New Joyful Community Excitement!

Check out our Meetup! I never knew March could be so festive with green being our main theme!

I am loving this festive time together with our new community, Music Makers!

This month, we are learning St. Patrick's Day is Coming, a song I wrote with my 10 year old student, Maya, during our ukulele lesson.

What a fun way to enjoy each month with a festive song that we can all sing and play together.

It's so wonderful that we can take what we learned in our Meetup and practice it all month.

We are meeting back next Thursday, March 9, at 2pm ET so you can play me what you practiced and I can give you some feedback.

And I am learning so much from my members, too!

Like I heard my first limerick, spoken by Hanna, our 9 year old Music Maker, she said,

"There once was a mid March day,

Where people would gather and say:

'St. Patrick's Day is here,

Let's wear green and give cheer.'

And then they partied the evening away."

What a fun way to expand our...

Welcome to our 3rd community meeting, here you will learn a family song that our family enjoyed during October and November, called The Pumpkin Pie Song.

Come along and learn to sing it, and pick your instrument part, ranging from beginning to advanced.

I will teach you the notes and the chords.

Click Here for the lesson plan.

Learn a simple 3 note melody that fits you and your level and favorite instrument

• vocals
• pennywhistle
• recorder
• ukulele
• piano

Learn only 3 chords for

• guitar
• ukulele
• baritone ukulele
• piano.

Years ago, I found The Pumpkin Pie Song in the book Festivals Family and Food: Guide to Seasonal Celebration by Diana Carey and Judy Large.

I first began learning it on pennywhistle. I added chords to it, and arranged it myself. I have never heard it played any where, so I just had to be creative when trying it all out. 

I thought it would be great arrange it with added guitar chords and with this simplified pennywhistle melody...

Check out our very first meeting!?!?!

I had no idea what we were going to discover or what this new community wanted, so let the journey begin!

We had a wonderful time together of sharing about our music journey. 

Join us next time.

We meet the first Thursday of each new month at 2pm Eastern Time. Please mark your calendars.

I was telling Angie how our meeting went because she wasn’t able to make it, I said, me personally, I was overwhelmed with the love that I felt. We had 3 kids join, and they are so pure and full of this amazing love that is so different and sweet, I long for this kind of love in our adult world for each other. I guess that is at the heart of what we do, as moms to be that space for them to freely love. What a blessing to be a mom!!!

 My husband bought me a new guitar, and it sounds so good!!!!  I got to share my new song that I wrote about the trees here in Georgia, called Into the World.

 It's a Martin 000-28 Eric Clapton Acoustic...

A Dream Set Free 

Saturday Evening

Thank you for letting me share this wonderful experience with you!

I hope you enjoyed this series about songwriting.

Now for the performance!

It was Saturday, at twilight, at Taproot, I couldn't ask for a better place or audience of friends.

Looking out at everyone's faces was the best. I am so glad that I can finally look out and see love instead of fear.

For so many years, I used to stand in front of audiences so scared of what they where thinking about me.

It was so hard to look out at people and not be scared, scared that I would make mistakes, or look bad, or get upset with how they were reacting to my most vulnerable self.

I am super sensitive, I was that little girl who was always way too shy to speak. It was painfully hard for me to talk to people, even as a teen.

So for me to be able to finally stand in front of an audience and share my music that lives in me and in the heart of my friends, was just so transforming.

To be...

A Dream Set Free 

Saturday Afternoon

Let your dreams become reality!

On this day, August 8, I witnessed a dream of mine, set free ~ writing a song with friends.

I was surrounded by love, beauty, freedom, friends, as time stood still long enough to write this song.

We hope you enjoy it!

Here is the moment we completed the song and we captured our practice performance.

The plan was to sing it for everyone that evening at the Saturday Night Sharing.

Thank you for stopping by today!

Check out Part 5 Now

A Dream Set Free 

The Essence of Taproot

 Part 1 was brainstorming and coming up with verse 1

Part 2 was coming up with verse 2 the next day out in nature

This is Part 3 the essence of Taproot Teacher Training

[Me, Jodie Mesler and Jean Miller]

In this blog post, I want give you a feel of A Dream Set Free, which is a very important part of songwriting. What is the collective feeling of this time together?

[Our small group, moms with kids 1st-3rd grade]

Rudolf Steiner, founder of Waldorf Education, states,

"We look at a painting and see beauty, with music we become beauty...

in the sculptural and pictorial realm we look at beauty, and we live it;

in the musical realm we ourselves become beauty...but in music humans themselves are the creators.

What they create does not come from what is already there, but lays the foundation and firm ground for what is to arise in the future."

The songwriting vision I had before I got to Taproot was...

I love having you here! Thank you for being apart of my musical journey! I love all of you, my friends and family! And this is a great time to send you all

     LOVE     

My sister, Jenny and I love  Valentine's Day for this very reason!!

 She loves it so much that she just name her new baby, Valen. He is a precious baby boy. She really wanted to name him Valentine, but she couldn't talk her husband into it! But I think Valen is a great name.

I have a free song for you, with the chord and lyric chart, called I  Love You So.

My cousin, Jamey and I wrote it together. It is a cute song to sing with your kids around this time of year.

He has a son that is 5 years old, named Oden and I am teaching him music lessons each week. I sing this to him all the time. It's his song, because....

This song was written 6 years ago, before Oden was born (I am pretty sure it was about Oden's mama).

I played the piano part for...

May your journey be safe,

May your worries be few,

And may love always guide what you do

May you grow like a forest straight toward the light,

Grounded in the mother earth

Every year at Taproot Teacher Training we sing this as our closing song.

Want to hear it? Click here

What a beautiful song to bless us all as we enter back in with our families to renew our homeschool journey.

Barbara Dewey and Jean Miller, along with our Taproot team, gave such great value. We all tuned in live on Zoom to the workshops, got hands on experiences, got to participate in the chat, and meet in breakout rooms. I got to invite everyone to sing my song, Joyful Creation, live on Zoom, on Friday, with Miriam and her kids; and then live on Saturday at the hotel. The event was so wonderful and we all felt such a sweet connection.

What I find most fascinating is that this event usually takes place every year in Cleveland, Ohio, with a max of about 30 parents; but...