think I will grab one of my paperback song books and do some musicking. I will use my pencil (because every good musician always has a pencil) to transpose things that need to be transposed. I will listen to examples if I don't already know how the music goes. I will do my best to take the example of my current intern and bring those songs into the sessions that I lead.

There is so much music out there, but it is time to purposely dip my toe into the never-ending well of possibilities. 

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