They're Playing My Song!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope yours was better than mine. I spent the day by myself because I was sick and couldn't drive home. On the plus side, once I started feeling better, I had time to create this blog.

There are so many things that I want to write about regarding my experiences at the AMTA (American Music Therapy Association) National Conference in Cleveland. For now, I'm going to give a quick shout-out to some people I met there and who's blogs I linked to on the side of this page. They are Kat Fulton, Michelle Erfurt, Kimberly S. Moore, Rachel Rambach, and Janice Harris, just to name a few. Please be sure to check out the blog list and give theirs a read.

So anyway, during a dinner break with some friends, just before the opening session of the conference, I was looking at the program and noticed that they had a Cabaret (I guess open mic style) listed for Saturday night. "That is so cool," I thought. I had the perfect song that I wanted to do, as long as I could get access to a projector or something to display the lyrics. To explain the song to my friends, I wrote out the lyrics to I-M-4-U in a notebook and sang it for them. I had already played it once for MARAMTS students at last year's Mid-Atlantic Region conference and it was a great success. I was looking forward to playing it for the Cabaret.

You can imagine my surprise when the amazing opening night performers, Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, played I-M-4-U in their opening set. "They're playing my song!" I screeched. I couldn't believe it. I was mildly jealous that they beat me to the punch but tremendously excited that they were playing it anyway. I pulled open my notebook where I had just written the lyrics down only hours earlier (as some sort of self-rightous claim) and enthusiastically sang along. It was so much fun. I never did sing it on Saturday night but I feel equally satisfied.

For those of you who weren't at the conference, I-M-4-U is a great little gimmick song using only letters and numbers for the song lyrics. It can probably be easily adapted to work in a number of different music therapy settings and populations. Unfortunately, I can't make a recording now because I have no voice but I will as soon as I'm feeling better. I'll also post the chords then too.

In the meantime, here are the "lyrics":

I - M - 4 - U

S - I - M

S - I - M

G - I - 1 - 2 - B - 4 - U - 4 - F - R

U - R - X - T - C

S - U - R

S - U - R

I - N - 10 - 2 - B - 4 -U - 4 - F -R

I - M - I - N - U

U - R - I - N - 2

S - E - Z - 2 - C

B - B

U - N - I - C - I -2 - I

O

I - M - 4 - U

S - I - M

S - I -M

U - N -I -L - B - S - 1 -4 - F - R - N - F- R - N - F - R