Fiddlefox World Heritage Songbooks

The Fiddlefox World Heritage Songbook series collects, translates, and illustrates children’s songs and folk repertoire from around the world with accompanying audio recordings and rainbow bell music notation.

I created this series as the proprietary music curriculum for Rock and Roll Daycare in Cambridge, MA from 2016-2019. The client requested interactive music media freely accessible to children in an independent Montessori-inspired learning environment. The client also wanted to pursue peace education goals and integrate world cultural study into music learning.

Collaborating with illustrator Gabriela Issa Chacón and music producer/arranger Marc Evan Díaz, we produced 17 collections of songs in as many languages. Animated versions of the illustrations and their accompanying recordings were produced after initial publication. Each song’s rainbow music notation allows children to play a simplified version of the melody on a corresponding glockenspiel or tap bell set. Books are available on Amazon and the recordings are streaming on all major platforms including Spotify, Amazon, Apple Music, and Bandcamp.

I worked on the series by researching, collecting, and translating the music for the collections. I transcribed lead sheets for studio musicians, arranged and formatted the rainbow bell music, and copyedited each publication in multiple languages.

Once the books were distributed to the students, I tested each collection in the classroom as a teaching music specialist with children from infancy to age five, developing lesson plans and curriculum integration strategies to share with other educators.