How I Track My Performances in Notion

How I Track My Performances in Notion

If I had one piece of advice for young musicians, performers, composers, teachers, or directors, it would be to start tracking all the work you do in a Performance List. I didn’t start doing this until the latter half of my junior year of college, and it has paid off tenfold. I only wish I had all my performances from earlier in my career, too; it makes a huge difference when going after professional opportunities if you have a track record to reference.

Tracking your performances doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming; I would take five minutes at the end of each week to log them as part of my weekly review. If you perform less than that, once a month would be fine too; as long as they’re eventually getting into a system of some sort, you should be good to go.

Setting this up took me AGES. I went through a lot of trial and error to decide exactly what fields to include, and which information wasn’t necessary, but where I’ve landed with it suits my needs perfectly. It was functional while I was in college, and it’s functional now that I’m out of college too; it’s flexible yet structured enough to be universally helpful no matter what stage of life I’m in, as long as I’m still actively performing. Even now, during COVID when performances have slowed down— I admittedly use it less, but still log performances as they come up. I also reference it as I begin new projects, which saves me so much time and brain power.

So that’s a little bit about why this is helpful, now let’s dive into the what.

What to Track

As a soprano with her degree in Performance, my focus has always been on performances (obviously…hence the name, ~Performance List~). It has been a key factor in crafting my CV and Resume as an active performer. But even if you’re a teacher, composer, or director, this list can serve a similar purpose.

Regardless of the field, professional musicians are constantly curating their success. We give to the world, and then it’s gone—unless it’s logged. No matter how niche your career field is, a tracking system can aid you in building on your success.

If you’re a performer, you can track your performances the way I do, and you can duplicate my template here. But if you’re not a performer, here are some ways to adapt this list to your needs.

Teachers: Log your teaching opportunities, field studies, guest conductor visits, bands you work with, competitions your students win, and anything else that shows a measure of success for where you want to go.

Composers: Log each time a new piece is performed, any competition is won (or lost), commissions you receive, leads for new opportunities, etc. You can also track all the pieces you write in something similar to this; I have a Composition Log which I keep separate from items like on this list. I’m working on a video and template for that, which I’ll link back here once it’s complete!

Directors: Log your ensemble’s performances, evaluations, events you host, events you’re invited to participate in, events you apply to perform at that you’re rejected to, guest conducting opportunities, clinicians who come and work with your ensemble, etc.

Hobbyists: Log each concert you go to, and use the tags for type; rock, jazz, classical, opera, alternative, rap, country, etc. If you’re a lover of music, see how many different types you can curate in a year. Go support a local high school band, dress up one night and go to the opera, and of course you can’t miss if Lady Gaga comes to your town!

How To Set It Up

We’re off to the races! Now is the fun part: setting this bad boy up to use. If you’d like, you can duplicate my template by clicking here, but if you’re interested in how to make this work for you, keep reading.

Basic Setup

In Notion (or Excel, Google Sheets, or a Word Doc), create an inline table with the following columns:

• Date function, titled “Date” (duhh)
• Rename the Title column to “Name”
• Multi-select function named “Tags”
• Text field named “Location”
• Checkbox titled “Favorite”
• Checkbox titled “Performed in”
• Text field named “Comments”
• File function named “Program”

Voila! That’s all it takes to start your very own performance list. Of course, feel free to add or take away any of these fields to suit your needs and tailor it to what you do as a professional musician.

This is all fine and dandy, but let me explain the reasoning behind some of these choices.

Tags

Adding tags will help categorize them – I recommend only adding tags only as you need them. When I first started this, I made a jillion tags for what I thought I’d use in theory, but it ended up making the whole thing disorganized for awhile.

Favorites

At first I thought this was a silly addition, but it has been a lifesaver in some cases. Yes, your favorite concerts will be imprinted in your memory so in theory you shouldn’t have to log them like this, right? But I have found that having a place to see them all at once, and having notes about each, has strengthened my memories of them. It also makes it easier when searching for CV and Resume items; your favorites tend to be your most successful performances, therefore they are nice to have all the info in one place when you’re listing them for business purposes.

Performed In

I highly recommend tracking ALL the concerts you attend, whether you’re in them or not. Part of being a musician is learning from others, finding new inspiration, and tracking growth. You can’t “steal like an artist” if you don’t have a track record of who to steal from. We are the sum of all the music influences that have been imprinted on our lives, so I think it’s important to track them all—whether we were in the spotlight or not.

Click the checkbox for the concerts you were in, and you will be able to view these in the “Performed in” view. Now there’s no reason to NOT track them all, since you can have these two separate lists using Notion’s “View” feature.

Closing Thoughts

There you have it! Starting a tracking system for your Performance List is endlessly rewarding, and something I wish I started a long time ago. I hope that it can help some of you, too! If you’d like to get my template, you can click here to duplicate it in Notion.

If you have any questions or ideas to make this better, I’d love to hear them! Shoot me a quick email or DM on Instagram and I’ll get back to you soon.