Dear Supporter,
Thanks so much for staying with us as we take our first step in preparing to make our songbook, We must determine if permission is needed to include the songs below in our envisionedSongbook for Hope, Help, and Healing. We'll identify who owns the copyrights to these songs, learn how to contact them, then reach out about the project and ask permission to include their songs for educational purposes. If payment is requested, we will put the amount requested for any song into the over-all budget for this project, and see what we can afford thanks to your gifts for this project.
The songs are grouped categorically, and listed alphabetically, below. If you have suggestions for other songs you'd like to see included, we hope you'll email them to us at info@guitarsintheclassroom.org.
Once we see which songs can be included, we will be able to adjust the contents and add more songs as needed.
Fortunately some of these songs have been written by members of the GITC community. These will be simple to clear.
Once these steps are complete, we can begin creating the design and layout for the book. We'll be back in touch with you soon with the results of our copyrights and permissions phase of development!
HOPE
HELP
HEALING
Thanks so much for your marvelous support during 2022! We wish you a safe, healthy, and most joyful New Year,
Jess
p.s. If you'd like to receive our enewsletters with reports from our programs, classrooms, workshops and conferences, we hope you will visit our website and sign up.
Links:
Dear Supporters,
We are writing to let you know that our wonderful book is going to be made independently.
We've explored our options for publication by an outside company and it's clear that this one needs to be the first in what we hope becomes a series of books that serve specific purposes.
This process will take time, including laying the business groundwork for making our own publishing company. We will keep you in the loop as we clear various hurdles. This CAN be done!
Thanks to your very generous donations, we will begin discussions with an independent songbook creation expert, get a production plan together, and start the wheels turning to get copyright clearances taken care of. Once we see which song titles we can get cleared for use, we'll plan the flow of the book, then move onto chapters, charting, and design and layout.
Hopefully by the next report we will have quite a bit to share. Thank you for hanging in here with us over time. It's all gonna come together this school year and we look forward to sharing the journey with you here at GlobalGiving.org.
If anyone has suggestions for cover art, please drop us a line at info@guitarsintheclassroom.org.
With enduring gratitude,
Jess
Links:
Dear Supporter and Friend,
I am excited to bring you up to date with the progress of our songbook for hope, help, healing and comfort. This is a challenging time. Each week we hear more stories in the media about suffering and loss as a direct result of racism, racial profiling, and now war. These stories cause grief, devastation and social unrest, often resulting in violence. This is especially difficult for children. Their teachers understand and have been drawing upon the songs and musical teaching techniques they’ve been learning in their GITC training courses this spring to directly, sensitively, and creatively cultivate understanding and student self expression. Our book continues to expand with input from the teachers!
This spring, thanks to your support, we are also including these songs, and their history, in over 50 teaching artist residencies as a part of musical learning. When classroom teachers share the songs with their students the music has the effect of restoring connection, amplifying joy, administering care and teaching kindness.
The songs that have become part and parcel of this body of work are helping teachers and children get through tough moments of this difficult school year. And there are thousands of guitar and ukulele strumming people who are not involved in education for whom this book could also make a difference. We are still hoping to find a publisher who sees the point of it, has a team to get copyrights licensed, and a sales department that can get it out onto shelves (brick and mortar as well as virtual) where more people can find solace and inspiration between its pages.
We are so grateful to each of you who has donated to this project. We are still working on getting the book published by reaching out to potential partners on the project. Meanwhile, teachers and students continue to take comfort and gain hope from the songs.
Thanks for keeping the faith and giving as you have.
Warmly,
Jess
Hi, Supporters and Friends,
This little end-of-year report is a follow up to the last time we wrote to you. As you may have guessed, we spent the last few months seeing it there might be a way to publish to Songs for Hope, Help, Healing and Comfort book through a major publisher, and as of last week, it has become clear that this will need to be an internal GITC production.
Some publishers have been doing their own versions of song collections that are uplifting, but they do not address the core issues families are facing these days, nor to they work for elementary classrooms. Many have a nostalgic twist that is great for those of us remembering the music of prior decades.
So, with your stalwart support, we are going to start creating and designing the book, clearing a handful of songs that are in copyright, and publishing our new versions of traditional songs with teacher-written lyrics. There is a lot to do, and a new year ahead!
We'll be checking in with a couple book creators we know, putting together the design and budget, and getting official musical charts written very soon. We will keep you posted, as always, and hope to have something to show you that will make you happy and proud to have funded the effort.
This will take some time to accomplish, but we don't plan on dilly dallying. The music is needed by students and teachers right now and your kindness and generosity will be fuel the determination and magic that gets things done.
Having gotten through the past 21 months of navigating through Covid and its variants, we are all better equipped to move through the current phase wisely and with care.
May each new challenge hold within it an opportunity, and may every opportunity reveal exciting possibilities and joy in 2022!
With love and gratitude for you,
Jess
Dear Supporter and Friend,
We are so grateful to each of you who has donated to this project. We are now at the stage of this effort where we need to see if the book can become published by a music publisher. This is a big hurdle to clear. Print publishing has been significantly eclipsed by electronic publishing, and the pandemic has sent so many of us online. But not all of us have equal access to tech. Buying a music book as an electronic document for download means people need a computer, internet service, and a printer to turn their e-songbook into sheet music. To be able to play a song all the way through on two facing paper pages means no scrolling. It means being able to play music without being online or staring into a screen. Restoring music making to a non-virtual experience has many benefits.
When we first had the idea for the book, there was no pandemic. The publisher we spoke with was uninterested in the concept of the book. Now we think the need is exceptionally strong, so we would like to try again.
When we figured we would need to do the project on our own, we knew it would be a large undertaking. Securing print licenses to include songs that are in copyright gets expensive. This is money that ultimately goes to the song copyright holders. Often, they are the songwriters themselves or the songwriter's descendants. That is a wonderful thing. But in the case that a songwriter has sold their publishing to an agency in exchange for money or some sort of business deal, the copyrights must be licensed by a company. So this can be a lengthy process, as well. Hurdles, hurdles, hurdles.
However, working with a publisher places the task of clearing the copyrights in their capable hands. Definitely preferable! We will need copyright clearances for 18 songs in this book if we are to keep the work intact.
The songs that have become part and parcel of this body of work are helping teachers and children get through tough moments as the pandemic continues to threaten, detail and take human lives. But there are thousands of guitar and ukulele strumming people who are not involved in education for whom this book could also make a difference. What if we can find a publisher who sees the point of it, has a team to get copyrights licensed, and a sales department that can get it out onto shelves (brick and mortar as well as virtual) where more people can find solace and inspiration between its pages?
This is where the project stands now. We will revisit the possibility of getting the book published by reaching out over the next two months to potential partners on the project. If we come up empty handed, we will go about book making ourselves. Either way you will get an answer in the next project report! Until then, please take great care of yourself, stay strong, and we will look forward to getting back in touch with you soon.
Thanks for keeping the faith and giving as you have.
Warmly,
Jess
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can recieve an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
