COLOURCHORD

July 2022

Team harmonies using hand gestures

This is an idea that occurred to me recently whilst thinking of ways to increase audience participation at gigs. Here's how it works:

- Split the group or audience into three
- You don't need to talk about team colours but in Colourchord terms the team to your left (assuming you are facing the group) will be orange, middle group green and group to you right purple
- Team to your left only pay attention to your left hand. If your hand is flat they sing note 1, if you point down they move down to note 7
- Team to your right only pay attention to your right hand. If your hand in flat they sing note 5, if you point up they move up to note 6
- Team in the middle pay attention to
both hands. If both hands are flat they sing note 3, if left hand is pointing down they move down to note 2, if right hand is pointing up they move up to note 4
- Chords are as follows
Both hands flat = black (i.e. tonic / chord I)
LH pointing down, RH flat = red (i.e. dominant / chord V)
RH pointing up, LH flat = blue (i.e. subdominant / chord IV)

I didn't actually try it with the audience in the end but I tried it out with my choir on Monday and it worked really well. The singers will just sing long "ahhs" so you will have to sing the melody whilst conducting the chord changes, or you could have one group on the melody?

I imagine reaction times will be slower than reading the colours so if you're using the Colourchord booklet to conduct the chord changes you may want to pick a song with not too many changes, or just ignore the briefer chord changes?

It may also work as a good introduction to Colourchord in general?
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Edit: here it is in practice:


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