Tracking Ward Music Selections

In June of 2008, the user “CelticWildFlower” posted an interesting question in comment to another posting.

Do you know if there are any great forms to use when planning the weekly music? I’d like to have a more organized way of keeping track—mainly so I don’t repeat my personal favorite hymns!

I failed to answer back then. I was managing my blog weakly on a less comment-friendly platform. Now having recently moved my blog to a better platform, I’m finding all these comments! And, too, I’m re-entered the blog space on several fronts, so I’m admittedly paying more attention. So, CelticWildFlower, please accept my apologies, and if you’re still around, here are some ideas on tracking music.

I’ve never seen any particularly effective forms for tracking music. There are 2 ways that I’ve used and seen used: Calendar and Spreadsheet.

Tracking Music Using a Calendar

Many choir directors track music on a calendar. Hymns could be tracked, too. This has sever advantages:

• If you track all music on the same calendar (hymns, musical selections, choir, etc.), then all music personnel have at their fingertips a full view of music for coming and past weeks.
• A calendar is a good communication tool. The calendar can be printed for choir members, music personnel, bishopric. It’s easily consumed by anyone.

If you like this route, I currently try to use a Google Calendar for Ward Music. I overlay a USA holidays calendar to help judge when certain selections may be best timed. That is, Google Calendar lets you build or subscribe to multiple calendars and you can choose which ones to display at any time. I call that “overlaying” the calendars, but it’s a matter of ticking the checkboxes for the calendars you want to see. Easy to use.

You can also share your Google Calendar and enable others to enter information there, assuming you have tech-savvy personnel. If you have really tech-savvy people, you could have your whole choir subscribed to your calendar, and they can get SMS text message reminders on Saturday that you’re singing on Sunday, or reminders Sunday morning, too. I don’t use that, but that’s a possibility, depending on your organization’s personality and needs.

There are also disadvantages to using a Calendar. It’s a good communication tool, but not really a “data” tool. If you want to easily review what was sung when and how often, it’s going to mean a lot of scrolling through months.

Tracking Calendar Example

My ward music calendar on Google is public. Click here to see it. You’ll see that we don’t necessarily keep it up to date, and I don’t track hymns on it. This calendar is for me as the Ward Music Chair tracking musical selections. I also add Stake things to this since I’m also Stake Music Chair. It’s mostly for me, but a few others do look at it.

Tracking Music Using a Spreadsheet

I prefer doing “tracking” like this in a simple spreadsheet. It lets me plan and review easily. It can also be shared with other musicians, either in its entirely or by copying and pasting out the relevant information.

Use columns such as date, #, Name, usage (opening, closing, sacrament, intermediate, hymnal choir, choir, musical selection, etc.) track all Sacrament Meeting music, including your choir music, so you can easily answer the question, “When did we do that last?” A spreadsheet lets you sort data by any of these columns, so you can check to see how often you’ve sung a given hymn or selection, or how often a given person has performed, etc.

“But Spreadsheets Scare Me!”

Don’t fret. Working with spreadsheets is different than working with a word processor. There are ample online tutorials. Look up “spreadsheet tutorial” at YouTube.com.

First, choose your spreadsheet software. If you create documents on your computer, you probably already have a spreadsheet as part of your office suite. Here is a listing of common office suites and tools where you’ll find a spreadsheet.

If you don’t have any of these, I strongly recommend that you download, install, and use OpenOffice.org from www.openoffice.org. It’s a free and open source office suite.

Tracking Spreadsheet Example.

I’m attaching for you a quick example of a possible tracking spreadsheet based on this model. I built it in 10 minutes. I don’t currently use this model, but have used something like it in the past when I was selecting hymns for these meetings. Click here to download the spreadsheet tracking example file: 2009 12 12 – Tracking Spreadsheet for Blog Entry. This spreadsheet is in OpenOffice.org’s .ODS format. If you’re using a very late version of Excel, it may be able to open it. You can also import it into Google Docs. Or, you can download OpenOffice.org to being using it!

Good luck!