Ideal for singalongs at nursing homes, senior residences or just at your own home. Bound in a loose-leaf binder of durable vinyl, unsnaps for access to pages. (To see a photo of the book, click 
Come on along for the ride
Yes, our songbook is ballooning, and a lot of volunteer singalong leaders are rising with it. Here’s how that happens:
When we in the Hat Band add a song to the book, Sing along with ease, we send free copies of the sheet music to everyone who’s already bought the book. That way, everyone’s repertoire grows.
When we began marketing copies of our book last January, it contained 313 songs. It’s now up to 331, all old favorites that are ideal for singalongs. Most of those additions have come from audience requests, some of them from our farflung group of songbook customers.
The process is simple: When we find a song we like, we convert it to simple sheet music in a singable key through a computer program called Finale PrintMusic. That gives us an electronic version of the song that we can print out for our own songbook and that we can email to everyone else who has the songbook. They print out the song and they’ve got it, too.
Now, I can’t say we’ve sold hundreds of the books in our first year, but it’s been in the dozens. And they’ve gone to a wide market — from New York to California, from Canada to Australia.
We’re not dealing with a mass market here. Singalong volunteers are, sadly, a rare breed. (Although I know of at least one case where a customer wanted a songbook just to help him improve his piano skills. Sing along with ease, with its single-note melody lines and simple chord notations, is ideal for someone who wants to dust off a guitar or return to a long-neglected piano for a little solo music at home.)
Basically, we’re in a small niche. Or, to add yet another metaphor, on the big ocean of the Internet, we’re in a little rowboat. But we stay in touch with others who’ve joined us bobbing around on the waves. And as we find additional songs, we mass-email them to everyone else, helping to raise the tide that, as they say, lifts all boats.
Or, to return to our original imagery, the balloon gets larger and more buoyant. And as long as the Hat Band keeps adding these wonderful old songs, the sky’s the limit. We all go up. We hope.
– Sid Leavitt
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September 29, 2011 at 10:00 am
Really sounds like an interesting project though I am not sure I get it completely. Anyways the sky IS the limit so I am sure you will make it with that attitude no matter what.
September 29, 2011 at 9:16 pm
Thanks, Morten. By the way, I visited your site, http://ratemybooks.com/, and was encouraged to see the written word being promoted. We’ve gotten away from that here now that we’ve moved into music.