The Queen of Lists and Organization

Lest you think that this last crazy rush of blog posts is some new desire in me to organize and structure my life, I must tell you that I've been this way for a long time.  I'll spare you the details of my childhood and jump right to college.

The Book about Books

As an undergrad, I began a project reviewing any and every book I could find about the voice and singing.  It looks like about half the titles have my reviews of the books and half are just standard bibliography entries.  It might have started as part of a voice pedagogy or literature class.  I can't really remember.  It was saved on one of those huge floppy disks.  The printed copy I just found was done on a dot matrix printer and still has the edges attached to the paper.  For those of you too young to remember, it looks like this.

Anyway, this project is at least 25 pages long and divided into categories:

• translations
• diction
• song lists
• textbooks and pedagogy sources
• voice training in schools and choral singing
• opera and music history

Pencilled notes in the columns show that I clearly had plans to sort and add more subcategories:

• Maybe class voice section
• maybe separate phonetics and diction
• acoustics
• Russian 
• Bel Canto
• musical theatre

Totally nerdy, but what a great resource!  Maybe someday I'll get back to it and finish Jeannine's Annotate Bibliography of Everything She Could Get Her Hands On.  (That wasn't the title then, but if I do finish it, that will be the new title.)

Other Nerdy Organizational Stuff

The Catalog

About the same time I was working on the bibliography, I also started a special card catalog of the music I own.  Each 3 X 5 card was a song title and listed important information like the show it was from and the composer.  Then it listed which books I had that song in.  I still have those cards.  I can't throw anything away.  Plus, I want to check them against the new and improved (but still in process because I can't stop buying music) catalog in an Excel spread sheet.  

The spread sheet version has columns for title, composer, show, book title, key, if I own the book or my school does, and if either the school or I have an accompaniment CD for that title.  On another page, I also have a list of all the songs I own that have ranges of one octave or less, with a column for what the range is for that particular song.  Because I spend so much time with repertoire, much of that information is also in my head, but it is helpful for songs in books that I don't use as frequently.  For example, a few weeks ago, someone needed to borrow a copy of a song.  I knew that it was in one book for sure, but I use that frequently and didn't want to loan it out.  I was then able to search my spread sheet and find what the person needed in another book.  

Also, having the information organized like this has been extremely helpful in finding the right key for a student.  If a student is singing a song that they love from a collection that they own and it should be working well for them, but it's not quite locking in,  I will see what other keys I have that song in.  Sometimes keys make a difference, changing an OK song for that voice to a WOW song.  

The Books of Pictures

I also have a couple of binders that I created during grad school.  They are full of pictures that I ripped out of magazines.  I am a very visual person and wanted ideas, real things that I could look at to help me build the situation of the songs I was singing.  There are pictures of people, places, things.  Basically, I added any picture that spoke to me on some level.  If it spoke to me, then I would be more likely to use it.  As I write fiction, this also gives me some great inspiration for describing people, places, and things.  

Pack Rat Stuff

I keep everything, and sometimes I'm better at organizing it than at other times.  

I keep:

• programs
• letters, even ones I didn't send
• old business records including schedules and student lists
• papers I wrote for school  (I still have some from elementary school.)
• handouts from classes, conferences, workshops
• magazine articles from a variety of sources

So, if all the stuff I'm posting here gets to be too much for you, that's OK.  Read what interests you, and rest well knowing that at least my thoughts are somewhat organized here and not scribbled on some scrap of paper and stuffed in a box under the bed.