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Highlighting what we sing: Using Google Docs for Choir Tasks

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I am exploring different ways of using Google Docs for my choirs and I hit upon a new one today:  highlighting the text.
 
Here was my task:
  • I’m working up Mendelssohn’s “Die erste Walpurgisnacht” for the Alabama Symphony
  • My chorus speaks Alabama, not German
  • Our language expert is coming Monday to help us
  • I need to identify exactly what/where we needed help
So . . . I found Goethe’s text online but we don’t sing all of that – and the men sing part and the women sing part and we combine on other parts.

Here is what I came up with.  Perhaps it is just beneficial for me and the language expert – but I shared it with the chorus as well.
 
What do you think – a useful tool?
 
Do you have other uses for Google Documents and your choir?

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Comments

  1. GREAT IDEAS!
     
    I started using IPA several years ago to help build uniform sounds for pure vowels (AND THOSE UGLY NASALS!) with The Houston Choral Society.  For singers with NO knowledge of IPA, beginning with the 5 pure vowels and the 3 nasals does not seem so daunting!
     
    THANKS!
     
    Betty Devine

  2.  Obviously a great way to begin the process!  What’s next?  I suggest an IPA transcription (labor intensive, but works great), with a small legend for some of the symbols that won’t be as familiar to the average chorister.  (I did this with chorus for a Turandot performance a hundred years ago, before the Web and Google docs … very successful for the choristers.)
     
    OR  get the native speaker to record the text and post on YouTube.  (You knew I was going to add that one, right!?)  Again, rather labor intensive, but very effective.
     
    Google Docs… Great stuff!!!
    As always, once you (Philip, or anyone) do this, it lives on the Web and can be shared with many other colleagues needing the same resource… no more re-inventing the wheel!
     
     
    And as for other uses of Google Docs … remember the old “Dear People…” letters that Shaw sent to his choruses? [I used to start mine with “Dear Folks,” so as not to be a total knock-off!) …… Wow, we can all share rehearsal information, encouragements, musicological/biographical backgrounds of the composer, future plans for the pieces, etc etc etc.  The list seems endless.
     
    Great topic!  Let’s hear more!        All the best,  Tim
     

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