in-patient songwriting

 

In 2011, Purple Songs Can Fly created a portable recording studio which enables the composers to work with in-patient children at their bedsides to write and record their own songs.

 

In this program, any child being treated as an in-patient or a sibling is welcome to participate, and no musical training or experience is required. Before getting started, parents are asked to complete consent and release forms for both Purple Songs Can Fly and Texas Children’s Hospital.

 

From songs about hope, to songs about kittens, from medicines to being thankful, best friends to dancing and everything in between, the children’s songs can be written on any topic imaginable. Every song is unique, but very often the Purple Songs Can Fly staff will work on capturing the child’s words first, and then move into creating a lyric and its underlying music. The children are involved each step of the way, choosing the rhythms and sounds they want to hear and even composing their own melodies.

 

During the  COVID19 pandemic we paused our in-patient songwriting, but in 2023 we 

created a new in-patient program working remotely with patients who are being treated on the bone marrow transplant floor, and also with patients being treated at the Vannie Cook Cancer Clinic in McAllen, Texas.