Colourchord

Very exciting to be attempting #wholeschoolharmony with @musicforthemany and @TodmordenHigh thsi week! These are the songs we're going to be trying out colourchord.org/resources/Tod-…

Fun trying this one out last night @DorothyPax - worked pretty well! More pop songs here: colourchord.org/resources/Colo…

I’ve added a blog page to the website. Already a few little things up there. Unfortunately it is currently beyond my web design capabilities to add a comments thingy but feel free to comment here if you have any thoughts! colourchord.org/blog

3 going up to 4 and down to 2). Flat hands give CHORD I (black), LH down gives CHORD V (red), RH up give CHORD IV (blue)

This has been working really well on stage :-) If you want to try it: audience on stage left just follow my left hand ("orange team" note 1 going down to note 7), audience SR follow my RH ("purple team" 5 going up to 6) and audience in the middle follow both hands ("green team"..

Added a blog to the website colourchord.org/blog First blog is about how to use the three “teams” and hand gestures instead of red/blue/black lyrics

@Suzie68446365 That’s interesting - is it not off putting that other teams are moving but you don’t have visual warning?

@Colourchord1 For use in school I have made sheets with just red and black, or just blue and black on single sheets. Once you have used the system a few times, the original booklet layouts should be fine to understand.

I'm thinking this sort of thing for the "one team only" sheets. Underlined word is the starting (black note), italics indicate you are singing a different colour to the other teams (visually quite subtle but then it's not very important that you notice it, just there for..

@FrlSchramm The purple team is up for blue, stay put for black and red so they’re just emphasising that…

@Helen_Lindley Just emphasising up for blue, stay put for black and red….

@Suzie68446365 Excellent!

@Colourchord1 Definitely separate song sheets for orange and purple teams with just their colour will help with younger children - I have prepared a few of these for use in school, using the booklets for green team.

Following on from this I think there’s a case for song sheets for the different teams, so no brackets to read but you can still generate the extra chord(s). Choir leader would have the “full score” (i.e lyric sheet with brackets) and singers could have the sheet for their team

Perhaps where a bracket is being applied to a team’s song sheet those words should be in italics or something to indicate that it’s supposed to sound different to the other chords of that colour? Otherwise it’ll feel odd if you’re expecting a blue 4 chord and you hear a 6 chord

Do schools still use hymn books?! Probably not thinking about it!

Just occurred to me (seems obvious now I’ve thought I’m of it) but in a situation where you already have songbooks printed out it would be a simple matter to colour-code them using blue / red highlighter pens

Might be a bit fiddly to do brackets but you could either code it for a specific team which would actually make it a lot easier to read (e.g purple team singing blue when others are singing black). Or you could draw a line above the bracketed word in the variation colour?

Last of 10 or so pre-gig Colourchord workshops tonight on the @spiersandboden tour. Thanks to everyone who has come along. Seems to work really well as a pre-gig extra - if any artists out there are interested in offering it I’m happy to colour-code some of your songs for you :-)

@anjibennett Also the above is only of interest if you’re going to do your own colour coding - completely unnecessary information for singers :-)

@Colourchord1 Aagh, I need another lesson from you! That session on Friday was so helpful. I'm actually contemplating starting to do this with a patient group for "Singing for health" but I need massively upskilling!

Shout out to my fellow harmony geeks out there....