Categories, tags, colors

[arlo]

Consider how you can add colors to songs, contacts and events:

- Songs: You can apply a color to each song, but you can't enter names for the colors; you just have to remember what you want them to mean.

- Contacts and Events: You can apply a category to a contact or event, and you can apply a color to the category, so basically contacts and events can have colors and those colors have explicit names.

I think it makes sense to put contacts and events but not songs into categories since songs have many more dimensions of criteria. That's why songs have tags instead of categories. Color labels on songs are just one more way to organize them, in a simple, free-form way.

But sometimes people request the ability to enter names to indicate what their song colors mean. I could do that, but then song colors would similar enough to contact and event categories that the remaining differences might be confusing. I could make them work the same as contact and event categories, but then the decision about when to use song categories versus tags would be confusing. Maybe the one-dimensional song color field is outdated and it would be better to always use tags, and allow assigning colors to tags. How would you handle this? How do you use song colors currently?

[danray0424]

I use song colors to say which of my two lead singers fronts each song, so I can see at a glance if I've got a set list out of balance between the two of us, or if I have too many of either of us in a row. Which is really just one very pertinent tag value.

If I could have the lead singers' names be tags, give those tags colors, and have the song be colored depending on which tag it had, that'd solve my use case and be much more flexible for other things. You'd need what to do when multiple different-colored tags are assigned to a song...

[megahertz]

I have used song colors in the past to indicate instrumentation. Green for acoustic guitar (as opposed to electric), blue for keyboard (as opposed to keyboard player playing guitar on the song). In the setlist it was a useful reminder to wait for the instrument change.

Now I use colors differently. In set lists for an upcoming show, I use color to highlight the songs we want to make sure we practice. In set lists for live shows, I use colors to indicate songs we might want to cut if we are going long. For these purposes, I have sometimes wished I could color a song only in a set list (as opposed to the song list).

[JeffsRealm]

So I use song colors to indicate how good we are with certain songs

Green good to go
Yellow good but we make a few errors
Red yeah we sucked at that during practice
Then just white and black lettering we haven practiced yet


Oh along those lines maybe some blanket ways to set colors. While not needed often. Over covid when we started again I just went in set everything as yellow.

[Songjoy]

I use song colors to indicate the "feel" of each song, for easy putting together of setlists without, for example, too many soft/slow ballads in a row, or two many upbeat/rock/danceable songs in a row. For me, for example, green = slow/ballad, yellow = a bit more upbeat but still chill, orange = pop/more swingy but not yet fast or loud, red = uptempo/loud/danceable.

When shoving songs around to make up a list, the colorings are a HUGE help. I'd love to also be able to use dual colors (for example, type color = green PLUS background color of the field = X) so as to denote songs with, say, harmonica accompaniment by me. That way, I could more easily put sets together without having too many songs with harp in a row - or too few. It helps to make a set more diverse and interesting. Same could be done for my duo, for songs in which bass (instead of a 2nd guitar) is played. Or songs in which a BeatBuddy (drumkit) comes into play. In the case of bass, for example, it is desirable to group a few songs with bass so as not to have to be swapping instruments too many times in a row (e.g. from acoustic guitar to bass and back again). Instead, you can set up groups of 3-4 songs with bass, and then go back to more acoustic set.

Of course, I could use a single color for each of these special categories, but it would be great to keep my overall color system as-is and just add a secondary color for the instrumentation aspects.

[birdonstrings]

I use a similar system as Songjoy, indicating the "energy" of a song. E. g. Red are high energy songs that I would never put towards the beginning of a gig, orange are bouncy/dancy ones, yellow/green are sorta "campfire style" ones and blue are mostly easy ballads. And so on.

I use all available colours, both for putting together harmonic sets quickly, but also to keep track of my own energy. For example, I've played gigs while being rather sick and my guitarist knew: red songs are a no-no. We stick with green, yellow and some blue.

Dual colours would be a fun thing to have, but I don't necessarily need it. Since there are several meanings for me hidden in each colour, I also don't really need to give the colours a name.

I understand that could be helpful if you use (dual?) colours for instrumentation though

[Neill00]

I like the idea of allowing setting colours to tags. You set it up ahead of time and then it’s just one step.  You can use it in a variety of ways.

[arlo]

This is still simmering, but my thoughts are in sync with the comments posted here. My favorite approach is to add colors to tags and eliminate the Color field because that's most consistent with the other modules. Then you could still add colors to songs, but via the Tags field, which would also have names to explicitly show what the colors mean.

The issue is how to handle songs with multiple colors, that is, multiple colored tags. Unless I can find a good solution for that, I'll leave this as is.

[dochereford]

I use song color to denote what guitar I use on each song.  One less thing I need to think about while on stage.

[Darug]

I use colours to differentiate Song parts.
IE

• Orange for Intro
  
  • Yellow for Verses
  • Blue for Choruses
    
    • Purple for Bridge
    • Dark Green for Instrumentals
      
      • Brown for Outro