How To Organize Your Song List In The Cloud

When you’re a singer, you wear a lot of different hats. Unless you’re Beyoncé, you have to be your own:

• Personal Trainer (Gotta keep your body and voice in shape!)
• Manager (Book the gigs, schedule rehearsals, deal with clients and contracts)
• Webmaster (Write copy for and update your website)
• Social Media Maven (Create content and post on socials)
• Librarian

Wait. What? Librarian?

Yup. One of the most important jobs is keeping your song list organized and up to date. Why?

When you’re first starting out, your song list might only have a few tunes on it. Keeping track of keys, charts, and lyric sheets isn’t such a big deal. But later, when you have tens or even hundreds of songs to keep track of, if they’re not organized, it’s overwhelming.

Enter Google Sheets. They’re easy to use spreadsheets in the cloud. You can use them for all kinds of things, but my inner librarian loves using them to organize songs.

Write set-lists.

Each song has a column for feel, tempo, key, or composer. When I’m writing a set-list and need a ballad for the third song in the second set, I click on the Feel/Tempo column. All the different styles and tempos organize themselves alphabetically, making it easy to find all the ballads on my list.

If I’m putting together a three-song medley focusing on the songs of one composer, I can see that too. I click on the composer column, et voila! All the songs written by that composer are easy to see.

Keep track of charts and lyric sheets.

Most of my charts and lyric sheets are stored in Google docs or Evernote (another cloud-based system that I highly recommend.) When I need to reference a chart or send it to someone, I can share the link that’s pasted into the charts column.

Study a tune.

When learning a song, I want to make it my own. But before creating my own interpretation, I like to listen to how other singers and instrumentalists have approached the tune. So I scour YouTube for recordings that I love and then copy and paste the links in the study column. Later, I can spend some time listening and learning.

Practice.

If there are backing tracks that I like to use for practicing, I make a note of where they are — in my iTunes library, Evernote, or on a physical CD. If there’s a great backing track on YouTube, the link gets pasted in the practice column.

Remember what I need to do next.

If a chart needs updating, or parts of a song aren’t memorized, I write a message to myself in the notes column. It’s so much easier to see what needs doing to make the song performance-ready.

Store links to song research.

When I fall in love with a song, I want to know all about it. When was it written? Who was it originally written for? Anything that gives me insight into a song’s origin story or its life out in the world make for a richer singing experience.

Researching a song reveals gems I can share with an audience too. When I uncover a great story or interesting tidbit about a tune, I use it in the song’s introduction. Stories create context and set the stage for the song I’m about to sing.

For the audience, a great introduction creates a deeper connection to the song — and to you. At the very least, it can make your song introductions more interesting!

Need some help organizing your songs? I’ve created a Master Song List to share with you. Click HERE to download it for free. You’ll also find instructions on how to use it and make it your own. Happy organizing!

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Originally published at https://www.valeriedaysings.com.